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DistributionsNews and Editorials openSUSE merges forums ahead of 11.0 releaseThe openSUSE project announced this week it has merged its three largest English-language community support forums under one big green umbrella and relaunched it as the openSUSE Forums. According to data supplied by openSUSE, the combined number of suseforums.net, suselinuxsupport.de, and openSUSE Novell support forum members was in the tens of thousands &mdash a number expected to rise with the upcoming release of openSUSE 11.0. Even though the new forums are already up and running smoothly, the team has no intention of resting on its laurels. They're already working on implementing similar changes with forums in other languages and better integration with the rest of the site. Project Manager Rupert Horstkötter says there are also plans for a "user-rating for the whole openSUSE community, integrated with forums.opensuse.org, and all other openSUSE services. Besides all of that, we hope to be able to attract more independent forum communities for the official openSUSE forums." Keith Kastorff, the site admin for suseforums.net says the idea began to take shape during an openSUSE project meeting back in 2007. "A big topic was the need for an 'official' openSUSE forum, and the duplication of effort, expertise, and resources we had in play," he recalls. "I volunteered to reach out to some of the independent SUSE focused forums to see if I could generate any interest in a merge." Then he contacted people involved with Novell and suselinuxsupport.de and "things moved forward from there." Kastorff says getting the project underway was slow going at first and admits that some members were wary of Novell's involvement. "The open source community is sometimes skeptical of commercial players, but we found nothing but tremendous support from Novell," he says. It's not surprising there were a number of technical hurdles to overcome in bringing the three forums together. One of the main issues included an inability to merge the member databases and it was eventually decided to simply archive them within a section of the new forum. "Like any project, we had to make compromises to achieve the end goal," says Kastorff. "We knew going in we had different cultures in play, and there were times the dialogs between the various merging staffs got intense, but the team's strong commitment to bettering the openSUSE community kept us focused on the prize." Indeed, it was a team effort. More than 30 people worked behind the scenes to import the help sections of the separate forums and archive over 400,000 posts prior to launching forums.opensusue.org. In order for the project to work, the various groups &mdash each with their own goals and ideas &mdash needed to work together and trust in the end goal. Horstkötter says it was "a lot of work to combine different cultures into one big forum for the openSUSE community, but it was a great time. I feel like I met some new friends during the project." "We had three teams &mdash one from Novell, two from different grassroots projects that had sprung up to serve the community and had developed their own style and ways of working together," recalls openSUSE Product Manager Michael Löffler "To merge the three, the staff for each forum had to be comfortable putting all their eggs in one basket (Novell hosting the forums) and agreeing on a common set of rules, moderation guidelines, etc. It took some time and effort to work everything out, but I think that the three teams are working quite well together now." Just as important as teams working together is the impact that merged forums will have on the openSUSE community overall. "Having a unified forum means that all interested users can converse and support one another in one location &mdash so you don't have the duplication of effort." says Löffler. "I'm really glad [they] launched in time for 11.0 &mdash I expect that a lot of new users are going to be interested in openSUSE with this release, and I am very happy we have the forums to help support them."
New Releases 64 Studio 2.1 'A Minha Menina' released!The latest version of 64 Studio, 2.1 'A Minha Menina', has been released. "Version 2.1 is the first update to the second stable release of 64 Studio. It is named after a song by Jorge Ben, recorded by Os Mutantes and covered by The Bees." 64 Studio is a remix of Debian 4.0 'Etch', focused on digital content creation, including audio, video, graphics and publishing tools.
Debian Installer lenny beta 2 releasedThe second beta of the Debian lenny installer is available for testing. Click below for a look at the improvements and known issues in this release.
Mandriva Flash 2008 Spring releasedMandriva has announced the release of Mandriva Flash 2008 Spring, the new release of its bootable distribution on a USB key. "Mandriva Flash 2008 Spring is based on the new release of Mandriva Linux. It doubles the capacity of the key from 4GB for the previous version to 8GB, and comes in an attractive white casing. Flash 2008 Spring's new installation feature lets you install Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring permanently onto any system with just a few clicks." It's available now from the Mandriva Store.
openSUSE Build Service 1.0 RC 1 releasedThe openSUSE Project has released the first release candidate of the openSUSE Build Service 1.0. "With the release candidate, all the features are now in place to support external collaboration with the community to build openSUSE in the open. Developers can now submit contributions to openSUSE directly at build.opensuse.org/."
Distribution News Fedora Fedora Board Recap 2008-JUN-03Here's a look at the June 3, 2008 meeting of the Fedora board. Topics include Codeina, Fedora 9 Postmortem, and Fedora Organizational Structure.
Gentoo Linux Nominations open for the Gentoo Council 2008/2009Nominations for the Gentoo Council 2008/2009 are open now and will be open for the next two weeks. Only Gentoo developers may be nominated and only Gentoo developers may vote.
Mandriva Linux Celebrating 10 years of MandrivaMandriva just celebrated its Tenth Anniversary, both as a company and as a distribution. "The Mandriva community celebrated in style over the last weekend in May, with a party in the Eiffel Tower in Paris attended by many staff, former staff, community members and partners. There was also an - indoor - picnic, and the now-traditional Dance Dance Revolution party."
Other distributions FreeBSD supported branches updateFreeBSD has announced an end-of-life for FreeBSD 5.5, FreeBSD 6.1, and FreeBSD 6.2. "Users of these releases are advised to upgrade promptly to FreeBSD 6.3 or FreeBSD 7.0, either by downloading an updated source tree and building updates manually, or (for i386 and amd64 systems) using the FreeBSD Update utility as described in the FreeBSD 6.3 and FreeBSD 7.0 release announcements."
Distribution Newsletters Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #94The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter for June 7, 2008 covers Ubuntu Global Bug Jam, New Members, Newly Approved LoCos, Canonical Showcases Ubuntu Netbook Remix at Computex, Kubuntu Specs in Full, Ubuntu at OSCON, Ubuntu Server receives positive reviews, Mobile devices driving Ubuntu-Shuttleworth, Ubuntu UK podcast #7, Acer bets big on Linux, and much more.
Fedora Weekly News Issue 130The Fedora Weekly News for June 8, 2008 looks at an interview with Jim Whitehurst, Ubuntu 8.04 vs Fedora 9, LinuxTag Reports, Fedora Open Day 2008, and much more.
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 256The DistroWatch Weekly for June 9, 2008 is out. "Ever since the launch of ASUS Linux Eee PC late last year, the ultra-portable computer market has turned into a major battleground of operating systems. Who will win? Microsoft with its thick wallet and pressure tactics or Linux with its low cost and open development model? Last week's Computex in Taipei revealed surprising differences between the ways hardware manufacturers embrace this exciting market. In the news section, Debian announces upcoming freeze of "Lenny", Mandriva celebrates its 10-year birthday, Canonical releases Ubuntu Netbook Remix, and FreeBSD updates the End-of-Life dates for its current and past releases. Also in this week's issue, a good collection of search resources for CentOS and RHEL users, and a list of valuable third-party repositories for openSUSE 11.0. Finally, with the annual package database update on DistroWatch, do let us know which new packages you want us to include in the tracking process."
Distribution meetings Recordings of Linuxtag '08Recordings from talks that took place at the openSUSE day at Linuxtag are available online. Almost all are in German.
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol |
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