Last year, syslog-ng 4.8.0 improved the wildcard-file() source on FreeBSD and MacOS. Version 4.9.0 will do the same for Linux by using inotify for file and directory monitoring, resulting in faster performance while using significantly less resources. This blog is a call for testing the new wildcard-file() source options before release.

Read more at https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/testing-the-new-syslog-ng-wildcard-file-source-options-on-linux

Agama 15 is out and it is time for a new blog post after our previous announcement of... wait... Agama 13? You may be wondering what happened to Agama 14. The answer is easy, we released it but we were too busy to write the corresponding blog post. So this will serve as an announcement for both versions.

Let's jump directly into the new features because there is a lot to cover.

Usability improvements related to localization​

We will start with those features affecting directly the web user interface. And in that regard we have to mention the changes introduced in the internationalization area. Agama offers two different localization (l10n) configurations:

• One for the installer interface (language and keyboard layout).
• Another for the installed Linux distribution (language, keyboard layout, and timezone).

There are many good reasons for that distinction, but users of previous versions of Agama used to confuse these settings despite being configured at different places of the user interface. That should not be the case anymore thanks to the many usability improvements introduced by this pull request, which includes a detailed description of the changes with many screenshots.

Revamped Wi-Fi user interface​

The network section of the web user interface also received many usability improvements, especially regarding the configuration of Wi-Fi connections. Once again, the individual changes are too many to be listed here but can be checked at the description of the corresponding pull request at Github.

Clarify options at the storage page​

If there is another aspect of the configuration that can be as challenging as the network, that is the storage setup. We keep adding more options on every Agama release and sometimes that implies we must invest some time polishing small details to make the whole user interface more understandable.

In that regard, Agama 14 reorganized the contextual menus on the storage section to help users find the option they are looking for and understand the implications of each action.

Registration: extensions and certificates​

And talking about adding new options to Agama, we also have to consider which of those options are available at the web interface and which ones are there only to be tweaked using the command line or a configuration file (eg. during unattended installation). The possibility of fine-tuning the registration process was an example of the latter... until now.

Agama 14 made it possible to use the web interface to register extensions. Those extensions allow to add more capabilities to SUSE Linux Enterprise right from the installation of the system.

But that is not the only news regarding registration. Agama 15 also added more options to deal with self-signed certificates for those SUSE customers using RMT (Repository Mirroring Tool) to manage subscriptions on their own internal network.

Management of certificate warnings and errors go beyond the visual interface and Agama 15 also offers several ways to handle the situation on unattended installations. In fact, the possibilities of unattended installations are dramatically expanded with these new releases of Agama. Starting with a special case.

Unattended configuration for iSCSI and DASD devices​

We usually implement new features first in the configuration used for unattended installation (the profile, using AutoYaST jargon) and only later we decide whether the given feature must be available at the web interface and, if so, to what extent. But the case of iSCSI and DASD configuration was an exception. Due to their special nature, we first implemented interactive management for them, available already at the early versions of the Agama web interface. Users have had to wait until recent versions 14 and 15 to be able to configure iSCSI and DASD respectively using only a section of the Agama configuration.

We are in the process of improving the documentation for the Agama configuration, but meanwhile examples for both storage technologies can be found at Agama's examples directory.

Storage section: improved searches and software RAIDs​

And talking about unattended installation and storage technologies, Agama 15 also represents a step forward in the way to select and combine the disks and partitions in the target system.

On the one hand, the search property that allows to match existing devices with definitions in the configuration was improved to support filtering by name, size and partition number. On the other hand, this Agama release includes the first fully functional implementation of the property mdRaids that allows to create and reuse MD RAID devices.

The combination of those new features allows to create configurations like the following.

{
  "storage": {
    "drives": [
      {
        "search": {
          "condition": { "size": { "greater": "1 TiB" } },
          "max": 2,
        },
        "partitions": [
          { "search": "*", "delete": true },
          {
            "size": "20 GiB",
            "alias": "parts-for-root"
          },
          {
            "size": { "min": "1 GiB" },
            "alias": "parts-for-home"
          }
        ]
      },
    ],
    "mdRaids": [
      {
        "devices": [ "parts-for-root" ],
        "level": "raid0",
        "filesystem": { "path": "/" }
      },
      {
        "devices": [ "parts-for-home" ],
        "level": "raid1",
        "name": "data",
        "encryption": {
          "luks2": { "password": "notsecret" }
        },
        "filesystem": { "path": "/home" }
      }
    ]
  }
}

Advanced boot loader configuration​

Apart from the storage configuration, there are other aspects where users of unattended installation may have special requirements. One of those areas is the configuration of the boot loader.

The new Agama versions allow to setup an arbitrary timeout for the menu and also additional parameters to be passed to the kernel on every boot of the target system.

{
  "bootloader": {
    "timeout": 10,
    "extraKernelParams": "verbose"
  }
}

Creation of network bridges​

The network section of the configuration was also expanded with the possibility to define bridge interfaces. As you can see in the following example, the syntax follows the same general principles than the previously existing support for network bonding.

{
  "network": {
    "connections": [
      {
        "id": "Bridge0",
        "method4": "manual",
        "interface": "br0",
        "addresses": ["192.168.1.100/24"],
        "gateway4": "192.168.1.1",
        "nameservers": ["192.168.1.1"],
        "bridge": {
          "ports": ["eth0", "eth1"],
          "stp": false
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}

But not all improvements in the unattended installation field correspond to new configuration options or sections. There are also other aspects of the experience we decided to enhance.

Relative URLs at the Agama configuration​

As the most seasoned (open)SUSE users know, AutoYaST may be a bit singular when it comes to URLs. One of the most creative AutoYaST tricks is the usage of an AutoYaST-specific schema relurl to specify URLs that are relative to the location of the profile. Of course, specifying resources relatively to the profile is useful in many scenarios, but for Agama we decided it could be done better.

Instead of porting relurl, Agama 15 introduces the concept of URL reference, well known from HTML and standardized at RFC3986. You can see the difference between an absolute and a relative URL in the following example.

{
  "files": [
    {
      "destination": "/etc/issue.d/readme.issue",
      "url": "http://192.168.122.1/agama/issue-readme",
    },
    {
      "destination": "/etc/issue.d/agama.issue",
      "url": "./issue-sles",
    }
  ]
}

Improvements at the command-line interface​

So far we described many improvements for both the web user interface and the unattended installation process. But as you know, the latter is not really any special mode at Agama, but just a way to trigger the installation in a way in which it still can be monitored and controlled using the mentioned web interface or Agama's command-line tools.

During this sprint we improved several aspect of those tools, especially regarding its ability to interact with remote systems, and implemented a new command agama monitor that can be used to connect to any ongoing installation and follow the process.

We must admit the previous screenshot corresponds to an improved version of the agama monitor command which is not included at Agama 15. Because, of course, this release is just another step in the long way to our Agama vision.

More to come​

As you can see, we are already working on Agama 16 and beyond. You can check our plans at the public project roadmap and test the latest development version using the corresponding Live ISO images.

If you got questions or want to get involved, do not hesitate to contact us at the Agama project at GitHub and our #yast channel at Libera.chat. Have a lot of fun!

My goal was to build a local database that could:

• Ingest my ~4GB Bugzilla database
• Answer questions or give advice on new bugs based on historical ones
• Run offline on my openSUSE Tumbleweed machine, which is equipped with 64GB RAM and an AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 7840U

Naturally, my first idea was to build a standalone LLM like GPT. But fine-tuning an LLM on custom data is resource-intensive—a massive understatement. When I started to fine-tune an LLM on my laptop, I let the process run for a full week, and it reached only 1%. Using cloud-based services or investing in powerful new hardware were not options. Also, the problem with standalone LLMs is that they may hallucinate or generate inaccurate information, especially on domain-specific topics. The other disadvantage of using LLMs is that they are static; once trained, they don’t know anything that happened afterward.

I savored every episode, knowing this was going to be one of those rare shows, like Severance season one, that you only get to experience for the first time once. It pulls you into a vivid, immersive world that’s equal parts mesmerizing and unsettling. A place you’re fascinated by, but would never want to be put in. The atmosphere seeps into you — the sound design, the environments, the way it all just lingers under your skin. You can’t shake it off.

And now I’ve watched the final 12. episode and I already miss it. So I need to say: watch it. It’s something special.

The series is a full-length expansion of the short Scavengers by Joseph Bennett and Charles Huettner (With visible improvements across the board). They’ve cited Nausicaä as a major influence, but if you’re into Akira, you’ll catch a few visual nods there too. It’s brutal. It’s gorgeous. And honestly, I haven’t been this excited about an animated series in a long time.

Neither Netflix nor HBO wanted to greenlight the second season. But the show has come to a very satisfying closure, so I’m not complaining.

★★★★★

One Identity Cloud PAM is one of the latest security products by One Identity. It provides asset management as well as secure and monitored remote access for One Identity Cloud users to hosts on their local network. Last year, I showed you how collect One Identity Cloud PAM Network Agent log messages on Windows and create alerts when somebody connects to a host on your local network using PAM Essentials. This time, I will show you how to work with the Linux version of the Network Agent.

Read more at https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/working-with-one-identity-cloud-pam-linux-agent-logs-in-syslog-ng

I’m not a professional web designer. I’ve been making websites for decades, but I haven’t kept up with the latest browser quirks and common approaches. What I do have is a solid grasp of the web’s foundations—thanks to my time teaching IP networking at the university.

My journey with Linux started when I struggled to get PHP running on Windows. (To my surprise, my student side project autoroku.cz kept running in production for years.)

At SUSE I’ve tasted the DRY principles while working on a Rails project, SUSE Studio. I left PHP behind and embraced static site generators like Middleman, then Jekyll as it integrated into GitHub. But over time, maintenance fatigue pushed me further—back to basics. No SASS. No site generators. Just clean, modern HTML and CSS.

People are often surprised to see major projects like gnome.org, brand.gnome.org, circle.gnome.org and my own jimmac.eu built with plain HTML. Yes you do repeat yourself and inconsistencies creep in. But with integrated version control and web based editors, fixes are a click away. More people can edit plain HTML than any bespoke stack.

Do I miss some form of include()? Sure. Would I reach for Jekyll+markdown when someone else is responsible for the content? Probably. But for focused, small sites, nothing beats good old HTML.

Dear Tumbleweed users and hackers,

During the last two weeks, you could enjoy a relatively steady stream of updates to your Tumbleweed installation. A total of 9 snapshots (0502, 0503, 0505, 0508, 0509, 0512, 0513, 0514, and 0515) have been released to the mirrors; two more were built and tested, but were not deemed fit for usage, so they were discarded.

The most relevant changes delivered in this period were:

• Mozilla Firefox 138.0 & 138.0.1
• Mozilla NSS 3.110
• GStreamer 1.26.1
• SDL 3.2.12 & 3.2.14
• KDE Plasma 6.3.5
• KDE Gear 25.04.1
• KDE Frameworks 6.14.0
• Linux kernel 6.14.5 & 6.14.6
• Libvirt 11.3.0
• Meson 1.8.0
• Fwupd 2.0.9
• Qemu 10.0.0
• PHP 8.4.7
• Ruby 3.4.4
• SQLite 3.49.2
• Deepin desktop has been removed from the repository, see https://lists.opensuse.org/archives/list/factory@lists.opensuse.org/thread/AXUHM4Q4SMFZHEHZL6MEV4VOMO23QIZQ/ for some background on this decision

The most relevant changes submitted by maintainers, and currently being worked on to be integrated, are:

• Boost 1.88.0
• util-linux 2.41: findmnt causes segfaults, libeconf seems to be involved
• GCC 15 as distro compiler, see https://build.opensuse.org/staging_workflows/openSUSE:Factory/staging_projects/openSUSE:Factory:Staging:Gcc7
• CMake 4.0 (not yet submitted, but please help fix issues, See https://lists.opensuse.org/archives/list/factory@lists.opensuse.org/thread/FHM4V3PGI3GX65LG6ZIAGJ6QQD5O57WN/

Imagine this: You built a gaming rig in 2016. It still crushes 1080p titles, runs cool, and looks great on your desk. But now Windows 10 is nearing its end-of-life, and upgrade paths point toward new hardware, stricter requirements and higher costs. Perhaps a new motherboard, a new CPU, and possibly hundreds of 💰 just to keep playing the same games.

Instead of giving in to forced obsolescence, you install a flavor of openSUSE.

And you’re still gaming. Still winning. Just on Linux.

Gamers know the name Linux and its adoption among users is beginning to shift. According to Google Trends, searches for Windows gaming are trending similar today to what it was roughly five years ago, which is when COVID saw more people engaging digitally during spare time. Searches for Linux gaming on the other hand have tripled during that time frame.

Screenshot:

Gaming on Linux no longer means giving up your Steam library or tinkering very long just to launch a title. Thanks to Proton, more than 70 percent of the top 100 Steam games now work out of the box on Linux. This includes Cyberpunk 2077, Red Dead Redemption 2, Elden Ring and more.

Linux distributions like openSUSE aren’t just along for the ride. The distributions are driving Linux gaming forward with reliant performance and improvements.

Why Gamers Choose openSUSE

1. Rolling or Stable? You Choose. Want the latest Mesa drivers and the Linux Kernels shortly from when they’re released? Use Tumbleweed; this is openSUSE’s rolling release version. Prefer something more static? Leap is built for reliability and long sessions without surprises.

2. Excellent Hardware Support AMD and Intel work out of the box. NVIDIA drivers are a one-command install. The distribution keeps pace with upstream Linux graphics and development essentials for gaming.

3. Built for Power Users You don’t need to be one, but if you are, Btrfs snapshots, and zypper package manager give you serious control. This isn’t watered-down Linux. It’s a full engine, tuned for performance and customizability.

Setup in Minutes

Gamers don’t want to spend hours configuring their OS. That’s why the openSUSE wiki and one-line installs make it simple:

sudo zypper install steam lutris mangohud gamemode

Enable Proton in Steam, link your Epic account in Lutris, and you’re set.

Here are some popular titles that just work

Native on Linux:

Counter-Strike 2

Dota 2

No Man’s Sky

Valheim

Terraria

Through Proton:

Cyberpunk 2077

Baldur’s Gate 3

The Witcher 3

Hogwarts Legacy

Starfield

Upgrading to Windows 11 may cost people more than they can afford or even lead to unnecessary e-waste with functional hardware, which the initiative End of 10 is raising awareness for across the globe.

Linux, and openSUSE in particular, offers a way out. Gaming shouldn’t end because support does.

Whether you’re a casual gamer or a full-blown enthusiast, your hardware still has years of life in it. openSUSE and other Linux distributions can help you keep that gear in play.

Join others making the switch. Visit endof10.org for an event to help you switch to Linux or visit get.opensuse.org to download a flavor of openSUSE. People can also look at Aeon and Kalpa as options.

This is part of a series on End of 10 where we advocate for Free & Open Source Software as a solution for Windows 10 users who wish to keep their devices rather than contributing to e-waste of functioning devices.