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openSUSE 11.1 is out
openSUSE 11.1 was released this week. This point release contains new features and bug fixes. A series of sneak peeks looks at KDE 4.1.3, The Latest GNOME Desktop, Improved Installation, Easier Administration and more, with plenty of eye candy.There is a look at the download numbers as of December 24, 2008 and lots of coverage. DistroWatch summed up a lengthy review with:
My only reservation is to do with proprietary codecs and drivers, which
still needs some work to reach the same level as other distributions. For
new users, this is still just too hard. I tried to get 3D working with
ATI's proprietary driver and gave up in the end (X worked, but no 3D due to
OpenGL errors). The 'recommended packages' feature of the package manager
is a great idea and does install MP3 support automatically, but this is
still second rate and users expect more. Overall I really feel that this
version of openSUSE provides a complete desktop experience for the
user. What does it have to offer you? Download it and give it a try, you
might be pleasantly surprised at what you find.
This version of openSUSE comes with a new OpenSUSE License with no EULA.
DaniWeb interviewed community manager Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier.
What's new in openSUSE 11.1?
Tons. :-)
More specifically, we have a lot of new software -- OpenOffice.org 3.0, GNOME 2.24, KDE 4.1.3, Banshee 1.4, and a lot more. We've also updated some important YaST modules (YaST is the system management tool for openSUSE) including the partitioner, printer module, and security module that allows users to examine their system's security.
This release also introduces a major new feature called Nomad, which is a new remote desktop technology. (http://en.opensuse.org/Nomad)
This was also a major update in other ways. First, this is the first release that was built in the openSUSE Build Service, which is an important step for allowing more contributions from the community over time. Also, we introduced a new, more friendly license and we removed some pieces of software from the DVD media that prevented redistribution, so now openSUSE is easier to obtain and distribute than ever before.
We asked openSUSE developers to share a little about their views of the best new features or what they are most excited about? We will conclude this article with their responses.
Greg Kroah-Hartman:
The new kernel version update, to the 2.6.27 release series, provides
support for many new devices and platforms over the previous openSUSE
releases.
Aaron Bockover:
I am excited about Mono 2.0 in openSUSE 11.1 as it brings a number of major
performance, memory, and stability improvements to our applications. From
the developer point of view, Mono is more compelling than ever with full C#
3.0 support. openSUSE is hands-down the best distribution for developing on
Mono.
Michael Meeks:
My favourite OpenOffice.org feature, and a world-first, is the split
build; this allows you to quickly compile just 'writer' against your
installed libraries (finally, like all other applications); so you can
get involved with OO.o much more easily.
My second favourite is the console help when invoking a missing tools, telling you the command to install it and the respective package - that combined with the speedy zypper makes life exceeding smooth.
Hans Petter Jansson:
I think one of my favorite 11.1 features must be that user switching
(switching to another logged-in user's desktop without logging out)
finally works seamlessly with GDM.
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier:
Of all the features and updates in this release, there are two things
that really make the release for me. One is the KDE 4 desktop, which
has come a very long way. It has a lot of polish and I'm really
impressed with the improvements since 11.0. The other is the new
license, which makes openSUSE much easier to redistribute and gets rid
of the EULA that openSUSE used to have.
New Releases
Mandriva Linux 2009 Spring Alpha 1 released
The first pre-release of Mandriva Linux 2009 Spring is now available. "This alpha concentrates on updating to the major desktop components of the distribution, including KDE 4.2 Beta 2, GNOME 2.25.2, Xfce 4.6 Beta 2, X.org server 1.5, and kernel 2.6.28 rc8. It is also the first distribution to introduce the major new Tcl/Tk release, 8.6."
Nexenta Core Platform 2 Beta1 Released
NexentaCore is a Debian/OpenSolaris distribution Version 2.0 beta has been announced. "The packages are relatively stable, and we've thus moved NCP to beta, and aim for a stable release early next year."
openSUSE 11.1 released
The openSUSE 11.1 release is out. "The openSUSE 11.1 release includes more than 230 new features, improvements to YaST, major updates to GNOME, KDE, OpenOffice.org, and more freedom with a brand new license, Liberation fonts, and openJDK. This is also the first release built entirely in the openSUSE Build Service." See the announcement (click below) for details.
openSUSE-Education 1.0 for SLE10 and 11.1
openSUSE-Education 1.0 is available for SLE1 with a release candidate for 11.1. "The first version of the openSUSE-Education Add-on is drawing to a close. By releasing the final version for SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 and the first Release Candidate for 11.1, we hopefully have the first community Add-On media which is available for each (open)SUSE Release, soon!"
Jaunty Alpha 2 released
Ubuntu's Jaunty Jackalope Alpha-2 has been released. Jaunty will become Ubuntu 9.04 by next April. "Alpha 2 includes a number of software updates that are ready for large-scale testing. Please refer to http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/jaunty/alpha2 for information on changes in Ubuntu."
Distribution News
Debian GNU/Linux
Debian dependency maps
![[Emacs map]](https://static.lwn.net/images/ns/emacs21_depmap.png)
Some folks at gnowledge.org have put together a
tool to generate graphical dependency maps for packages in the Debian
distribution. At the right is a (much condensed) map for emacs. For some
real amusement, go to the map generator
and get a map for a package like amarok.
Bits from the Debian Installer team
The Debian Installer team has a report on the status of the installer to be used with Debian "Lenny" aka 5.0. "The next release candidate version is aimed at being the version used in the Lenny official release. This version will fix a few bugs discovered in Release Candidate 1 (RC1) and a few more which were listed in RC1 errata. It will also be based on the 2.6.26-12 kernel packages. We intend to begin the final release process of Debian Installer RC2 in the very early days of January 2009."
Manoj Srivastava resigns as Debian secretary
Manoj Srivastava has sent out a posting resigning his position as the secretary of the Debian Project; this is, of course, a result of the current general resolution mess. "Mistakes happen. Mistakes can be recovered from. What can not, however, is relationships, and trust, and this works both ways. It has been made clear to me that the project no longer trusts me, and many consider that I have been the epitome of sleaze over the years, manipulating votes for my own ends. That hurts."
Seeking volunteers for the post of Debian Project Secretary
Debian project leader Steve McIntyre has sent out a request for people interested in becoming the Debian project secretary. Manoj Srivastava has resigned from the position, so McIntyre is giving folks until January 12th to indicate their interest. "A couple of people have been in touch already to volunteer, but rather than just take one of the first few I explicitly want to see if anybody else is interested. If you'd like to take the job on, you will need to be a Debian Developer. You will also need to have a good understanding of our constitution and how the Condorcet voting system works." Click below for his full message.
Second call for votes for the Lenny release GR
Acting secretary of the Debian project, Bdale Garbee has sent out the second call for votes on the Lenny release general resolution. He considered stopping the current vote and starting over, but could not find a constitutional basis to do so. The voting will end on December 28th and Garbee is strongly encouraging Debian developers to vote. "If you choose *not* to vote, then you are in effect saying that *any* of the options presented would be ok with you. A vote for Further Discussion tells the world that you think we should start over and try again with a better set of choices. That is a completely ok result for the project. It wouldn't "solve" anything, but it would do no harm." Click below for his full message and the text of the various options. Update: Please see this notice for the correct voting period.
NM Front Desk staff changes
Debian's New Maintainer Front Desk has had some staff changes. Bernd Zeimetz joins the Desk and Marc Brockschmidt leaves the Desk. "Additional kudos go to Lucas Nussbaum who has been helping us over the last weeks to clean up some of the more dusty queues in the NM process."
Fedora
Fedora election results
Three separate elections for various Fedora committees have completed. The Fedora board election results in Bill Nottingham and Matt Domsch being elected for a two-release term. For the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo), four of five nominated were voted in, resulting in Josh Boyer, Dan Horák, Jarod Wilson, and Jon Stanley being elected for a two-release term. For the Fedora Ambassador Steering Committee (FAmSCo), 7 of 10 nominated were elected to two-release terms: Max Spevack, Joerg Simon, Francesco Ugolini, Thomas Canniot, Rodrigo Padula, David Nalley, Susmit Shannigrahi. The turnout was 227 for the board, 169 for FESCo, and 126 for FAmSCo.FAmSCo 2008 Activities and Events Report
The 2008 FAmSCo (Fedora Ambassadors Steering Committee) has released the Activities and Events report PDF. "I hope it could help new FAmSCo members to figure out what the past FAmSCo has done with some suggestion to improve the future experience. This report is for all Ambassadors too: I hope you'll find a brief, simple scheme of what was done, thank, primarily, to the marvelous job you have done and, I'm sure, you'll continue to do."
Fedora User Guide
The Fedora Users Guide has a new URL and has been updated for Fedora 8. Hopefully F9 and F10 will be coming soon.FINAL REMINDER: Fedora 8 EOL
Fedora 8 reaches its end-of-life on January 7, 2009. After that there will be no security updates, new builds will not be allowed, and all open bugs will be marked CLOSED WONTFIX.
Mandriva Linux
Letter to Mandriva Community
Mandriva will launch the Mandriva Community Steering Committee in January of 2009. The committee will "unify and leverage the Mandriva Community and Ecosystem, thus aligning joint efforts towards clear goals..."
Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Alan Cox is moving on from Red Hat
Alan Cox has announced that he is leaving Red Hat. "I've been at Red Hat for ten years as contractor and employee and now have an opportunity to get even closer to the low level stuff that interests me most. Barring last minute glitches I shall be relocating to Intel (logically at least, physically I'm not going anywhere) and still be working on Linux and free software stuff."
SUSE Linux and openSUSE
openSUSE Weekly News - call for contributors
The openSUSE Weekly Newsletter Team is looking for volunteer translators. "Thanks to your awesome help, the openSUSE Weekly Newsletter Team currently provides the Weekly News in 9 languages (including English) to the openSUSE community. To be able to further enhance the quality of our current offering, the openSUSE Weekly Newsletter Team always welcomes contributors."
openSUSE-GNOME Bug Day Proposal
The openSUSE-GNOME team is proposing a Bug Day on January 9, 2009. "Feel free to drop into #openSUSE-GNOME on Freenode..."
Ubuntu family
Notifications, indicators and alerts (here be dragons)
Mark Shuttleworth takes a look at the proposals Canonical's user experience design and desktop experience engineering teams have made for Ubuntu 9.04. "Some of these ideas are unproven, they boil down to matters of opinion, but since our commitment to them is based on a desire to learn more I think of them as constructive experiments. Experiments are just that - experiments. They may succeed and they may fail. We should judge them carefully, after we have data. We are putting new ideas into the free desktop without ego. We know those ideas could be better or worse than similar work being done in other communities, and we want to gather real user feedback to help find the best mix for everyone. The best ideas, and the best code, will ultimately form part of the digital free software commons and be shared by GNOME, KDE and every distribution."
Distribution Newsletters
Debian miscellaneous developer news (#12)
This issue of Misc developer news covers: Bdale Garbee as Acting Secretary, New proposal to track maintenance status of all packages, Packages-arch-specific maintenance changes, Githubredir available and Babelbox updated for Lenny.DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 283
The DistroWatch Weekly for December 22, 2008 is out. "This week we take a first look at Novell's openSUSE 11.1, the latest release from the ever popular distribution. In the news, the release of openSUSE 11.1 heralds the adoption of a freer license, Debian calls a vote on whether or not to include firmware in the upcoming Lenny release while Debian secretary quits over backlash from firmware vote, Gentoo begins releasing weekly snapshots of stage tarballs, the Asianux Consortium incorporates its fifth member and expands into Thailand, Mandriva sets up a Community Steering Committee and increases their number of channel partners, a new distro, Hackable: 1, aims to create a GNOME-based software stack for hackable devices while the Openmoko project releases an update to their software stack. Finally, included in their respective new sections are two interviews - one with Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier of openSUSE and the other with Johannes (Hanno) Böck of Gentoo Linux. Happy reading!"
Fedora Weekly News #157
The Fedora Weekly News for December 21, 2008 is out. "In our last issue of 2008, Announcements reminds you of FWN's holiday schedule and presents the gift of the Omega distro, Planet is chock full of tasty tidbits from the Fedora blogosphere, Developments invites you to warm your hands over a "Nautilus Spatial-mode Flamewar", Documentation invites you to a "Holiday Hackfest", Translations reports on the re-organization of "Sponsors for cvsl10n", Artwork unwraps some shiny "Creation Highlights", SecurityAdvisories lists some ways to avoid a lump of coal from Santa, and the usual sleigh-load of Virtualization goodies includes instructions on "Building oVirt from Rawhide." We would like to thank our readers for their interest and attention and all our contributors for producing the goods week after week. May you all have a happy and relaxing holiday and we look forward to seeing you again in January 2009."
openSUSE Weekly News, Issue 51
The openSUSE Weekly News looks at openSUSE 11.1 out, Lee Matheson: NEWBIES - Suse-11.1 Pre-installation, Joe Brockmeier: Leaping lizards! Lots going on in the openSUSE community, Petr Mladek: OpenOffice_org 3.0 beta1 available, Comments on Phoronix Benchmarking openSUSE 11.1, and more. Click below for links to several translations.Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #122
The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter for December 20, 2008 covers: Holiday Schedule for the UWN, Announcing the next "Global Ubuntu BugJam, Ubuntu on Amazon EC2 Beta released, Main frozen for Alpha 2, New Ubuntu Developer Week set for January, New MOTU's, Ubuntu on national Danish TV again, Launchpad interviews: Jonathan Lange & Adam Olsen, Launchpad 2.1.12 released, Preparing for signed PPA's, Launchpod episode #14: Drupal Modules, Linux is a way of life, not a clone of Windows, Ubuntu Podcast #15, and much more.
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