08.23.08

Do-No-Evil Saturday - Part II: OpenSUSE 11.1 Reaches Second Alpha

Posted in GNU/Linux, Opensuse, Security, Review at 4:26 pm by Roy Schestowitz

The big news of the week was probably this alpha release, which was announced a few days ago. From Christoph’s E-mail:

[opensuse-announce] openSUSE 11.1 Alpha2 is available

Hi everyone,

openSUSE 11.1 Alpha2 is available and ready for testing. This time it is
actually installable and bootable But you’ll need to be quick and select
the right boot option from the bootmenu. Due to bug #418619, “Failsafe” is
the default boot option. Please make sure to always select real “openSUSE
10.0.42 - 2.6.26-14″ option!

On x86_64, please make sure to always disable the image-based installation
from the summary screen, before the actual instllation starts!

There will be no LiveCD with this Alpha, but we are planning on doing an
Alpha2plus LiveCD next week.

openSUSE 11.1 Alpha2 is available from
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.1-Alpha2/iso/

Please also refer to http://software.opensuse.org/developer for further
details and all the direct links.

Known issues / workarounds:

- image-based installation on x86_64 will not work without problem, as the
images on the ISO don’t match the RPMs. You’ll get errors around “unable
to remove pam-config”.

Workaround: always disable image-based installation on x86_64!

- Bug 418619: Failsafe kernel is default in menu.lst

Important: Please make sure to boot the right kernel — failsafe can cause
trouble on some maschines

- Bug 418592: gdm doesn’t start on some maschines

- Bug 418577: Bootloader: cannot update the dynamic configuration policy

- Bug 418729: Could not find /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_…

- various AutoYast-related bugs
* Bug 418574: AutoYast is ManualYast in 2nd stage
* Bug 418707: Firewall services still enabled although disabled in
Autoyast profile
* Bug 418568: uuidgen missing

Here is a review of OpenSUSE 11.0 GM. There’s a breakdown at the end:

The Good

* Installer was easy to use
* Interface was nice
* Configuring things is quick with YAST
* User Friendly
* Pretty Fast when using
* YAST

The Bad

* Technical Language (Not bad for me, but maybe another user)
* Boot Is slow
* YAST for package managing is just a little slow

The Inbetween

* YAST
* Technical Language

Detailed new review of OpenSUSE 11.0:

openSUSE 11.0 is a solid release with all the functionality you could ever need on the installation DVD. If by some chance it’s not on the DVD, you’ll more than likely find it on the openSUSE.org website. Installation is painless and operation is smooth. openSUSE 11.0 is definitely a distribution worthy of your investigation.

Another OpenSUSE ramble:

Simply put I still LOVE openSuse. Of course theres a few things that need work, but overall its a wonderful distro that I strongly recommend.

Ok so for a bit of back story I’ve been using windows since i think 3.1. When i was a kid my dad taught me to use the green screens, and i’ve been using linux off and on since about 2000. Also I’ve rarely used kde.

The OpenSUSE project proudly announced the inclusion of SELinux and Heise covered this shortly afterwards. It will come in the next version.

The next releases of SUSE Linux, OpenSUSE 11.1 and SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 (SLES), will see the security extension SELinux moving into the SUSE distribution. SUSE’s current security extension, AppArmour, will remain enabled by default. SUSE describe SELinux’s inclusion as a technology preview and are not offering enterprise suppport or any ready made SELinux security policy files. SUSE say they are focussing on supplying the necessary kernel patches and changes to applications to allow for SELinux operation.

Duncan has this technical post, which is just one among many from SUSEGeek and others.

Today I used some of the coolest openSUSE Build Service features: project layering, patches against linked packages and aggregates. I want to write about them.

The SUSE bootloader got some attention and this detailed article about GRUB and LILO was later published.

You may not realize it unless you are dual booting multiple operating systems, but after your BIOS starts firing up the fan, the microprocessor chip, and the power supply, a boot manager, or bootloader, takes over the process until the kernel starts up.

Linux supports a variety of open-source and proprietary boot managers, but you can install only two with YaST: the Grand Unified Bootloader (GRUB) and the Linux Loader (LILO). GRUB has been the default bootloader for SUSE Linux since v8.2, but LILO still runs quite a few systems, and you may want to use it instead.

Installment #34 of Weekly News came a little late this week (vacation might be the cause). At least it arrived, eventually.

Welcome to issue #34 of openSUSE Weekly News!

In the last two weeks:

* Announcing ENOS 2008
* Join the openSUSE Proofreading Team
* Announcing Hack Week III
* openSUSE TV

The 35^th installment is out now as well.

Welcome to issue #35 of openSUSE Weekly News!

In this week:

* openSUSE 11.1 Alpha2 is available
* Hack Week III is almost here!
* openSUSE to add SELinux Basic Enablement in 11.1
* Masim Sugianto: Linux Distribution Popularity Across the Globe

OpenSUSE will be at FrOSCon tomorrow. It was also there today.

Join the openSUSE Project this weekend, Saturday August 23, and Sunday August 24, at third annual FrOSCon. FrOSCon is a two day conference on Free Software and Open Source, taking place at the Fachhochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg in Sankt Augustin near the cities of Bonn and Cologne.

Have a lot of fun. █

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