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openSUSE 10.3. I couldn't follow its development as I did with previous releases and tested only after the final version appeared. First I upgraded my desktop from 10.2 and it wasn't a pleasure as it made the system unbootable and I had to fix using a rescue console. But after having it running I was quite satisfied with it. Software management has improved (but still not fast enough in my opinion), the possibility to add the community repositories from YaST is nice, as it is the search page and the one click install (well one click on the webpage, several clicks later). I found some bugs and annoyances and I reported them, in the hope that they will be fixed in an update or in future releases. I also downloaded the 1 CD KDE version and decided to try it on my laptop. This laptop run Kubuntu since the beginning of 2006, when I switched it from SUSE in order to try it and learn it. Kubuntu was OK, but I missed some things, like YaST, I was not happy with all the modifications made to KDE and suspend to disk worked, but strangely (took a long time to come back and had to play with CTRL-ALT-Fx to get back the X screen). But I was happy with the boot speed, I even blogged about it. So I replaced Kubuntu with openSUSE 10.3. All I can say is wow. This time the installation went fine as it was a clean install, not an upgrade. The system feels quite good for this computer (PIII 550Mhz laptop, 192MB RAM, Trident video card with shared memory, 30GB IBM HDD). Compared to my previous tests only the HDD is different, but works at about the same speed (13MB/s). Booting until the KDM screen takes only 45 seconds and until I can use my system is 1:15seconds. Yes, the system is usable at that time when my optimized Kubuntu did not finish loading the login screen. The only optimization I did was to disable services I don't need from the current runlevel and disable arts. Now I don't want to say openSUSE is better, faster than Kubuntu. The new Kubuntu might also be just as fast and good. What I'm saying is that I'm impressed by the speed of the latest version of a Linux distribution. Software tends to be slower in time, while this time it became faster. I also know that booting speed is not enough or really relevant. Right now all I can say is that for general use (not for development) the system feels to be responsive and fast enough. Suspend to disk takes 25 seconds, resume 36. That's quite OK, I didn't meassure yet, but I believe it takes just as much on my desktop system is which is very fast compared to this laptop. I had until now two issues with the laptop: Read More

Jim Bublitz has been industriously working on getting the Python bindings for KDE 4 into shape. Part of that work is documentation of course and for that Jim has put together a very handy documentation viewer which combines reference docs with code samples and example code all in one easy to navigate package. One of the classic documentation problems for GUIs which are as customisable as Qt/KDE, is that everyone can, and often does, have their own visual style configured for their desktop. This of course means that any screenshots accompanying documentation simply don't match what is in front of the user most of the time. Having real widgets displayed and operational in the reference docs themselves solves this problem for Python developers at least. I think it's real neat. Read More

As Aaron is reading Spook Country I also wanted to chime in with some Gibsoness. I finished Spook Country, the latest novel of William Gibson, a couple of weeks ago. It's a very stylish work of art with lots of amazingly sharp ideas. I really enjoyed reading it. His concept of locative art is fascinating (and I want a magnetically elevated bed as well ;-)). Read More

So says this advert me and the other organisers put in this month's Linux Magazine. Thanks to them all for making Akademy possible and to media partner LNM for the advert space. Read More

The openSUSE 10.3 box is shipping! Some subscribers seem to have received it already yesterday, today I received my employee copy (German version). I'm pleasantly surprised that it didn't take this time over one month after the release, and that the two DVDs are safe in a plastic cover: Read More

First of all, i'm working in a Linux company, i use Linux for almost everything in my life except gaming. Second, my company sold like hundred thousand of linux machines all over the world. Third, it's obvious for any smart person that actually read regular information about computer world see that linux is growing A LOT. Then, suddenly, the bank that i use ( and many of my fellows co-workers ) decide the very smart move to include an security applet that simply makes mandatory the use of Microsoft Windows. And they tell this explicitely. They provide a telephone to users of "other operational systems" to inform then that they're not using MS ( maybe to tell then to use telephone operations ). Ok, would be barely ok if.. ..i'm outside my country. The only way i have to pay my accounts is by internet banking, as my family lives away from my city. And will not back until the terminal date od back change, 19 October. So, if some issue happens during my stay out my home, like pay the credit card debts, that i'm using here, to avoid lock, i'll be helpless, or use some non-personal computer with Microsoft Windows to deal with my money. Nice, huh ? To have security, i just need abandon my current security in favor of a use unsecure computer that i can't assure if is reliable. Maybe can i ask ABN to give me R$ 500,00 in my account to buy a copy of some non portuguese Microsoft Windows here to solve my issue :-P Read More

So I thought I would spend a tiny bit of time on the weekend trying to get khtml 4.0's gif decoder all finished. Yeah, right. Decoding the frames themselves is easy: giflib does it for us. The messy part comes when it comes to putting them together into an animation. Read More

There are some misconceptions floating around about openSUSE 10.3. Unfortunately uninformed people are still allowed to blog ;-) so let me pick up some I read: "No Live-CD! Every hobby distro has one. Why can't a huge company like Novell do one?" Read More

Let me share some hints for openSUSE 10.3 which just came to my mind: If you use GNOME and eg don't like the yast2-gtk package selector or miss the powerful Qt package selector, install the yast2-qt package and set in /etc/sysconfig/yast2 the WANTED_GUI variable to "qt". If you want the Crystal-style YaST icons back, replace the yast2-theme-openSUSE with the yast2-theme-openSUSE-Crystal package. If you miss the photo wallpapers, they have been moved to the desktop-data-SuSE-extra sub-package. For really old wallpapers, think SuSE Linux 9.1, install the gos-wallpapers package. And this seems to be the biggest complaint of some people: you can make the Geeko of the KDE start menu roll its eyes again: kwriteconfig --file kickerrc --group General --key KickoffDrawGeekoEye true">

Today, after ten months of work, openSUSE has 10.3 been released. :-) Francis did an excellent coverage of everything new so let me just relist his Sneak Peeks: Greatly Improved Boot Time, with Stephan Kulow 1-Click Install, with Benjamin Weber New Package Management, with Duncan Mac-Vicar Prett Compiz and Compiz Fusion, with Matthias Hopf and Jigish Gohil KDE 4, with Dirk Müller SUSE-Polished GNOME 2.20, with JP Rosevear 1-CD Installation & Multimedia support, with Michael Löffler Virtualisation, with Frank Kohler A Plethora of Improvements, with Andreas Jaeger More screenshots and more detailed version list are available in the wiki. Get it here. Read More