linux-1pi7:~ # yast lan list
0       79c970 [PCnet32 LANCE], Not configured

1       79c970 [PCnet32 LANCE], Not configured

linux-1pi7:~ # yast lan edit id=0 ip=2001:15c0:668e::5 prefix=48
Ethernet Network Card
MAC : 08:00:27:80:b5:07
Device Name: eth1
Started automatically at boot
IP address: 2001:15c0:668e::5/48


linux-1pi7:~ # yast lan list
0       Ethernet Network Card, 2001:15c0:668e::5

1       79c970 [PCnet32 LANCE], Not configured

linux-1pi7:~ #

For folks not that used to web interfaces, the openSUSE Forums team provides a secondary interface to our forums – NNTP. The intention of this post is to raise your attention on this possibility.

What is NNTP?

Using our NNTP interface, you’re able to participate in forums discussions without accessing the web interface at all. You’re able to use any newsreader supporting the RFC standard to read and even write posts. Actually your user-id gets recognized in the web interface if you set up your newsreader properly.

From my personal experience especially developers are in general more familiar in using mailing lists instead of browsing a web interface. One of our desires is to get more developers to the board. On the one hand, developers can provide competent assistance especially to our new users – on the other hand, the forums are able to provide a lot of feedback back to developers. The advantages are obvious!

The NNTP interface to the forums provides a neat way to browse significantly more content with less effort. You can get a quick overview about forums content using NNTP. Certainly you’ll not be able to see the great template created by Robert Lihm, but every choice has its drawback – Good to have a choice at least, isn’t it?

For detailed instructions on how to set up your newsreader properly to participate in forums discussions, be sure to check out the NNTP section within our forums FAQ.

We’re really looking forward to your contribution!

[PS. I coudn’t resist. I just had to name the package ‘*Kit’. ]

Need to do a firmware update with a DOS program?

Can get tricky if you don’t have a DOS system around. We used to provide a bootable floppy image for that in the past (package dosbootdisk). But who has a floppy drive anyway?

So, here comes the new
FirmwareUpdateKit package. Install it and run run, e.g. fuk --grub foobar.exe That’s it. The next reboot gives you the option to start DOS and run foobar.exe.

fuk can also create bootable ISOs and, of course, even floppy images.

This blog does not add any information to the documentation you can find around. Anyway, it is not too long since someone was able to make Babylon dictionaries usable by software other than the proprietary Babylon application. And they have been trying for years… so it has not been a trivial step

If you do not know Stardict, you can get it from Yast. This is the official site.

A few dictionaries are also linked – ready and free to use – at Stardict website. However, I used Babylon when I was a Windows user and i have to admit that their dictionaries remain unbeaten. Matters not what language you want, mono-language or bi-language, technical, general purpose etc etc… they just rock!

You can get tons of dictionaries for free from Babylon website:

Now, go to Yast Software Manager and search for dictconv. Alternatively, you can install from source (which is what I personally did).

Installing is very easy: ./configure and then make all install

Now you’re all set. To use it to convert:

cd to the directory where you have the .BGL dictionaries and type: dictconv INPUT_FILENAME.BGL -o OUTPUT_FILENAME.ifo

Pay attention to the extension: must be .ifo. This will generate 3 files for each BGL dictionary: .ifo, .idx, .dict

Place all these 3 files in /usr/share/stardict/dic/ creating a separate folder for each dictionary. Then rebook Stardict and go to Manage Dictionary (bottom right): there you can select what comes first, activate or deactivate etc etc

Nothing difficult but def worth, and not only for non native speakers.. there are lots of technical terminology Babylon dictionaries that may well come handy.

Notice that with Stardict you can also implement Pronunciations of the typed words: see Stardict site: “WyabdcRealPeopleTTS package make StarDict pronounce English words. It is just many .wav files. Extract(tar -xjvf) the tarball at /usr/share/”.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sooo well… Have fun ~ Buon divertimento ~ Viel Spaß ~ I que te diviertas ~ Maak plezier ~ ha så roligt [hmm i’m just hoping the dictionaries mentioned just above are not making me do some poor figure for these few transations of “Have Fun”.. cuz i have no idea for any language except Italian :D]

The Enthought Tool Suite (ETS) is a collection of components developed by Enthought to construct custom scientific applications. It includes a wide variety of components, including:

• an extensible application framework
• application building blocks
• 2-D and 3-D graphics libraries
• scientific and math libraries
• developer tools
• MayaVi Data Visualizer

It is available for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows, but they don't provide binaries for OpenSUSE, I don't now why.

Here are just some steps to get it running on OpenSUSE 10.3. But, you have to install some packages, check here before to proceed:
My system:

ionut@vaio:~> cat /etc/SuSE-release
openSUSE 10.3 (X86-64)
VERSION = 10.3

I installed the suite in /usr/local/lib64/python2.5/site-packages so, let's create the directories:

sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/lib64/python2.5/site-packages

Get the souces for ets tool from their repository:

svn co https://svn.enthought.com/svn/enthought/ETSProjectTools/trunk ETSProjectTools

Build ets (it is a kind of wrapper for their repository), a tool that automates the checkout process.

cd ETSProjectTools
python setup.py install

Get the latest souces for the project files, and build the eggs for the components:

ets co ETS
cd ETS_3.0.0b1
svn export https://svn.enthought.com/svn/enthought/sandbox/egg_builder.py
python egg_builder.py

If the build was successful, you would not have received any errors (though there will be one warning at the end about not building egg.info files) and the built eggs would be residing in a directory called dist

Install the eggs in the directory which we created at the beginning:

sudo easy_install -f dist/ -H dist/ ETS

Now you can try some examples which are included:

• check if Traits is working:

python Traits_3.0.0b1/examples/demo/Applications/converter.py

• check if Mayavi is working:

python Mayavi_3.0.0a1/examples/mayavi/scatter_plot.py
python Mayavi_3.0.0a1/examples/mayavi/streamline.py

or just run mayavi2 command.

In my case everything is working fine, I hope that also for you. Here are some references:

• Installation on Ubuntu_7.10_i686
• Installation on Fedora_8_i686
• Source code
  

After announced on March 11, 2008, official openSUSE forums has been established and starting work for providing better support for openSUSE community on June 09, 2008. Forums merges 3 existing openSUSE forums, suseforums.net, suselinuxsupport.de and the openSUSE support forums at forums.novell.com.

You could use single sign-on login with your Novell/openSUSE account. It’s also should be work with your existing account at existing forums but I didn’t try it ;-), so, please try to login before create another new account.

Thanks for all of Novell staff and openSUSE community members who make the dream come true. Quoting what Michael said last 3 month : “a big gain for the whole openSUSE Community !”