There were three openSUSE Tumbleweed snapshots released so far this week.

The snapshots updated Mozilla Thunderbird, Mozilla Firefox, Mesa, KDE Frameworks, glusterfs, php and several other packages.

The most recently released snapshot, 20210511, updated a little more than a handful of packages. There was one package update from KDE Frameworks 5.82.0 with plotting framework kplotting. The 5.12.2 Linux Kernel updated in the snapshot and brought a thermal sensor correction to the x86 thinkpad_acpi module and some fixes for Advanced Linux Sound Architecture USB audio. Another package update in the snapshot was hivex 1.3.20, which is a system for extracting the contents of the Windows Registry; the hivex version fixed a Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures that would allow an attacker to read memory beyond normal bounds or cause the program to crash.

Mesa 21.1.0 and a majority of the KDE Frameworks 5.82.0 packages updated in snapshot 20210510. The Mesa update added some patches and dropped vulkan_intel.h in /usr/include/vulkan/ but a decision was made to keep the directory empty. The update of KDE Frameworks 5.82.0 added new sidebar show and hide Breeze Icons. The KDBusAddons file was relicensed to LGPL-2.0 or later. Many fixes were made in the frameworks update, including a KTextEditor memory corruption fix and a couple fixes for dragging. The update of Mozilla Thunderbird 78.10.1 restored some previous behavior found in the 78.9.0 version. The fetchmail 6.4.19 update now properly reports option parsing errors. Tumbleweed skipped an entire major version of the of cluster file-system capable of scaling to several peta-bytes in its update of glusterfs from version 7.1 to 9.1; the new major version upgrade added support for 5K volumes, improved the rebalance of sparse files and it is now compiled with Link Time Optimization enabled by default. The full-featured implementation of the DNS protocol bind9 9.16.15, fixed a few CVEs including one that could lead to a RUNTIME_CHECK assertion failure. Also updated in the snapshots were ceph 16.2.3.26, chat client pidgin 2.14.4 and terminal multiplexer tmux 3.2.

The 20210508 snapshot updated Mozilla Firefox 88.0.1, which fixed a corruption of videos playing on Twitter or WebRTC calls on some Gen6 Intel graphics chipsets. A CVE involving web render components was also fixed with the open-source browser. An update in php7 7.4.19 reverted a fix that treated everything as PARAM_STR. Google’s library for parsing, formatting and validating international phone numbers libphonenumber updated to version 8.12.22, which updated carrier data and the geocoding data for Germany’s +49 and Mexico’s +52 calling codes. Other packages updated in the snapshot were hwdata 0.347, perl-CGI 4.52 and ibus-table 1.13.0.

A startup bringing personal workspaces in the cloud for students, workers, coders, and creators along with a Linux project for developers, system administrators and users are teaming up to extend the use of a secure desktop from any device, anywhere.

Shells and openSUSE Project have entered into a partnership to expand the use of Shells with the availability of openSUSE distributions on Shells’ private virtual desktop environment powered by cloud computing.

“This is a great way to give an openSUSE distribution a spin - without downloading or installing anything locally,” said Gerald Pfeifer, chairperson of the openSUSE Project. “And it’s a completely new way to use a feature rich, full fledged open source-based environment from your tablet or other device.”

Shells’ CEO Alex Lee couldn’t agree more.

“We’re thrilled with the images that have been created that are now available for our customers to choose from when setting up their Shells virtual desktop,” Lee said. “It’s been a pleasure collaborating with the openSUSE team for the past few months. Both of the openSUSE and Shells tech teams have put in a lot of hard work to drive this project to completion, and it is clearly evident in the end products.

“We are honored by the fact that the group at openSUSE selected this project to work on during their SUSE HackWeek,” Lee added.

Shells has multiple use cases and openSUSE distributions are just one of many other operating systems offered by Shells. With the partnership, openSUSE will be a member of Shells Affiliate Program. The two organizations are working closely on a way to allow users to trial the distribution and its desktop environments. Further extending this partnership, Shells has become an Emerald Sponsor of this year’s openSUSE Conference and Lee will give a keynote on June 18.

Developers can rapidly spin up multiple secure environments that are automatically backed up. Music producers can access production grade programs across devices to collaborate on the next hit.

The use of Shells by educators allows for remote learning on any device, which becomes affordable, less complex for students and the accessibility and learning with the many operating systems and tools add synergy to the classroom. Students across the world can easily access openSUSE distributions on whatever device that is available to them, whether that be at school, the library or at home.

“The openSUSE leadership team has always expressed the fact that it is important to have the right tool for the right job,” Pfeifer said. “openSUSE has a lot of powerful tools. Securely accessing openSUSE and its toolset from anywhere extends the power of the distribution to the device in someone’s pocket, to a smart TV, or VR browser of a user in an instant.”

A key member of the Shells tech team involved with the collaboration is Debian developer and former Purism Chief Technical Officer Zlatan Todoric.

“The Shells and openSUSE collaboration is one of those that we all enjoy in the FLOSS community,” Todoric said, who is currently serving at Shells’ Vice President of Technology. “Sharing knowledge, ideas, and helping each other to benefit the entire community is obviously what it is all about. openSUSE is a well known integrator and has vast experience in desktop and cloud environments, and having them as an option for our Shells cloud computers is a win-win solution for everyone. The collaboration will continue to expand even further as time goes on and I can already tell you that the openSUSE experience on Shells is going to be loved.”

Disclaimer: The initial go-live images are Tumbleweed images that make it easier to adjust as the distro changes. The release team is working toward having an openSUSE Leap image.

Get your openSUSE virtual desktop here.

Media Contacts:

Alex Lee Shells.com alex@shells.com

Douglas DeMaio openSUSE ddemaio@opensuse.org

I just recently discovered one of the hidden gems in the openQA WebUI: Show only failing tests in external results.

Developers of the openSUSE community are looking to utilize armv7l efforts in the context of openSUSE Step to evolve how openSUSE Leap and SUSE Linux Enterprise are developed together.

The Step effort was announced in February to open up and expand architecture enablement for future SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) releases.

Step is a community effort to rebuild SLE from the released sources packages in the openSUSE instance of the Open Build Service (OBS) with the intention to stay as compatible as possible with SLE. Just recently the project established armv7l in OBS as a Leap port.

“As the survey’s results showed, Leap still has lots of armv7 users,” said Guillaume Gardet, an arm developer and community contributor. “We listened to that feedback to address the potential use cases of people with armv7 and found a solution.”

Leap ports provide Leap for architectures not supported by SLE, such as 32-bit architectures. Step armv7l together with Backports forms the Leap port for armv7l.

Images can be found at http://download.opensuse.org/ports/armv7hl/distribution/leap/15.3/.

Glad I refrained from buying the overpriced DJI Smart controller just to get video out from the fpv goggles. Turns out somebody figured out how it does it.

Dear Tumbleweed users and hackers,

Week 18 was a regular one with almost daily snapshots being published. A total of six snapshots went out to the users (0429, 0430, 0502, 0503, 0504, and 0506).

The main changes in those snapshots included:

• GTK+ 3.24.29
• TeXLive 2021
• PHP 7.4.18
• Python 3.8.9
• We switched from openMPI2 to openMPI4

Changes currently being prepared in the staging areas:

• GNOME 40.1
• KDE Plasma 5.21.5
• icu 69.1: for the ring packages, nodejs15 seems to be the last blocker
• Switch from go 1.15 to go 1.16: most packages fixed, the last failure in Staging:M is cilium
• GCC 11 as default compiler: Move from special-purpose Staging:Gcc7 to Staging:O (incl. openQA test coverage). There are a few more build failures to be addressed.
• UsrMerge: The current state is that we checked in all changes and are planning on actually doing the switch somewhen in the not too far future, likely together with the planned distro-rebuild for GCC 11

During my time with Phosh on PinePhone and openSUSE Tumbleweed, I have stumbled on a couple of issues that made clear that the experience still needed some polish. This is not a critic against the Phosh or the GNOME project. I don’t envy the developers that need to ensure that their app works across many form factors.

However, I can see that the additional time that the KDE project has spend on polishing their experience has paid off. In this article, I will describe the issues that I encountered and how you can fix them. I like everyone to try out this GNOME based mobile experience. It’s awesome to see FOSS beyond the PC / Laptop.

Where is my keyboard?

Unlocking your phone and then your SIM card are the number 1 and 2 things to do when you boot up a smartphone. However, its hard to unlock your SIM card without a virtual keyboard. And that was exactly what I encountered.

How do you progress? Click on Cancel and go to the Settings.

There is a category for Accessibility and under Typing you find a toggle for the (on) Screen Keyboard. Hit the switch!

You will find a keyboard icon at the bottom of the phone. Touching this keyboard button automatically opens and closes the virtual keyboard.

Now it is time to unlock that Simcard. Go to the Mobile category and click on Unlock.

Enter your Pincode and now you can make phone calls. The sound quality is excellent.

The GNOME experience, but mobile

Phosh is GNOME. And that becomes very apparent when you go from the full-screen experience to the windowed experience. (Yes, you can do that.) Just drag the title-bar down and your windows are in plain sight.

In many ways you can see that most apps are plain desktop apps (up-scaled by 200%) on a mobile device screen. Take GNOME Software for instance, which is clearly not designed as a Mobile First app. However, it does everything that it needs to do.

The most funny example is when you open LibreOffice. (Yes, you can do that.) It is amazing that you can do this at all. I do recommend that you switch to a Dock and a FullHD monitor to work on your LibreOffice files. You won’t get very far on the PinePhone screen.

Phosh looks good!

The parts that are developed for Phosh are designed to be Mobile First. You can see that the experience is optimized for those parts. Scrolling is relatively smooth (the PinePhone is not the fastest device and hardware acceleration is not working). The general design direction is clean and functional. The Lock screen is a good example of that design esthetic.

When you unlock Phosh, you are greeted by the App grid.

The Phone app is clearly designed to be a Mobile First experience.

When you swipe up, you go back to the Overview, where your open windows (Yes, it does multitasking) are shown above the App grid.

GNOME already featured a very clean and functional look for its apps. That translates quite well to a mobile form factor. GNOME Maps for instance looks quite good. The buttons could be a bit bigger, but it works fine on the PinePhone.

GNOME Weather works as you expect.

And GNOME Web (or Epiphany) works very well as a mobile browser.

The Smartphone app is called Megapixels. That app is still a work in progress. In contrast to opening this app on KDE Plasma Mobile, I can now see colors. The user interface of Megapixels is easy to understand. But there are very few features to work with.

GNOME Clocks could also do better. Everything is very small and there is a lot of unused screen estate. Which is weird, because on my desktop PC the interface looks more mobile friendly. However, there is a minimum width for the window on my desktop PC. Maybe this is what happens, when you make the window even smaller.

Conclusion

I liked exploring Phosh on openSUSE Tumbleweed. I am not in love with the experience, but I do like the way it operates. It’s a very functional experience. For some people, that is all it needs to be. With some love and development from the GNOME community, I am certain that it will reach the same level as polish that the KDE community has.

What I really like about the PinePhone is that I can install any OS to the phone that I like to explore. It is a bit similar to using Virtualbox to explore the various Linux distributions and the various Desktop Environments. You can just wipe your phone and flash another Operating System on it and try it out. Every experience is unique. Although not every experience is right for me, it is fun poking around. And that is what FOSS is all about (for me).

Published on: 4 May 2021

So, you’re in the middle of a review, and have couple of commits but one of the comments is asking you to modify a line that belongs to second to last, or even the first commit in your list, and you’re not willing to do:

git commit -m "Add fixes from the review" $file

Or you simply don’t know, and have no idea what squash or rebase means?, well I won’t explain squash today, but I will explain rebase

See how I do it, and also how do I screw up!

It all boils down to making sure that you trust git, and hope that things are small enough so that if you lose the stash, you can always rewrite it.

So in the end, for me it was:

git fetch origin
git rebase -i origin/master # if your branch is not clean, git will complain and stop
git stash # because my branch was not clean, and my desired change was already done
git rebase -i origin/master # now, let's do a rebase
# edit desired commits, for this add the edit (or an e) before the commit
# save and quit vim ([esc]+[:][x] or [esc]+[:][w][q], or your editor, if you're using something else
git stash pop # because I already had my change
$HACK # if you get conflicts or if you want to modify more
      # be careful here, if you rewrite history too much
      # you will end up in Back to the Future II
      # Luckly you can do git rebase --abort
git commit --amend $files #(alternatively, git add $files first then git commit --amend
git rebase --continue
git push -f # I think you will need to add remote+branch, git will remind you
# go on with your life

Note: A squash is gonna put all of the commits together, just make sure that there’s an order:

I lied, here’s a very quick and dirty squash guide

• pick COMMIT1
• pick COMMIT2
• squash COMMIT3 # (Git will combine this commit, with the one above iir, so COMMIT2+COMMIT3 and git will ask you for a new commit message)

If something is not broken, do not fix it. Following that principle, the YaST Team spent almost no time on the latest sprint working on SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP3 or openSUSE Leap 15.3. But that doesn’t mean we remained idle. Quite the opposite, we invested our time reorganizing some of the YaST internals. An effort that hopefully will pay off in the mid term and that affects topics like:

• Management of local users, specially during installation.
• Unification of the code for configuring the network.
• Error handling and reporting.
• Reorganization of our UI toolkit.

So let’s take a closer look to all that.

In our previous blog post we already announced we were considering to refactor the YaST Users modules to improve the management of local users and to reduce the risk associated to the current complexity of the module. We can now say we are making good progress in that front. We are working on a separate branch of the development repository that is not submitted to Tumbleweed or any other available distribution, which means we still have nothing concrete our users can test. But we hope to have the creation of users during installation completely rewritten by the end of next sprint, while still remaining compatible with all other YaST components that rely on user management.

Another milestone we reached on the latest sprint regarding YaST internal organization was the removal of the legacy network component known as LanItems. Everything started with the report of bug#1180085 that was produced because the installer, which uses the new Y2Network (a.k.a. network-ng) infrastructure for most tasks, was still relying on that legacy component for proposing the installation of the wpa_supplicant package. So we took the opportunity to seek and destroy all usage of the old component all along YaST, replacing the calls to it with the equivalent ones in the new infrastructure. Less code to maintain in parallel, less room for bugs.

That was not the only occasion during this sprint in which we turned a bug into an opportunity to improve YaST internals. It was also reported that using an invalid value for the bootmode or startmode fields of a network configuration file could produce a crash in YaST. In addition to fixing that problem, we took the opportunity to introduce a whole new general mechanism to handle errors in YaST and report them to the user in a structured and centralized way. Apart from the YaST Network module, that new internal infrastructure will be adopted by several parts of YaST during subsequent sprints. In fact, it’s already being used in the rewritten management of local users mentioned at the beginning of this post.

Last but not least, we would like to mention that we keep working to improve the new unified repository of LibYUI. Apart from revamping the README file that serves as landing page, we created new scripts for a more pleasant and flexible building process, we are improving the compatibility with the Gtk backend and with libyui-mga (the extra components developed and maintained by Mageia) and we published the API documentation in a central location that is now automatically updated on every change of the repository.

Of course, during the process of implementing all the mentioned improvements, we fixed several other bugs for SLE-15-SP3 and openSUSE Leap 15.3 and also for older releases and Tumbleweed. But, who wants to write about boring bug fixes? We prefer to go back to work and prepare more exciting news for our next report in two weeks from now. See you then!

Dear Tumbleweed users and hackers,

This week seemed rather calm except for a minor glitch with the Linux kernel 5.11.16, which, due to a build failure, was out of sync between the various kernel sub-packages for one snapshot. The pace of the snapshots was averaged at 5 snapshots (0423, 0425, 0426, 0427, and 0428).

The changes included things like:

• Linux kernel 5.11.16 & 5.12.0
• KDE Gear 21.04.0 (formerly KDE Applications)
• Mozilla Firefox 88.0
• NetworkManager 1.30.4
• Virtualbox 6.1.20: some services were renamed; e.g. vboxautostart.service” is replaced by “vboxautostart-service.service

The plan for the upcoming snapshots currently includes:

• TeXLive 2021
• Move openmpi default from openmpi2 to openmpi4
• GNOME 40.1
• icu 69.1: for the ring packages, nodejs15 seems to be the last blocker
• Switch from go 1.15 to go 1.16: most packages fixed, the last failure in Staging:M is cilium
• GCC 11 as default compiler: Move from special-purpose Staging:Gcc7 to Staging:O (incl. openQA test coverage). There are a few more build failures to be addressed.
• UsrMerge: The current state is that we checked in all changes and are planning on actually doing the switch somewhen in the not too far future, likely together with the planned distro-rebuild for GCC 11