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a silhouette of a person's head and shoulders, used as a default avatar
a silhouette of a person's head and shoulders, used as a default avatar
a silhouette of a person's head and shoulders, used as a default avatar

openSUSE 12.1 released - spread the word!

Congratulations to everyone who has worked hard on openSUSE 12.1 for another successful release. Can't wait to get it running.

In the meantime, spread the word!

Stories are appearing on Slashdot and HackerNews. Upvote, comment, discuss! Suggest to the websites and magazines you read to run a review. Zonker over at Linux.com has already written an intro to 12.1 piece.

Tell your friends on Twitter and Facebook! Let everyone know about the work openSUSE contributors have put in for the latest release - 12.1 has an amazing feature list.

openSUSE is one of the major distributions in existence, both in terms of number of users and in contributions back to the rest of the community, we should all be extremely proud to be part of it, I know I am.
a silhouette of a person's head and shoulders, used as a default avatar
a silhouette of a person's head and shoulders, used as a default avatar

WebYaST Terminal Plugin

During the SUSE Hackweek Vladislav Lewin (member of the YaST team) has had the nice idea writing a WebYaST plugin which provides a console terminal witch which the user has the opportunity to login on a console on the target machine. He sould be able to start any console based application there ( of course even YaST :-))

So the benefit is to login on a target linux machine from a computer which

  • has not to be a unix machine and
  • is without any VPN configuration stuff.

Just a simple Web browser is needed to get a login via the Web on another linux machine:

Mainly the architecture is based on shellinabox which we have packaged together with the WebYaST Terminal Plugin. These RPMs are now available for download.

BTW: You will be surprised that the source code of the WebYaST Terminal Plugin has about 100 lines only !!!

How to get:

  • All needed packages can be downloaded from OBS
  • The source code can be found in Github

a silhouette of a person's head and shoulders, used as a default avatar
a silhouette of a person's head and shoulders, used as a default avatar

7th ODF Plugfest in Gouda

For those that might care, your servant will be attending this week the ODF Plugfest #7 in Gouda (Netherlands).

I will have on Friday a short presentation of the best free and open source library for parsing Microsoft Visio Documents. The other exciting thing is that after more then 6 years of common collaboration I will get to meet personally one of my libwpd co-maintainers, Johannes Marcus Maurer also know as "uwog".

What an exciting time before us!!!

Mastodon
the avatar of Greek openSUSE Ambassadors
the avatar of Greek openSUSE Ambassadors

Greek openSUSE community, Translation of openSUSE Weekly news in Greek (issue 200)




Hello everyone!

I am very pleased to announce the new issue (200) of openSUSE Weekly News in Greek.
In this issue you will read about:

* Help us spread the word on openSUSE 12.1!
* openSUSE Medical Project searches for new Leadership and other participation
* Linux Journal/Bruce Byfield: Four Hidden Tools in Scribus
* linuxcareer.com/Writing manual pages on Linux
* Jun Auza: How to Convince Your Friends to Use Linux Without Being a Jerk

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
the avatar of Andrew Wafaa
the avatar of Andrew Wafaa

Running for the openSUSE Board (2011)

For those that aren’t subscribed to the openSUSE Project Mailinglist: As was announced last month, the Board is looking for some new blood. As such I intend to run for one of the available seats. Yes people, your lovable FunkyPenguin is hoping to be able to represent you and all your crazy ideas (I’ve got some of those myself ;-) ). I know of a few other candidates that are running, and they’re fine upstanding folk of the openSUSE community.

a silhouette of a person's head and shoulders, used as a default avatar
a silhouette of a person's head and shoulders, used as a default avatar

shutting down a iomega storcenter

For my backups I am using a iomega storcenter device.

All management is done by web interface and I needed a way to shut it down from a script.

Here is the script.


  1 COOKIE_FILE=/tmp/iomega-stor-center-cookie.txt
  2 IP=192.168.1.3
  3 curl -c $COOKIE_FILE -k --data "login=admin&passwordx=" https://$IP/index.html
  4 #curl -b $COOKIE_FILE -k --data "restart=identifyDevice" https://$IP/stg-device.html?t=6
  5 curl -b $COOKIE_FILE -k --data "restart=Poweroff" https://$IP/stg-device.html?t=6
  6 rm /tmp/iomega-stor-center-cookie.txt

the avatar of Pascal Bleser
the avatar of Pascal Bleser

FOSDEM 2012: announcing the devrooms

Just sent out the ack/nack emails for the developer rooms at FOSDEM 2012, the latter part always being pretty tough, but we have to make choices.

On the good side: here is the list of the devrooms for FOSDEM 2012.

Mind you, that list does not include the Distribution Miniconf, which will take place in two rooms during both days and will gather sessions, talks, ideas from many (mostly Linux) distribution projects.

the avatar of Sankar P
the avatar of Sankar P

Smartphones - Acquired Necessity


Smartphones - An acquired necessity

I have used a Motorola E398 mobile phone for the last 6 years. For the last one month, I tried using a Samsung Galaxy S2 smartphone. I have concluded that Smartphones are an acquired necessity and is not needed for most of my workflows. I will not buy a smartphone in the near foreseeable future.

Smartphones gives an impeccable improvement for one workflow - Email. If your work involves time-sensitive emailing, a smartphone is a crucial tool. However, if it doesn't, then you are better off buying a good desktop/laptop and a normal mobile phone, imho. A shortlog of things observed in this one month are:

Observations:
  • Vibration: Smartphones are too thin and don't have enough vibration, if you are used to thick phones (Not a big problem)
  • Poor signal reception: A biiiig problem. In the quest to slim the phone, the signal reception abilities of the phone are heavily hampered. While we were travelling in a car (from Bangalore to Chennai), A cheap Samsung GURU E1081 consistently beat Galaxy S2 in terms of signal strength. Most of the times the Galaxy S2 was showing "Emergency calls only" only. May be a phone from a real phone-maker like Motorola/Nokia may not have this problem. We had to keep the phone upright near the car window too.
  • Typing: Even with the on-screen-keyboard, swype etc. the phone is totally unsuitable for typing long text. We can do only twitter/facebook updates and not do any serious document editing or long blogpost(s). The requirement for Siri (Voice Control) is just a natural demand. I wonder how the folks at Google missed this big requirement. They should have introduced this with a big bang and not play catch-up to Siri. Probably they missed it as they were busy tomato-saucing Google+ to all their applications ;-)
  • Screen Estate: The screen size is totally unsuitable for reading books, blogs. It is okay for occasional blog reading, but it is straining. There are people who read blogs using their phone primarily. But I am spoiled by my employer who gave me an iPad, a Samsung GalaxyTab and a Thinkpad to play with, for some mobile related coding. I did not prefer the smartphone even once when I had my good old Thinkpad. Tablets and laptops provide far better reading experience and are equally handy. The GalaxyTab can act as a phone too for all your needs.
  • Fragile: Smartphones need extreme care. Not ideal for rough use, unless you are using a rugged phone like Motorola Defy+ (which has its own set of problems). A friend once dropped a Google phone from his hands while taking from pant pocket (~3 Feet) and the glass shattered into pieces. I have thrown my E398 numerous times (atleast few dozen times from ~5.6 feet) and nothing has happened except an automatic restart.
  • A Patentable Idea: The unlock pattern (of Android) leaves fingerprints and so your phone is not really secure. If you look at the phone, by keeping the screen flat in front of your nose, you can easily detect the unlock pattern finger prints. This may be fixed soon with the advent of touchscreens that do not leave a finger print. I wonder why can't we just authenticate based on the fingerprint in a smartphone !? That may be cool. I should probably patent it, as it seems in mobile phones any stupid thing can be patented. Think: SYSTEM and METHOD for RECORDING and AUTHENTICATION of users to mobile phones via fingerprints, by letting them swipe on either the surface/camera/etc.
  • Battery Life: Even after switching off the wireless, due to the rich display, the battery life of all the smartphones is very less. My phone battery did not last more than 3 days. With wireless on and just GMail app running, the battery lasted for just about 1 day. Some of the non-smart phones these days have close to 2 weeks battery life. If battery life is your criteria or travel a lot, you must order a extra battery if you are buying a smartphone.
  • Muscle Memory: After laying in my bed for sleep, many times, I have taken my motorola phone, unlocked it, launch the alarm application, set alarm for a specific time, exited the application, locked the phone again. I do all this while keeping my eyes closed. The normal phones with keypad are easily operable in one hand. I can take a call in one hand, while the other hand is balancing my body in a bus moving through the high-traffic streets of India. Contrary to what you hear, smartphones require both hands to be used and is not so easily adaptive for muscle memory. For a basic operation like calling a recently called number, you will take more time in a smartphone than a phone with a dedicated CALL button.
  • COST: The single biggest reason why I won't buy a smartphone is Cost. Smartphones from any decent hardware maker are very costly. Personally, with my Indian mentality that takes pride in being cheap, I find it stupid to spend 30,000 INR (600 USD) on a phone which will be valued at 1,000 INR (20 USD) after may be 3 years. This inference is based on the Motorola Razor handset pricing in India. Compare this to a new Samsung GURU phone with color-display, USB charging capacity etc. that costs a mere 1000 INR (20 USD) and has battery life of about 1 week with normal usage. However, there is a big demand for cheap smartphones in markets like India. If and when Nokia releases their cheap smartphones in India, they are sure to repeat their success story in India, just like they did with their Torchlight series phones.

Samsung-specific-observations:
  • The default alarm application does not have snooze option. There is no excuse for this.
  • Samsung Kies - Ahem :/
    Also, it is not available on Linux. Good news is that with the recent versions, the software update can be done within the phone itself without Kies.
  • The indic support patch is not upstreamed yet. But kudos to Samsung as they are the only Android handset makers who support Indic fonts native as of today, afaik. A few of my Tamil friends bought Samsung phones just for this reason.
  • OLED - Amazingly rich screen, especially while displaying black color.
  • The front camera in S2 is just a joke. Totally useless for my needs.

Android:

  • "Android" brand has a better image than "Linux" in the consumer market. It is not without reasons. There are a lot of positive things about Android. I have not mentioned any of them because you can find them easily.
  • However, To be honest, the usability of Android phones is *not* jaw-droppingly-awesome, imho. They are just as normal (good ?) as say Meego UI or GNOME 3. But consumers love them. If enough money is spent on marketing, pigs really can fly. I wish some of the earlier projects like openmoko/maemo/meego had rich companies that were as committed as Google is to Android.
  • I hope ChromeOS opens a door for Linux on Desktops, just as how Android made Linux the most dominant operating system on mobiles. That may help PC OEM vendors to think a little instead of their current act of blindly worshipping Microsoft.
  • The biggest positive impact of Android imho is: Android made companies which usually don't bother about Linux users (like Evernote) to write applications for Linux.
Conclusion:
I will happily use my Motorola E398 until it lasts and then will buy a normal non-smart mobile phone when it no longer can run. Even though I may take up a job with a mobile phone company, I don't think I will buy a smartphone for my needs.
the avatar of Han Wen Kam
the avatar of Han Wen Kam

Every-Packet's Changing... my Keane Parody

This is for all my friends, colleagues & fellow human-beings who ended up working in IT... and loving it.happy

Every-Packet's Changing (sung to the tune of Everybody's Changing by Keane)

You say you wonder your own LAN
When I think about it, I don't see how you can

You route add, you netstat
And I can't see the Ping that you tried
Says Every-Packet's changing and I don't know why

So little time, try to understand that I...
Try to log a call just to stay in the game, I
Try to stay awake and remember my frame-rate
Every-Packet's changing and I start to go insane

You're gone from here, soon you will disappear
Fading into tri-colored light
Cause Every-Packet's changing and I don't feel right

So little time, try to understand that I...
Try to log a call just to stay in the game, I
Try to stay awake and remember my frame-rate
Every-Packet's changing and I start to go insane

So little time, try to understand that I...
Try to make a patch just to stay in the game, I
Try to stay awake and not go init zero
Every-Packet's changing and I don't feel the same

Ooooh, Every-Packet's changing and I report abends...