7 months have been passing by since the launch of the official openSUSE forums back in June. Since then a lot has been done by both the membership and the forums team to make this a big gain for the whole openSUSE community. From now on we are going to provide status reports on a monthly basis to represent the progress we make. As this is the first issue of status reports, we’d like to provide some long-term openSUSE forums statistics along the statistics for December 2008.

Up to the 31st of December 2008, we achieved a membership of 18.772 members, 18.144 threads and 105.203 posts, which is quite a lot considering that we started with an empty database due to some technical issues we had during the merge of the three independent parties that initially joined forces. Most users ever online was 7.771 – including guests – on the 2nd of December 2008.

The following diagram shows the monthly development of new user registrations, user activity, new threads and new posts since the launch in June. The user activity measures the number of individual visits to the openSUSE forums. We started strong with the release of openSUSE 11.0, then the traffic has been slowly declining followed by another peak with the release of openSUSE 11.1.

The next diagram outlines the daily statistics of the same measurements for December 2008. As you can see, the release date of openSUSE 11.1 – the 18th of December – had a significant impact on all presented measurements.

Kudos to our Top5 posters during the last 7 months…

• oldcpu – 4.558
• caf4926 – 3.643
• kgroneman – 2.536
• ken_yap – 2.375
• swerdna – 2.355

…and to our Top5 posters during December 2008.

• caf4926 – 795
• oldcpu – 658
• mingus725 – 449
• ken_yap – 441
• BenderBendingRodriguez – 284

Thanks a million for making the openSUSE forums useful.

We’d like to take the opportunity to thank the whole openSUSE community for their participation – without your great support during the last 7 months the success of the openSUSE forums would never be possible. The openSUSE forums are accessible through the website and the NNTP gateway. If you’re interested in the latter possibility, be sure to read my former article about NNTP access to the openSUSE forums.

As of the issue #49 of the openSUSE Weekly Newsletter, we present hot topics and asserted threads at a dedicated openSUSE forums section to the openSUSE community. If you are a frequent forums visitor and you’d like to contribute to this openSUSE forums section, you are very welcome to join the Newsletter Team. If you’re interested, please contact me – rhorstkoetter/at/opensuse.org – for further information.

Happy New Year from the whole openSUSE forums team!

Today while trawling around on the opensuse mailing list I found this gem of a quote from one of the user's answers that summarize really well why I love and continue to use Linux and why any other thing would feel wrong ....

"""
I use openSUSE and Linux because it allows me to use my computers the
way I want. I have some almost new hardware and some really old
stuff. I'm typing this on a Thinkpad laptop with a P3/1Ghz and 256mB
RAM while I have 4 ssh sessions into my server running 2 movie
re-encodes and doing file maintenance in the other 2. I've got 2
directories on my server mounted on this and 1 directory on this
laptop mounted on the server to copy files with. If I was using MacOS
or Windows I'd barely be able to do anything.
""" - Larry Stotler

Thank you Larry for converting my thoughts into such simple but expressive words.

There have been mixed reviews for OpenSuSE 11.1, some lauding it while others panning it for a disaster almost as bad as the 10.1 release mostly surrounding KDE-4 desktop choice. The desktop environment is so much a part of a distro nowadays that normal users do not usually make the distinction between what is the distro and what is the desktop environment. For them, KDE or OpenSuSE they are both the same. For me I applaud the OpenSuSE team for taking a brave new step ahead! KDE-4 has it's faults no doubt but as usual I put my total trust in the OpenSource community to mold into something better than the current 3.5.x. I will still look forward to keeping OpenSuSE as my main working distro.

Finally to all the readers of this blog. Merry belated Christmas and a Happy Profitable new year ahead!

Just upgraded my X61's opensuse from 11.0 to 11.1 and found that the opensuse team bumped up the python version from python-2.5.x to python-2.6. Woohooops! Definitely won't win them any new fans in the Python camp for that move. For one deluge no longer works as it uses Python-2.5.x. As a comparison, although the folks over at the Fedora-10 camp is also known for their up to date apps, they still maintained python at version 2.5.2 to maintain a semblance of sanity with some of the apps that need python 2.5. I am just going through the multitude of Python applications I have on my box to see which one greets me with a "Goodbye cruel world" bomb. Why oh why do you have to be like that opensuse?! Well on the upside the whole desktop experience has improved and I had a relatively smooth upgrade path.

Something else too, kde-4.1 which used to be pretty clunky and unusable in 11.0 has been improved and after a while of getting used to it, I am beginning to think it's pretty good.

Well, when the lizard gives you lemon make lemonade I guess ... time to revisit ktorrent. I just hope everything else is intact.

Is over now. Hope everyone had a relaxing time.

As for work... Since December 10:

- We released openSUSE 111!!!11!elf1 (since every says openSUSE 11 to openSUSE 11.0 a little bit freedom here).

2 hours later we started releasing security updates for it, complete with delta support etc.
7 security updates after 24 hours.

- Slow down for Christmas break... Over Christmas break we of course do not close the SUSE and
throw the keys away, but most developers are on holidays. We are of course checking E-Mails
and reacting on critical issues. So far no critical issues yet.

- Wine 1.1.11 released, RPMs as usual on the buildservice.


But now I am on vacation, spent a week at my parents place, helped dig up the forest of grandma for planting new trees, eat lots of food, tried showing the Nintendo Wii to my family (so far no one has played with it, only the husband of my sister), and sleeping long and general relaxing.

What I did in OSS stuff:
- You can now dump and configure most of the Nikon D70s properties. (also used by the other Nikons). So every aspect that can be remote controlled is (will be) remote controllable with a nice interface. Also planned for the other Nikon DSLRs.
- Fixing the KDE4 camera:/ ioslave and configuration module. Still ingoing, but the kcontrol module was completely broken at least due to some automagic conversions run over it.
The kioslave troubles seem related by yet more semantic changes in KIO behaviour. I rewrote parts of kio kamera already to make it less prone to such unclear behaviour, not yet finished / committed.

I was curious about some discussion threads posted in LinkedIn's Open Source group. One had the following content:


Is 2009 The year of "supported open source" Do you agree or disagree ?

I have to admit having worked on both sides of the fence the biggest trend we are now experiencing on web related project requirements is the shift to "supported open source technology"...

The days of 6 figure plus licence fees are now over "phew" our clients thankfully quote...

Old versus New

Interwoven / Vignette versus Alfresco / MySource Matrix ?
Salesforce versus Sugar CRM ?
Documentum / Trim versus Alfresco / Sharepoint Integrated CMS's

What are your thoughts fellow CM Professionals ? Don't just take my word for it... http://cmswatch.com/Feature/189


I read some interesting opinions below, such as this one from Tony Wasserman:

To me, the issue here is adoption and use of open source software by companies and governments for activities that are essential to their businesses. One of the key corporate criteria for that type of software acquisition is availability of long-term 24x7 support, including service level agreements for problem resolution. These CIO's and other decision-makers just don't accept the idea that they can post their issues on a forum and that someone will post a reply. They want a toll-free telephone number to call with the assurance that someone knowledgeable will answer and address the issue.

For example, while small companies and the technically knowledgeable will download and install the Drupal CMS (and its underlying components), the corporate buyer, by contrast, will go to Acquia, gladly paying for support. As a better example, many of the installations of open source software in corporate environments are being done through consultants and system integrators, such as Wipro, Infosys, Accenture, and IBM.

So now the next question is whether the demand for open source software will increase in 2009. For that, I would give a qualified "yes". Startups have been building their companies on open source software for most of this decade, and will continue to do so, but they are not spending a lot of money on support, consulting, and training services. Developers in companies of all sizes have also long used open source software packages and libraries, including Eclipse, NetBeans, JBoss, MySQL, and hundreds of others, again without much money changing hands.

For enterprise applications, companies have already made substantial investments in existing proprietary software from Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, and other vendors, so it is hard for them to justify replacing it. The enterprise opportunities for open source come with new applications, and with growing companies that need these applications.

So I think that there will be growing revenue in 2009 for the system integrators providing open source support and services, as well as some money for the vendors of commercialized open source products, such as Zenoss, Groundwork, and other infrastructure packages. I think that the growth for the application packages is probably a little further out, though I would make an exception for OpenOffice.org , which has already seen a lot of acceptance.


Or this one from Glenn A. Curry:


Tony brings up an interesting issue. That of access to tech support. But our experience has been that the tech support available from commercial software manufacturers is in many cases worse than nonexistent. Not all have 24x7. And even if there is someone that answers the phone, there typically is little value in talking to them.

In trying to resolve software issues for our customers, we are most often given answers like "just keep reinstalling it till it works". Or they want security settings reduced because their interface is sloppy. Or they just flat give bad answers. The extremely poor level of phone support so often found is incredible. The battle required to move up the chain to someone that actually has a clue is frustrating and costly to the customer as they have to pay for our time while on the phone.

e.g. we spent days dealing with Sage on a Peachtree upgrade. Their solution (besides the before mentioned "just keep reinstalling it, that usually makes it work eventually") was to run as administrator all the time to get around a security problem. Eventually we found the problem and solved it with some port mapping. It was a common problem based on discussions on techie sites. AFAWK it is still a problem for them. We sure are not going to tell them how to fix THEIR bad software design for free. And noe one there had a clue.

And I won't even begin to list the massive Microsoft tech support nightmares.

Just because a company claims 24x7 tech support, does not mean it has an actual usable value.


So, without trying to be devil's attorney, I gave my opinion:


I think Tony and Glenn raise good points about support, but I would like to arise a third point, that maybe contrasts with them. The issue is not about support itself, but about what does "support" mean in open source software:

1) Yes, in open source, there's no monopoly about technical support, and this is always a good thing, except for the cases in which it can be seen wrongly as bad quality, because:
a) It may happen that there's no company behind an open source project, just one or some developers, and it's a bit awkward to ask them for support if they're not professionally gathered in some way. Besides, if the developer base is so small, it's going to be difficult to find another company which gives you support if they don't know much about the product.
b) It may happen that the developer-base is spread around many companies (for example: OpenOffice, the Linux kernel), so the company that needs support is normally confused as to which one is the best one to request support. This is awkward to a company which normally considers a product to come from "just one company".

2) Propietary software may mean a monopoly in regards to technical support but, let's face it: many incompetent people working inside companies just prefer some provider to blame if something goes wrong: "we're stuck in this issue because Oracle (or put you're favorite propietary software company here) technical support sucks", and it's not their fault anymore. If they had chosen an open source software solution, they may be accused of:
a) Not choosing the best provider for technical support.
b) Not fixing the issue themselves, since, if you have the code, it's just a matter of time to solve it, right?

Well, just trying to be realistic. Of course I advocate open source (I work on it on a daily basis), but just wanted to give some clues about why it's not getting the success it should have.


In general, the (2) point and (2a) in particular, is very similar to the reason why still incompetent but huge companies survive on the market: I've heard many cases of people just buying Oracle or Accenture because they're the most expensive. If all goes wrong, it's impossible they would be accused of selecting the wrong provider if they selected the most expensive one, right?

UPDATE 16-FEB-2008: Even though the above given problems about choosing open source solutions, here's a nice guide to try to overcome them: Convincing Management To Approve Free Software.

Merry xmas everyone!!

I'm spending my xmas night with my parents and then (when they fall sleep) i will be with my friends eating, drinking and drinking until the sun rises. It's a tradition here. I'm feeling very happy for this day i hope the best for everyone!

PS: I got a gift from my parents, a Emporio Armani Code perfume, my favorite.
PS2: Cleaning some bugs at GNOME bugzilla  and submiting new 2.25 packages for opensuse.

Happy xmas!

Ladies and Gents!

Glad to announce the third release of unofficial Enlightenment LiveCD based on our brand new OpenSUSE-11.1.

Download page
‘Welcome’ notes (PDF)

Please visit the download page to see the details and try the mirror provided by Yandex.ru. Read the Welcome.pdf before you pop the disk into the PC/Qemu/etc.

Along with this “release” we made another ‘iso’ which has less software but carry the proprietary ATI/NVIDIA drivers and all components to build and install them for your PC. Instruction is here:
‘Development’ release
Disk has a kernel sources, gcc, make and other ‘user unfriendly’ packages – thet’s why it’s a ‘development’ one.

The brief changelog comparing to the old ‘release’:

• all EFL applications now use the default themes. This allowed to save some valuable spase and provide additional software (like the latest ‘linuxdcpp’ with multithreading download capability)
• ‘SCIM‘ is included and ready to support the wide spectrum of international locales (added upon request from our Japanese colleagues)
• operations with any external and internal volumes/storages under ‘User’ via hal+dbus+udev. You’re welcome to explore the amazing E17’s module ‘places‘ which allow an ordinary user to control and monitor all volumes on-the-fly
• EFL/Enlightenment is build in OBS from svn revision 38164 (dated 20081215)
• ~/bin folder has some nice scripts inside and we hope to provide much more useful tiny utilities next time
• ‘Wicd‘ is set as a default network configuration utility (instead of ‘Exalt‘ which is now in a heavy development). If you’re not happy with it – just use the default ‘NetworkManager’.
• ‘jwm‘ is added as an example of a WM which could be configured in and out (man jwm). It’s very good for an old PC’s (along with ‘E16‘). We tested the disk with a 128 RAM – works…
• and the most interesting feature – is a ‘0install‘ technology, which allow you to build your own ROX-Desktop from scratch (internet connection is required). The result is very close to ‘GoboLinux’ – just click on ‘ROX-Filer‘ menu entry (Applications -> System -> File Manager -> ROX-Filer)

Some new applications added like ‘Tracker‘, ‘Edje_viewer‘, etc., init routine adjusted and several other tricks performed to prepare yet another general-purpose Linux LiveCD. Below is a link to the small gallery of a screenshots:

screenshots

Exactly what you get by default. Unfortunately they can’t express the feel of E, which is “…like people say, amazing.” Mirror is updating right now and the new version soon will be there (hope so).

As usual we’re glad to receive your feedback.

Acknowledgments:

Enlightenment Development Team and Enlightenment Community
OpenSUSE Build Service Team
OpenSUSE KIWI Team (schaefi, cyberorg, pzb, cgoncalves – THANKS!)
Stalwart, thanks for the hosting!
Packman Team
Novell
Jan Engelhardt
and all the others, who helped to make it (Engineers, Developers, Users, Maintainers…)

Thanks!

Regards,
SOAD team

YaST uses style.qss located in /usr/share/YaST2/theme/current/wizard by
default. If you want YaST to use a different style sheet (e.g. the style shown
while installation) you can set the $Y2STYLE environment variable:

Y2STYLE=installation.qss /sbin/yast2 disk

I’ve added a new hotkey to YaST which allows to modify the style sheet on
runtime. Pressing [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [Alt] + [S] in a YaST module opens the Stylesheet Editor. Now you can load a style sheet and modify its style rules.

The Stylesheet Editor can be very usefull when you want to design your own style for the YaST Qt4 UI.

This feature will be available in openSUSE 11.2. If you want to use it now all you need is yast2-qt version 2.18.2. You can find the latest version here:
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/tgoettlicher/openSUSE_Factory/

Recently i had trouble getting my zypper to talk in Slovak despite the correct locale set (using export LANG=sk_SK.utf8). I was so desperate after some time of searching for the cause that i even filed a bug report.

Well, it turned out that i forgot about one more variable, the LANGUAGE. This defines a language preference list and takes higher priority that LANG, or LC_* variables. Mine was set to en_US (i don't know why, though) :O(

So the fix for me was either to unset the LANGUAGE variable, or include sk in its value. Read more about this variable here.