Han Wen Kam
posted at
My openSUSE 12 Journal - 3: Lotus Notes 8.5.3
Lotus Notes is what I use at work and the latest v8.5.3 works well on openSUSE 11.4. Although it installed without a hitch on 12.1, things goes awry when I start using it. Here are my observations and how I managed to get it working again. :)
For starters, Lotus Notes 8.5.3 only managed to render about half of its interface. For example, I could see my inbox but email preview pane is blank. Integrated SameTime worked but workspaces and replication tabs were blank too. I suspect it could be some incompatibility or confusion with the GTK libs and I was right... Google is my friend and I discovered a brilliant soul who had the same challenge, created a bug report against openSUSE and even created a workaround/fix.
[Update on 27 Nov 2011]: Oops, it occurred to me that Lotus Notes 8.5.3 is actually 32-bit running on 64-bit openSUSE 12.1. That means the RPM created by Stefan Lijewski should have worked. I cannot recall why I came to the previous conclusion. I have just tried the 32-bit RPM and it worked for me. Therefore, I am correcting my entry below.
Unfortunately for me, I could not use his nicely packaged RPM and online repository because I am using 64-bit openSUSE 12.1.
The easy way is to use a 1-click install via Stefan Lijewski's online repository.
The easy but manual way is to download the RPM before you manually execute a zypper in lotus-notes-gnome3-1-1.1.i586.rpm
In both cases, you will need to verify that your Lotus Notes launch icon has been updated to use the new notes-wrapper script instead of the original notes script in /opt/ibm/lotus/notes/ directory.
Finally, the hard way (if you're so inclined to experience compiling your own code) is the original method I used below.
Below is how I got Lotus Notes 8.5.3 working on openSUSE 12.1 (64-bit).
1. Download the workaround fix from https://github.com/sgh/lotus-notes_gtk2.23.3/downloads
2. Un-tar the fix, tar zxvf sgh-lotus-notes_gtk2.23.3-2028e8e.tar.gz
3. You will need to install additional packages before you can compile the fix. As root, zypper in make gcc gtk2-devel glibc-devel-32bit gcc-32bit
4. In the sgh-lotus-notes_gtk2.23.3-2028e8e subdirectory, compile the fix with make
5. If make completed with success, you should have a new file libnotesgtkfix.so in the directory. Copy it and notes-wrapper to installed Lotus Notes directory /opt/ibm/lotus/notes/.
6. Last and final step, edit your Lotus Notes icons (kmenuedit if using KDE4) and change the default launch script to execute notes-wrapper instead.
That's it. Lotus Notes 8.5.3 should function normally... and its all good for the last 3 days for me.
I hear this would not be a challenge with the newer Lotus Notes 8.5.4 (yet to be officially released). We shall see when we get there. :)
For starters, Lotus Notes 8.5.3 only managed to render about half of its interface. For example, I could see my inbox but email preview pane is blank. Integrated SameTime worked but workspaces and replication tabs were blank too. I suspect it could be some incompatibility or confusion with the GTK libs and I was right... Google is my friend and I discovered a brilliant soul who had the same challenge, created a bug report against openSUSE and even created a workaround/fix.
[Update on 27 Nov 2011]: Oops, it occurred to me that Lotus Notes 8.5.3 is actually 32-bit running on 64-bit openSUSE 12.1. That means the RPM created by Stefan Lijewski should have worked. I cannot recall why I came to the previous conclusion. I have just tried the 32-bit RPM and it worked for me. Therefore, I am correcting my entry below.
The easy way is to use a 1-click install via Stefan Lijewski's online repository.
The easy but manual way is to download the RPM before you manually execute a zypper in lotus-notes-gnome3-1-1.1.i586.rpm
In both cases, you will need to verify that your Lotus Notes launch icon has been updated to use the new notes-wrapper script instead of the original notes script in /opt/ibm/lotus/notes/ directory.
Finally, the hard way (if you're so inclined to experience compiling your own code) is the original method I used below.
1. Download the workaround fix from https://github.com/sgh/lotus-notes_gtk2.23.3/downloads
2. Un-tar the fix, tar zxvf sgh-lotus-notes_gtk2.23.3-2028e8e.tar.gz
3. You will need to install additional packages before you can compile the fix. As root, zypper in make gcc gtk2-devel glibc-devel-32bit gcc-32bit
4. In the sgh-lotus-notes_gtk2.23.3-2028e8e subdirectory, compile the fix with make
5. If make completed with success, you should have a new file libnotesgtkfix.so in the directory. Copy it and notes-wrapper to installed Lotus Notes directory /opt/ibm/lotus/notes/.
6. Last and final step, edit your Lotus Notes icons (kmenuedit if using KDE4) and change the default launch script to execute notes-wrapper instead.
That's it. Lotus Notes 8.5.3 should function normally... and its all good for the last 3 days for me.
I hear this would not be a challenge with the newer Lotus Notes 8.5.4 (yet to be officially released). We shall see when we get there. :)
Andrew Wafaa
posted at
Member
FunkyPenguinopenSUSE ARM Update 25Nov2011
Sorry that no news has been dished out with regards to the openSUSE ARM porting effort, but that’s mostly because things have been busy (honest!)
For starters we have now successfully built around 3500 packages out of a total of about 4700 for the full openSUSE ditribution. So we are well on our way. It hasn’t been easy going though, and we still have lots of hurdles, hoops and obstacles to overcome.
Han Wen Kam
posted at
openSUSE 12.1 gets positive review on LAS
Nice and positive review of openSUSE 12.1 on the Linux Action Show on 20th Nov 2011. The YouTube video is embedded below... you may fast-forward to 30:10 where they finally got down to the review of openSUSE 12.1.
Most interesting (the best) comment on that YouTube page was from Jos Poortvliet (our openSUSE Community Manager), "VERY nice review guys! Fun to see how opinions on openSUSE have changed in the last year - from 'meh, yeah, is that distro still alive?' to the awesomeness now :D
As with most things in life, its all about perception and goodwill. openSUSE 12.1 is polished and enjoyable but a number of the great features mentioned, including SUSE Studio and openSUSE Build Service, have been around for a while... anyway, I'm just happy & enjoying the goodwill towards openSUSE. :)
Most interesting (the best) comment on that YouTube page was from Jos Poortvliet (our openSUSE Community Manager), "VERY nice review guys! Fun to see how opinions on openSUSE have changed in the last year - from 'meh, yeah, is that distro still alive?' to the awesomeness now :D
If you ever wanna talk about it with me - I'd be happy to be on the show..."
As with most things in life, its all about perception and goodwill. openSUSE 12.1 is polished and enjoyable but a number of the great features mentioned, including SUSE Studio and openSUSE Build Service, have been around for a while... anyway, I'm just happy & enjoying the goodwill towards openSUSE. :)
Greek openSUSE Ambassadors
posted at
LSWC’11 , Zaragoza, Spain Report (EN)
LSWC'11 Zaragoza, Spain
A conference with 600 participants and 100 open-source companies...something very interesting and for me the first conference outside of my country...
I leave and study in Madrid but i thought it would be a good idea taking part in the LSWC'11..let's see what happened in the conference and which presentation i saw...
Day 1st (9 November)
I woke up very early so as to take the bus and go to "Ayutamiento de Zarogoza's building". I arrived about 8 o'clock for the "Accreditations" so i had free time to enjoy a coffee in "Cafeteria el Seminario" . At 9 o'clock i got into Ayuntamiento de Zaragoza, so as to be accredited . The truth is that it wasn't difficult to find the conference cartel (poster) and the "Accreditations place" because nearby there were 3 conference posters. ([1] , [2] , [3] ). About 10 o'clock took part the "Conference Opening". During the Opening speech , Juan Alberto Belloca (Alcade de Zaragoza) presented the adoption and use of FLOSS in Aragon the last years. Afterwards , an interesting presentation took place "Firm and digital identity with Sinadura Suite" . This suite it's a free software product (builed in Java) offered by Zylk, has to do with the firm and digital identity in Spain (DNI). At 11.30 was the right moment for the (Coffee Break). After the Coffee Break another presantation took place , "Web development using express.js (node.js + MVC)" . Express.js offers a very clever way to programm in Javascript. I really enjoyed this conference because there have been presentations not only of commercial interest although presentations of general interest like "The social networks in web 2.0" (Ana Frede). After this interesting presentation , as usually the lunch time begun. I attended another presentation,which in my opinion was important enough,such as the others "Migrasion from Google Apps to Zimbra OSE (Consorci Lleidatá)" . I believe that right now,there is a lack of applications that could replace Google Apps. At 17.00 in Salon Actos,started another speach of legal interest "Software patents : the empire strikes back" (by Alberto Barrionuevo). Though,I insist that this subject is not only of legal interest,as the informatics people have to be aware of what is up with software patents. After this speech, Alberto Barrionuevo, gave another one, of commercial interest "OpenERP Plus : the most complete implementation of free empresial management " ,over a version of OpenErp,more commercialized,that OPENTIA gave out in the last years. This was how the first day in the conference passed.
At night,I went out for a beer
Some videos of the first day of the conference are available here:
"Conference Openening " [vid1]
" Software Patents" [vid2]
" OpenERP Plus " [vid3]
2nd Day (November 10th)
The second day was slightly different from the first one. at 10.30 the most important speech for me,started in Aula 3. Certifications is something many people want to obtain,that's why "Que es la Certificacion LPI" gave us all, all the needed information. Henry Chalup Dergam , the Director Manager of LPI in Spain , presented the certification and all the connected information. During the presentation in aula 3, I saw smth that made me happy. in the city hall of zaragoza,they use a distribution, based upon openSUSE 11.2, named AZLinux. The last presentation I attended was in AZLinux. After the Coffe Break, at 12.00, I started the Merengue. The subject of the presentation was "Merengue : CMS based on Django" .Merengue is a CMS based on Django, and despite the fact that I don't know much of Django, it seemed easier to use and program with Merengue than with Django. The last speech I attended was "AZLinux. Functional Characteristics" " . AZLinux is based on openSUSE 11.2. The Ayutamiento de Zaragoza now uses free software in all its computers and I loved the fact that it was a policy of the Aragon Government, this use of free software in the public sector.For this, AZLinux uses the Migasfree Package Manager, a package manager very useful and easy-to-use.In the Ayutamiento de Zaragoza they inserted a migration from propietary software into free software.
Some videos of the second day are available here :
" Merengue : CMS based on Django " [vid4]
Also all the videos of the conference are available here :
[Videos]
Finally,LSWC'11 was a conference I liked. I met many people passionate with FreeSoftware.Not only company members but also persons like me,simple individuals.As Francisco Javier Solans Benedi (President of Cesla) in [ vid1 ] (13:00), "It's a fact that Free Software is an axioma,that came to stay", that's why many autonomous communities in Spain use FreeSoftware. It's sure that in the future,I will participate in more conferences and events like this,during my stay in Spain.
Rousinopoulos Athanasios-Ilias
Han Wen Kam
posted at
My openSUSE 12 Journal - 2
Installed openSUSE 12.1 (64-bit) on both my home PC and my Thinkpad W520. The best part was I did not have to burn any installation DVDs and speed of installation was at Gigabit speed on my home local network. 
Here is what I did in a nutshell:
For more details, please refer to my older posts:
Happy to report the steps I documented in the posts above worked for openSUSE 12.1. There were some minor differences, mainly to do with Systemd and how it changes the console output a little. The previously observed SuSEFirewall bug for TFTP server is still present, so remember to add port 69 to UDP as previously documented.
Here is what I did in a nutshell:
- Download openSUSE 12.1 64-bit ISO and verified integrity with md5sum
- Configured my Thinkpad, running openSUSE 11.4, as the network installation server.
- Boot up my home PC in PXE-boot mode and installed openSUSE 12.1 from my Thinkpad.
- Once my PC is installed and running openSUSE 12.1, I configured it as the network installation server and boot up my Thinkpad in PXE-boot mode and installed openSUSE 12.1 onto it.
For more details, please refer to my older posts:
Happy to report the steps I documented in the posts above worked for openSUSE 12.1. There were some minor differences, mainly to do with Systemd and how it changes the console output a little. The previously observed SuSEFirewall bug for TFTP server is still present, so remember to add port 69 to UDP as previously documented.
Han Wen Kam
posted at
My openSUSE 12 Journal - 1
openSUSE 12.1 was released earlier this week. Although I had to wait more than 24 hours before I got my hands on the the ISO binaries (4.4Gb of both 32-bit and 64-bit), it was well worth it. The lesson learnt was to use more than one download method concurrently in the event something fails. More importantly, its imperative to verify (ie md5sum) the downloaded binaries or risks having to abort an installation when the integrity of the packages are in question. 
For this release of openSUSE, everything has been incredibly smooth from installation to productive use of my home system. In fact, I have just completed another installation on my Thinkpad W520. I am sure there are some who have encountered challenges (no software is perfect); however, at least for me, this has been the smoothest experience ever since the days of SLES 8!
To all involved with openSUSE 12.1, please accept my congratulations on a job well done!
One little quirk, minor annoyance
From a usage scenario, I have to report something that made me panic on the first-boot of openSUSE 12.1, to the extent that I voluntarily hit the physical reset button on my PC.
The cause, as it turns out, is the new Systemd that replaces the old System-V init. Whenever I boot up a newly installed Linux for the first time, I always hit the ESC key on boot to see the boot messages. This helps me identify any problems early and gives me an indication of how quickly and smoothly Linux boots up. When I did the same with openSUSE 12.1 on first-boot, I observed some initial messages but suddenly everything seems to just stop. I panicked after 20 seconds and hit the physical reset button (thinking I may have messed up).
Apparently, the new Systemd is not very "chatty". I only had to wait 40 seconds more and the entire system booted up and I am automatically logged into KDE4.
If anyone could share how one might re-enable the same level of "chattiness" when the system boots up, appreciate if you could use the comments section below.
Gnome 3.2
Post-installation, I used YaST - Software Management and installed both the "Gnome Base System" and the "Gnome Desktop Environment" patterns. Finally, I got to try out Gnome 3 for the first time ever.
I have been a Gnome 2.x user for quite a number of years until I switched over to KDE4 when it became the default in openSUSE 11.2. KDE4 is great but I do miss the simplicity of Gnome 2.x from time to time.
Happy to report I'm using Gnome 3.2 rather productively on my home PC. However, I am not fully convinced it would be my default environment just yet. Gnome 3.2 is major re-design and it's as different to Gnome 2.32 as KDE4 is to KDE3. Here are some of my thoughts at this time:
For this release of openSUSE, everything has been incredibly smooth from installation to productive use of my home system. In fact, I have just completed another installation on my Thinkpad W520. I am sure there are some who have encountered challenges (no software is perfect); however, at least for me, this has been the smoothest experience ever since the days of SLES 8!
To all involved with openSUSE 12.1, please accept my congratulations on a job well done!
One little quirk, minor annoyance
From a usage scenario, I have to report something that made me panic on the first-boot of openSUSE 12.1, to the extent that I voluntarily hit the physical reset button on my PC.
The cause, as it turns out, is the new Systemd that replaces the old System-V init. Whenever I boot up a newly installed Linux for the first time, I always hit the ESC key on boot to see the boot messages. This helps me identify any problems early and gives me an indication of how quickly and smoothly Linux boots up. When I did the same with openSUSE 12.1 on first-boot, I observed some initial messages but suddenly everything seems to just stop. I panicked after 20 seconds and hit the physical reset button (thinking I may have messed up).
Apparently, the new Systemd is not very "chatty". I only had to wait 40 seconds more and the entire system booted up and I am automatically logged into KDE4.
If anyone could share how one might re-enable the same level of "chattiness" when the system boots up, appreciate if you could use the comments section below.
Gnome 3.2
Post-installation, I used YaST - Software Management and installed both the "Gnome Base System" and the "Gnome Desktop Environment" patterns. Finally, I got to try out Gnome 3 for the first time ever.
I have been a Gnome 2.x user for quite a number of years until I switched over to KDE4 when it became the default in openSUSE 11.2. KDE4 is great but I do miss the simplicity of Gnome 2.x from time to time.
Happy to report I'm using Gnome 3.2 rather productively on my home PC. However, I am not fully convinced it would be my default environment just yet. Gnome 3.2 is major re-design and it's as different to Gnome 2.32 as KDE4 is to KDE3. Here are some of my thoughts at this time:
- I liked the idea of integrating my online identity (Google & Twitter only at this time) into my desktop; but, this means I have to use Evolution... not something I liked due to past experiences (3 years ago).
- I really liked the concept of workspace on demand. I can drag an app & move it to the next available workspace & a new empty one is created. I am ready to move on from the 4-sided (or n-sided) cube paradigm.
- The font size and window title-bars takes up too much screen estate. It seems to run contrary to my initial impression that Gnome Shell gives me lots of screen estate since there is only one bar at the top.
- A good buddy of mine explained that its design was geared towards mobile devices (ie tablets with touchscreens) and I start to appreciate it more; however, I think this approach seems a tad too early at best? Given how mobile devices are dominated by Apple, Android & others, I don't see any hardware vendor officially supporting (hard-bundling) Gnome as the de-facto GUI. Feels more like a spill over from Meego & netbook UI era (only 2-3 years ago).
Greek openSUSE Ambassadors
posted at
Greek openSUSE community, Translation of openSUSE Weekly news in Greek (issue 201)
Hello everyone!
I am very pleased to announce the new issue (201) of openSUSE Weekly News in Greek.
In this issue you will read about:
* The Green Planet
* Geekos go on G+
* openSUSE Medical Calling for Leadership
* Klaas Freitag: Kraft 0.45 released
* Nelson Marques: Unknown Horizons – 2011.3 RC4 @ games:unknown-horizons
As well as many interesting news about openSUSE and useful advice, which can make our lives easier.
Enough said though... Read more at: http://own.opensuse.gr, http://el.opensuse.org/Weekly_news or www.os-el.gr
We are always looking forward to receiving your comments as well as suggestions regarding things you would like to read about in our next issue.
The openSUSE Weekly News is being translated in the Greek language from issue #150. You can read older translated issues here: http://el.opensuse.org/Κατηγορία:Weekly_news_issues
Enjoy it!
Efstathios Agrapidis (efagra)
Jan Holesovsky
posted at
LibreOffice v češtině
Chcete si stáhnout LibreOffice? Doporučím vám tedy stránky LibreOffice v češtině, abyste se k instalátoru nemuseli dostávat přes anglické stránky :-)
LibreOffice 3.4 má uživatelské rozhraní kompletně přeložené do češtiny, nápovědu z 90%. 3.5, příští verze, je na tom trochu hůře - uživatelské rozhraní 97%, nápověda 89%. Pokud chcete tato čísla zlepšit, není nic jednoduššího - zaregistrujte se na LibreOffice Pootle serveru, pošlete mi své uživatelské jméno na kendy @ suse cz a já vám zařídím potřebná oprávnění.
LibreOffice 3.5 toho má hodně co nabídnout, byla by škoda nemít všechno přeloženo!
Wolfgang Rosenauer
posted at
Evergreen project status update
I guess it’s time for another Evergreen status update.
I cannot tell much about 11.2 (but as far as I can see Stefan does an awesome job in maintaining it) but will share my thoughts about the 11.1 flavour of Evergreen.
When I started that project it was clearly an experiment as I haven’t had an idea how much work it would be and if people would use it or even help with it. Looking back at what we’ve created it finally is more than I expected. Compared to what I announced in the beginning it was almost possible to maintain every part of the distribution and not only server packages. There are things which turned out be quite hard (e.g. kernel) but overall most issues were covered for 11.1. I think what I was able to prove is that it’s possible to somehow maintain a distribution with very few manpower.
Now as 11.1 is nearing its 3rd birthday on December, 18th and given the fact that it’s getting harder having stuff updated while still being more or less compatible and stable I found that I cannot keep the pace with my limited spare time and without neglecting my other volunteer projects (remember Mozilla’s rapid release cycle?). For that reason I’m announcing that I’ll step back from being the Evergreen/11.1 project leader by end of this year. As of now noone else has stepped up so I need to announce that 11.1 will most likely be unmaintained as of end of this year. This does not affect 11.2 and I’ll also try to keep my packages updated for maintained Evergreen projects in the future. I’ll also stay involved and help out with organizational and administrative stuff where needed.
It’s still possible to step up taking over the 11.1 maintenance but in the end I think 3 years is already a good timeframe for a community distribution.
I hope that I find a bit of time in december to post a (statistical) summary about Evergreen/11.1 to let you know about some details.
Thanks for your support during the last year!
Tor Lillqvist
posted at
Native Android development gotchas
I wasted several hours on two (mis)features of the native Android development toolchain:
- The tool that creates .apk packages, the one that "ant debug" invokes, silently skips shared objects in the libs/armeabi-v7a folder that don't end with ".so". In my case, one of the very first libraries involved when starting to do unit tests of LibreOffice code on Android had a name like this, libuno_sal.so.3. I had to look in the Android source code to see the reason why it wasn't present in the .apk.
- When creating a .apk, it works fine to put a shared object with a name that doesn't start with "lib" into the libs/armeabi-v7a folder. But then when you install such an .apk on the emulator (or device), the installer silently skips such shared objects, and doesn't copy them to the app's lib folder. Again, I had to look in the source code to find the reason for this.