09.20.08
Do-No-Evil Saturday - Part I: OpenSUSE Calls for Testers and Boarders [sic]
The major story, although it depends on one’s perspective, is one of OpenSUSE adoption through localisation. [via Glyn Moody]
Noy’s built up a team inside NiDA to localize open source desktop apps into Khmer (a language too small to be interesting to Microsoft), build up open source development skills amongst young people (still early days on this one) and train end users on Linux, Open Office and Firefox (20,000 people and counting). He’s also the major champion behind Khmer OS, a localized OpenSuse distribution.
It was interesting to find this call for testers which combined OpenSUSE and SLES/D.
In the “old days” SuSE had a closed list of beta testers that would help with SuSE Linux testing and try to help SuSE ensure the best possible Linux distribution. Many beta testers expressed an interest in joining the SUSE Linux Enterprise beta program as well. We’re happy to announce that we have found a way to make this possible, and we’d like to expand the beta program to include new testers as well.
OpenSUSE is also still looking for more board candidates. Cute picture there in the page!
As a distribution, OpenSUSE is still pretty safe from the wrath of many. Ubuntu and Gentoo net the undesirable prize with a considerable gap over the rest.
The results are in. The most hated community Linux distribution is….
Ubuntu! Yay! Hurray!The final results were:
1.. Ubuntu: 27%
2.. Gentoo: 25%
3.. Fedora: 12%
4.. OpenSUSE: 10%
5.. Debian: 9%
6.. PCLinuxOS: 7%
7.. Slackware: 7%
The following long story of distro-hopping is a journey that ends in OpenSUSE 11.0.
I got bored with my Ubuntu Hardy install last week and decided to have a look at what some of the other guys are up to these days. Mind you, there wasn’t anything horribly wrong with my Ubuntu host. I still ♥ apt; IMHO, there’s still nothing faster (although the new package management in OpenSUSE 11 comes darned close!). But anyway, it was an interesting trek across the newest distros and while I was looking to end up with something other than SUSE (again, nothing wrong with it at all–I just like change), I am totally impressed with OpenSUSE 11 and am going to feel satisfied sticking with it for a decently long while, knowing that I’ve shopped around as it were. And I think that that’s really the main point, now that I think of it. It’s why I got involved with Linux originally: I hated Windows 3.1 and didn’t like the fact that there was no way to shop around and make it better. Oh–one other thing I was looking for in a new host: nightly/weekly KDE trunk (4.2) snapshots–and from what I found, only OpenSUSE offers that. Anyway… some random thoughts about the voyage…
A neat feature of device installation (driver selection) is shown in this blog post from Duncan.
Since openSUSE 10.1, ZYpp has the ability to recommend packages based on drivers and other useful system information. Packages can supplement any namespace, which is in turn evaluated at solving time. This allows to automatic select drivers on installation, based on the machine hardware, for example.
There was not much more to be found about OpenSUSE apart from some technical articles or posts. Here are a couple that stood out:
The YouTube user “NovellVideo” has just posted this video, which arguably represents SUSE beyond just the commercial product.
Last week’s newsletter seems to have arrived a little later than usual, so this time around there are two — not just one — summations of news. Here is issue #38 and also #39.
In this week:
* Last Call for openSUSE Board Candidates
* openSUSE KDE Bug Squashing Days (20-21 September)
* Board election
* openSUSE 11.0 survey
* KDE in openSUSE 11.1 and beyond
In this week:
* Board election
* OpenOffice_org 3.0rc1 available
* Call for SUSE Linux Enterprise and openSUSE Beta Testers
* Duncan Mac-Vicar: Extremely easy driver installation
* Distribution status
In the next post, we take a look at Novell SUSE. There’s tons of stuff this week. █
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.