Here’s some thoughts about some hardware I was going to use, hardware I use daily, and hardware I’ll probably use someday in the future.

Thunderbolt is dead, long live Thunderbolt.

Seriously, it’s dead, use it as a video interconnect and don’t worry about anything else.

Ok, some more explanation is probably in order…

Back in October of 2012, after a meeting with some very smart Intel engineers, I ended up the proud owner of a machine with Thunderbolt support, some hard disks with Thunderbolt interfaces, and most importantly, access to the super-secret Thunderbolt specification on how to make this whole thing work properly on Linux. I also had a MacBook Pro with a Thunderbolt interface which is what I really wanted to get working.

At the risk of stepping on other people’s toes let me apologize before I start. I am certain we have many members in the community that have gone out of their way to overcome hurdles placed in their way by our “organization” or others. I was inspired by this story because it shows how dedicated our community members are and it really fits well with some of the issues we are still struggling with in the transition from Boosters to SUSE team and the transition between initiatives, Ambassadors to Coordinators and shipping of DVDs to boxes of promo material for designated events.

Peter Czanik was caught in the middle of all of this at a recent FSF conference where he and others had an openSUSE booth. With no DVDs being shipped, due to the transition in the promo material shipping procedure (this has been announced) and no money available through TSP for local production of marketing materials due to a snafu (a temporary solution is in the works) there was basically no help from the resources where help should be coming from, sorry about that Peter.

Despite these obstacles Peter and the team showed up and made due with what was available to have great success. In Peter’s words:

“”””
– distributed the last few remaining openSUSE 12.2 DVDs. Many people complained, that it’s not the latest and greatest, but also many were happy, as they have an old machine and older Linux versions usually have lower resource requirements.
– reused the posters we printed last autumn to decorate the booth (at the end of the day they were in a sorry state, so can’t be reused any more…)
– used the few remaining openSUSE brochures, stickers we printed last year (printing was contributed last year by somebody working at a printing company and our company printer…)

– used my ARM machines and a few borrowed mini PCs to demo openSUSE and make the booth eye catching (people asked about the machines and went away with openSUSE DVDs and brochures )

So, in short: last autumn we had local contributions from community members, this year we used what was last few bits of it and some creativity.

The good thing is, that I was told from multiple directions, that openSUSE had the best booth among software projects at the conference (and they did not know, that it was from a ZERO budget…).

The bad thing is, that we don’t have any marketing materials left. No DVDs, posters or brochures.

“””””

There is no need to rose color the situation, leaving community members trying to represent openSUSE at a conference stranded like this should not happen and there is no excuse for creating this situation in the first place. Work is proceeding to address these issue. However, I want to focus on the positive, and that is undoubtedly how determined Peter and the team were to make the conference a success and how they overcame the obstacles presented to them.

Thank you Peter and team fro being such dedicated representatives of our community and project. Also thank you for pointing out the shortcomings in our current transition period. This will allow us to address these, hopefully in short order.

As I mentioned, am am certain many of you have similar stories to tell. Thanks for your efforts as well.

The openSUSE Conference 2013 is ad portas and the media has already caught on to this Open Source event in Thessaloniki, Greece. There was a recent request for having an ad about the openSUSE Conference featured in a German Linux magazine. I quickly jumped to the action looking for ideas on what ways are more effective in delivering an ad about our project.

The first thought was to make something that talked about the conference and the things that will make the conference shine. However, a second thought also came through. The openSUSE Conference is just the result of a much bigger project, the openSUSE Project. If we are to feature an ad about our conference it should be centered on the project and not the conference necessarily.

Why? Because there are many conferences and events every year. It is hard for the general public to know and acknowledge the differences of conferences around the Linux world. However, there is only 1 openSUSE Project. The conference's main event is not the conference itself, it is openSUSE. Therefore, I thought that rather than having the conference-made logos and graphics, we should focus on the main event, openSUSE.

In the end, this is what will go on the magazine. I hope you like it!

Hi!

This week in Barcelona:

Thursday 20, at 19:00 - Barcelona on Rails monthly meeting
XING's office at Consell de Cent 332
Topic still to be defined
http://barcelonaonrails.com/


The Barcelona Graphic + Web Design Meetup Group
Thursday, June 20 at 8:30 PM
http://www.meetup.com/graphicdesign-159/events/gfcdnyrjbbc/

Сеть в Xen работает по принципу виртуального моста, как рассказывается здесь: http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Xen_Networking.

Сначала, надо сделать этот самый мост. В /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-br0 надо написать буквально следующее:

BOOTPROTO='dhcp4'
# как для простого интерфейса, можно и статический адрес задать 
BRIDGE='yes'
BRIDGE_FORWARDDELAY='0'
BRIDGE_PORTS='eth0 eth1'
BRIDGE_STP='on'
# если два активных физических интерфейса в мост собраны,
# то пакеты могут и по кругу пойти без Spanning Tree Protocol.
STARTMODE='auto'

ifcfg-eth0 и ifcfg-eth1 лучше просто удалить, чтобы не мешались.

Теперь у нас есть самый настоящий мост, который можно вписывать в параметры конфигураций доменов: http://xenbits.xen.org/docs/4.2-testing/misc/xl-network-configuration.html.

Дальше запускаем домены, и проверяем, что появились их бэкендные интерфейсы:

# brctl show br0
bridge name     bridge id               STP enabled     interfaces
br0             8000.52540035c714       yes             eth0
                                                        eth1
                                                        vif1.0

Дальше настраиваем внутренний интерфейс домена, как это происходит обычно.

As a consequence of [the recent changes in the repositories]({{ site.url }}/2013/06/upcoming-changes-to-opensuse-kde-repositories), the openSUSE KDE team is happy to announce the availability of packages containing the first beta of the KDE Platform, Workspaces and Applications 4.11.

Packages are available in the KDE:Distro:Factory repository. As it is beta software, it may have not-yet-discovered bugs, and its use is recommended only if you are willing to test packaging (reporting bugs to Novell’s bugzilla) or the software (reporting bugs directly to KDE). For specific queries on the 4.11 beta not related to specific openSUSE packaging, use the KDE Community Forums 4.11 Beta/RC area.

Have a good test!

Before focusing my spare time completely on the GSoC* (as I have mentoring responsibilities this year \o/ ), I wanted to solve a problem that cannot wait after July...

Yes, I've been victim of Google's cuts too... And I was wondering, where should I move? Feedly? ThingyBob? Well, I shouldn't make the same mistake twice, right?

Actually, some time ago I was using a desktop app to avoid relying on software that I cannot control (yes, vendor lock-in, the most important thing that open source tries to solve, right?): Thunderbird. But somehow the convenience of a web app (that I can access from any computer) and the hassle of using my mail client for RSS reading made me move to the web.

I should be able to find a replacement that no company or individual can "take down", and which feels less clunky than Thunderbird for reading RSS. So, enter blam (in the future I'll figure out how to sync its state between computers, maybe using SparkleShare?, to achieve that same convenience that a web-app provides), that Gnome app that has strangely managed to not catch my eye until now...

Well, maybe because if I install it from debian sid and I try to import my very first RSS feed from my GoogleReader list it doesn't work? Well, apparently it is a bug that is already fixed upstream, thanks to Carlos which has modernized the way that the program deals with XML and serialization.

Then I went ahead and tried to compile master myself... and guess what, the autogen.sh execution fails. Here the yak shaving begins, when I feel like this when trying to fix the autotools stuff:


Fortunately, after some tinkering (and some copy&paste from banshee's build scripts), I managed to fix the problem, and also modernized a bit some things (like using the brand new ".ac" extension instead of ".in" for the configure script, or using properly the AC_INIT and AM_AUTOMAKE_INIT macros,...).

Anyway, the real thing to highlight here is that while I was fixing this stuff and pushing to the repository...


... I saw some really good stuff committed by Carlos: using the new .NET 4.5 C# async patterns to get rid of those ugly callbacks! Kudos to him.

And if you're willing to help more with our autotools housekeeping, please do, I still feel this autogen.sh is way too long and needs some ironing.

* And if you're wondering what's up with GSoC (aka Google Summer of Code):

• I had Nicholas Little lined up to work on Rygel+Banshee integration, but sadly he couldn't apply due to work commitments (hopefully he will still work with me on it in his spare time).
• I had Rashid Khan lined up to work on Cydin+Banshee integration, but sadly there were not enough GSoC spots for him :( (fortuntately he told me he still wanted to work on it with me in his spare time).
• I had Tomasz Maczyński lined up to work on Banshee integration with more REST APIs, and fortunately he was selected! So expect some nice FanArt.TV and SongKick plugins soon!

Since KDE has released the first beta of Platform, Workspaces, and Applications 4.11, there will be some changes in the packages offered in the openSUSE repositories.

In short:

• KDE:Distro:Factory will now start tracking 4.11 betas and RCs: packages are being worked on. Use this version to test packages and to report bugs upstream.
• KDE:Release:410 has been decoupled from KDE:Distro:Factory. If you were using 4.10 packages from KDF, you’re highly encouraged to move to this repository.
• KDE:Unstable:SC will keep on carrying snapshots from KDE git repositories.

If you test the 4.11 packages, report bugs in the packaging (or openSUSE-specific functionality) to Novell’s bugzilla, and bugs in the software to bugs.kde.org. Also, please use the dedicated area on the KDE Community Forums to discuss issues.

Let the testing commence!

It’s been almost 18 months since I last made any change to this site, and I’ve been meaning to do it for a while. In all honesty, it’s been a while since I last blogged so I thought it was as good a time as any. Thanks to the likes of Twitter and Google+, and my corporate blog I’m finding myself blogging less an less. As my blog is getting less content, is it really worth running an sql server etc?

This was a problem I didnt think I would face while getting a new laptop. I got the Toshiba C580 laptop, which has quite decent specifications. It is a nifty machine, and openSUSE works more or less flawlessly. The only issue I faced was with the Wireless card. It is a Realtek device, which is usually well supported, but this particular model, the 8273AE is yet to be fully supported by the kernel. I had to dig around a lot to get this to work, but received a lot of help from the openSUSE forums, and managed to get it to work. Thanks to lwfinger for writing the patch to get it to work properly.

1.) Use YaST to install the Kernel Development, C/C++ development and Base Development patterns

2.) Download the compat-wireless package from
http://linuxwireless.org/download/compat-wireless-2.6/compat-wireless-2012-10-03.tar.bz2

3.) Download the patch from
http://www.lwfinger.com/realtek_drivers/rtl8723ae_master_patch

4.) Run the following commands

tar jxvf compat-wireless-2012-10-03.tar.bz2
cd compat-wireless-2012-10-03/
patch -p1 < ../rtl8723ae_master_patch
make
sudo make install

5.) Check if the driver is working with
sudo modprobe -v rtl8723ae

This should get the driver working properly

Source: http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/wireless/477285-rtl8723ae-realtek-wirless-driver-hell-3.html