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openSUSE Spotlight

Zonker's Insights


Google Mentor Summit (day one)October 25 2008

A little past the mid-way point at the Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit in Mountain View, California. The summit has been great so far — lots of interesting topics (so far, discussions on how to work with students for “umbrella” projects, getting universities involved in open source projects — specifically ways for projects to work with instructors to get their projects into the curricula, and how to deal with disruptive people in projects).

I’ll type up some thoughts on the various topics later after I’ve had a little more time to digest and think about the topics. It looks like we’re going to have a hackfest tomorrow on the university topic, which is awesome. Ran into Pavol Rusnak this morning, but it looks like our tastes in topics differs, since we haven’t been in any of the same talks since.

Some good ideas for openSUSE’s participation in GSoC next year — I think we ought to start looking at recruiting students and getting projects ready much sooner this year — like, starting at the beginning of 2009. One of the common complaints / problems mentioned is that there’s not enough time to get students up to speed with projects even with the additional bonding period. This isn’t really a problem with GSoC per se, just a reflection of the fact that it takes more than a few weeks to really get immersed in the way that any given project works.

By the way, for the chorus of folks who usually ask “where are the pictures?” Go

Right call on KDE 3.x for openSUSE 11.1October 17 2008

Reading this post by Max Spevack, I’m more convinced than ever that the openSUSE Project made the right call on KDE 3.5 inclusion in openSUSE 11.1:

John is still using Fedora 8 in part because he’s not a big fan of KDE 4 — an interesting data point. When I mentioned that Fedora 10 would include KDE 4.1 (addressing a lot of the stability problems that people have disliked in Fedora 9), he indicated that it wasn’t KDE 4.0 versus 4.1 that was the problem, but more that he simply preferred the general KDE 3 architecture. This is not the first time we’ve heard about loyal KDE users who prefer KDE 3 to KDE 4, but it’s an anecdote that I thought our KDE team might want to hear. I wonder if there is sufficient demand for the older KDE as to warrant a Fedora Spin that is essentially “Fedora 10 but with the latest KDE 3.x code instead of KDE 4.x code”. I use GNOME, so I don’t presume to make suggestions. I’m just trying to offer some reporting, and let the KDE experts make the decisions that they think are best.

A reminder, KDE 3.5x and KDE 4.1x will both be available on openSUSE media for openSUSE 11.1 — meaning the DVD images and DVDs produced for shows and so forth — but KDE 3.5 will be listed as one of the “extra” desktop environments, rather than as a primary DE

Suggestions for the new board?October 15 2008

So, I think it might have been mentioned that there’s this election thing going on… (Are you an eligible voter in the openSUSE Board election? Have you voted yet? If not — stop reading this post and go vote!)

My question for today — what suggestions would you have for the new board? If you were having a sit-down with the board, what advice would you give, what would you ask them to do in the next year?

See you in Indiana? How about Ohio?October 6 2008

Getting ready to head back from Tokyo, but already looking forward to my next trip out — specifically, heading to Indiana for Linuxfest 2008, and then to Columbus, Ohio for Ohio Linuxfest 2008!

I’ll be doing a keynote at both events. I’m really looking forward to seeing the Indiana Linuxfest for the first time, and I always have an excellent time at OLF. Especially this year when I’m not responsible for organizing it! ;-)

By the way, if you’re interested in helping out at the OLF booth this year, please get in touch. We still have room. :-)

Update: If you live near Bloomington, Indiana and were thinking about heading to OLF but didn’t want to splurge on gas — I might have room in my car for one or two passengers. I’ll be driving from Bloomington to Columbus Friday afternoon and then back Sunday morning. You’ll have to arrange your own room in Columbus, but I’m happy to help a few Linux enthusiasts get from point A to point B to support the cause.

Third anniversary of openSUSE Project’s first releaseOctober 6 2008

Just three years ago today, the openSUSE Project announced its first release.

Andreas Jaeger sent the word out to the opensuse-announce list on October 6, 2005, announcing the release of SUSE Linux 10.0:

I’m glad to announce the final version (aka the Goldmaster) of SUSE Linux 10.0. Developing 10.0 as part of the openSUSE project with an open bugzilla was a new and great experience. Thanks a lot to everybody that contributed in testing, reporting and fixing bugs, discussions etc.

The 10.0 release featured the latest and greatest free and open source software: the 2.6.13 Linux kernel, Firefox 1.0.6, GNOME 2.12, OpenOffice.org 1.9, and .

The project, which was announced at LinuxWorld Expo in San Francisco in August of 2005, has achieved a lot in just three years:

  • The formation of the first openSUSE Board
  • Five stable releases in three years (10.0, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, and 11.0)
  • Introduction and complete re-write of Zypper/libzypp for better package management
  • More than 200 members approved since the start of the project
  • Release of the openSUSE Build Service 1.0, whi