04.19.08
Do-No-Evil Saturday - Part I: OpenSUSE 10.3, 11 Beta; CNR Sidles with Ubuntu (Like a Leech) (Corrected)
Not a particularly active week has it been for OpenSUSE (or for GNU/Linux in general for that matter), but let’s make a start with this visually-appealing video which demonstrates dual-head ‘eye candy’ in SUSE.
The latest packages of KDE4 (KDE 4.0.3) are now available for OpenSUSE. EasyVG, who moved his Linux/OSS blog to a new and separate domain, covers this briefly. He is a big OpenSUSE and AMD fan, whose blog has always been a joy to read.
After fetching the latest updates for KDE 4.0.3 packages for my openSUSE 10.3 distribution, I noticed quite a few graphics improvements that was expecting for some time now. Apart from graphics improvements, there are also quite a lot bug fixes. Following are few screenshots…
You can see the OpenSUSE 11.0 countdown on the sidebar. It’s only about 2 months away (60 days) and the existing beta is already being looked at.
Sorry guys, the innovation hat is green. Ok, enough with articles. Lets back to 11.0 beta.
We talked about package management speed, we talked about new looks and features already. However our work around patches and patterns was still missing.
During the last weeks, we have been working on this and now all the pieces start to fall together. Click on any image to see it in full size. Also note that ugly scrollbar in the disk usage is was also fixed already.
Over at Download Squad, the folks take a look at the latest stable OpenSUSE, not the test branch.
The last openSUSE install I tried for any real length of time was 10.1. I installed 10.3 a month or two back to try some things, and found, though it’s really usable, there wasn’t anything that made me want to say, “Screw Ubuntu.”
[...]
Until I reinstalled openSUSE 10.3, with the GNOME desktop. I was taken by the whole presentation, the whole delivery of the OS. I am still blown away by it.
Francis is still active with OpenSUSE news, but he is just not the one delivering their announcement in the mailing lists. And speaking of which, new OpenSUSE mailing lists have just been created. Others like the KDE-oriented one have reached an almost-permanent state of silence. [Corrected, omitted: see clarifications in the comments below)
Issue #18 of openSUSE Weekly News is now out!
In this week’s issue:
* openSUSE Project Releases Major Update to openSUSE Build Service
* Counting down to 11.0 - Get your counter here![...]
Coverage which is focused on the latest state of the Build Service was published in the same blog as well.
The openSUSE team is proud to announce another major release of the openSUSE Build Service (OBS). This release brings a new level to OBS scalability by adding the ability for OBS instances to interact.
Beineri (OpenSUSE/KDE developer) has this nice shot of the H-P Mini-Note running SUSE not with the typical desktop but with KDE4. Worth a glance:
Last week HP announced it’s Mini-Note PC with preloads of SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10. Our heros of the Mobile Devices Team have worked the last weeks on that. The Mini-Note is available in different configurations starting at $499 (that would be only 313 Euro if applied for Europe without surcharge). All editions share the form factor, the nearly full-size keyboard and the nice display (1280×768). So I had to lend one from Mobile Devices team and play with it.
Linspire/CNR
Other than last week's bad news, Linspire has become a little boring and quite dormant on the face of it. It hardly gets a mention anywhere. Reused press release, however, have still appeared since Linspire’s troubles. It remains to be seen how long the company will be around for. Here is another bit about CNR. [PR]
Linspire, Inc., developer of CNR.com, an easy-to-use, one-click digital software delivery service for desktop Linux software, today announced the immediate availability of web-based software applications at CNR.com.
Watch how they use the highly-anticipated release of Ubuntu 8.10 8.04 (they spell “Hardy Heron” incorrectly as a single word) to ride on the hype and associate Ubuntu with CNR. Ubuntu has been supported by CNR and vice versa for quite some time, so it’s a ‘non-announcement’ really.
Linspire, Inc. developer of CNR.com (http://www.cnr.com/), an easy-to-use, one-click digital software delivery service for desktop Linux and web-based software, today announced the immediate availability of a beta CNR Client for the Ubuntu 8.04 long term support (LTS) Linux distribution edition currently in beta.
For a change, one journalist gave these dull press releases a whirl this week. Here it is from DesktopLinux:
Linspire’s CNR beta supports Ubuntu HardyHeron
Stated Larry Kettler, President and CEO of Linspire, “Since the launch of our new beta CNR.com service, Feisty and Gusty users have made up an important part of the CNR user base. We look forward to continuing this growth with Hardy users, as well as adding other popular desktop Linux distributions to CNR.com in the future.”
Maybe they just picked up the release/version codename from the Wiki, which uses CamelCase. This might explain the consistency of these spelling oddities. █
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.
Francis said,
April 19, 2008 at 5:40 pm
> Others like the KDE-oriented one have reached an almost-permanent state of silence.
Well, since no-one else corrected you:
francis@opensuse:~/stuff> grep ‘opensuse-kde’ ./opensuse-kde-2008-03 |wc -l
156
156 posts in one month is not exactly what I would call a “permanent state of silence”. Strange idea.
Roy Schestowitz said,
April 19, 2008 at 7:31 pm
I’ve just checked again. Seems like the last message I received was on January 30th (it goes into a separate directory, so I rarely see it), so someone might have tossed me out then (I guess I shouldn’t be surprised if it were the case) because I only received crossposted items after that (falling into the same directory). To clarify, I’ve been on that list for years, long before the Microsoft deal which turned many people sour. I didn’t subscribe with malice in mind.
Thanks, Francis. I’ll correct this post.
Francis said,
April 20, 2008 at 3:41 am
There was actually a nasty unsubscription bug with the mailing list software around then. There is no reason to forcibly remove someone from a mailing list who isn’t actively contributing negatively to it, so you shouldn’t worry about that ever happening if you are not posting.
Daniel said,
April 20, 2008 at 7:53 pm
“Watch how they use the highly-anticipated release of Ubuntu 8.10″
Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex isn’t until October. I assume you meant 8.04 Hardy Heron? =P
Interesting blog, but those little popups on *every* link annoy me to no end.
Roy Schestowitz said,
April 20, 2008 at 8:03 pm
Oops. Yes, you are right. I was thinking ahead and didn’t proofread properly.
Regarding the ‘popups’ (nicetitles), I was hoping they would reflect better on destination and add context even if you choose not the follow the hyperlinks.
I didn’t realise some people found them obnoxious. Thanks for the feedback on that. We’ll see what we can do.