Announcing ENOS 2009

(See the announcement in English bellow)

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Pelo terceiro ano consecutivo, toda a comunidade portuguesa de openSUSE reúne-se num só espaço com o intuito de dinamizar o projecto openSUSE em Portugal.

O ENOS 2009 (acrónimo para "Encontro Nacional de openSUSE 2009"), organizado pela comunidade portuguesa de openSUSE e pela Associação de Informática de Castelo Branco, decorrerá na magnífica cidade de Castelo Branco, Sábado 26 de Setembro, tendo como ponto de encontro o Instituto Português da Juventude de Castelo Branco pelas 10 horas.

O objectivo do ENOS é dar a oportunidade aos utilizadores portugueses de openSUSE de se juntarem assim como dar aos participantes uma visão introspectiva dos últimos desenvolvimentos do projecto openSUSE e estimulá-los a participarem na comunidade, tudo num ambiente bastante informal e aberto.



Para além do convívio, troca de ideias e discussões dos mais diversificados temas possíveis, também decorreram durante o dia apresentações e BoF's tais como:

• O projecto openSUSE desde à 365 dias (Carlos Gonçalves, openSUSE)
• Integração de Open Source vs Software Proprietário (Engº João Batista, Novell Portugal)
• Linux na pós-produção áudio (Ricardo Antunes, UrbanaFM)
• BoF: Moonlight (Andreia Gaita)
• BoF: Packaging com o Build Service (Carlos Gonçalves)

Também este ano será possível submeter-se aos exames de certificação LPI, através da empresa nacional DRI, Master Affiliate do LPI em Portugal, com um desconto de 50% nas certificações - os interessados deveram informar a organização com pelo menos 8 dias de antecedência da sua intenção.

Assim, convidam-se todas as comunidades, associações e instituições, empresas e individuais a participarem.

Embora o encontro seja totalmente livre, agradece-se o registo na página do evento ou por email para eventos () opensusept () org por forma a ter uma ideia do número expectável de participantes.

Para informação mais detalhada, queira por favor consultar a página oficial do evento em http://pt.opensuse.org/Eventos/ENOS


Com os melhores cumprimentos,
A organização do ENOS 2009

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English Version (note: it differs slightly from the above in Portuguese)

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For the third consecutive year, all the Portuguese openSUSE community users will be meeting will the main goal of boosting the openSUSE project in Portugal.

ENOS 2009 is the third yearly edition of the event and will be held in the Institudo Português da Juventude (IPJ), Castelo Branco, Portugal on Saturday, 26 September.

• About

The acronym ENOS stands for ‘Encontro Nacional de openSUSE‘, a Portuguese expression which can be translated to ‘National openSUSE Meeting‘, an event meant to unite the Portuguese openSUSE users, as well as provide the participants an inside view into the latest developments in the openSUSE project and stimulate them to take an active part in the community itself.

• Schedule

The current schedule, subject to changes, defines the following (GMT timezone):

• 10:00 - Gathering at Institudo Português da Juventude
• 11:00 - ENOS kicks off
  • 11:15 - 11:50 - The openSUSE project since 365 days ago (Carlos Gonçalves)
  • 11:50 - 12:00 - Coffe Break
  • 12:00 - 12:45 - Open Source vs Proprietary Software Integration (Eng. João Batista) Batista)
• 13:00 - 14:30 - Lunch
• 14:30 - 17:00 - IPJ
  • 14:30 - 16:00 - Audio post production on Linux (Ricardo Antunes)
  • 16:00 - 16:30 - (pending talk)
  • 16:30 - 16:45 - Coffe Break
  • 16:45 - 17:30 - Birds of a Feather
    • 16:45 - 17:10 - BoF: Moonlight (Andreia Gaita)
    • 17:10 - 17:30 - BoF: Packaging with Build Service (Carlos Gonçalves)
  • 17:30 - 18:30 - Activity (suprise)
  • 18:30 - 19:30 - Ideas & Discussion ; openSUSE Install Party ; LPI Certification
• +19:30 - Castelo Branco at night

• LPI

The LPI (Linux Professional Institute) seeks to become recognized as the global leader in the certification of Linux professionals while advancing the Linux and Open Source movement through strategic partners, sponsorships, innovative programs and community development activities.

The ENOS organization has the pleasure to announce that we agreed with the LPI Master Affiliate DRI to allow interested people to certificate themselves with the LPI certification during the ENOS meeting (50% discount), which is a really good opportunity to everyone get their own LPI certification!

• Invitation

Anyone interested in attend should sign in or email eventos () opensusept () org so we can have a better idea of how many people we should expect (tip: you will not leave the event without some openSUSE goodies! ).

For more detailed and up-to-date information please see the official event page.

• The Community

• Mailing list: opensuse-pt@opensuse.org
• IRC: #opensuse-pt on irc.freenode.net
• Web: http://opensusept.org

• Thanks To

Big thanks to Associação de Informática de Castelo Branco, Novell, IPJ, and Castelo Branco City Council for the support!

Looking forward to see you there!

More on Smolt

Minutes after I posted The new shiny Smolt client I've received lots of feedback via email, IM and Novell Bugzilla. The most annoying bugs were:

• Bug 525324 - [home:cgoncalves:playground] the Privacy Policy window has not scrollbar

• Bug 525322 - [home:cgoncalves:playground] smolt does not display special chars

All known bugs were fixed and Smolt 1.3.2 tagged.

Q: So, what's really new?!
A:

1. Smolt KDE4 popup made by Thomas Goettlicher:
   
   

The notification will be shown automatically upon KDE startup (X-KDE-autostart-phase=2)


2. Qt.ToolButtonTextBesideIcon (the text appears beside the icon) is now default per Nuno Pinheiro's suggestion:
   
   


3. Window size auto-adjusting:
   
   
   As you can also see BNC #525322 is indeed fixed.
   

I'm preparing a Smolt RPM update to submit to openSUSE Factory to get included in time for openSUSE 11.2, though you can try it already by using my home:cgoncalves:playground repository:

openSUSE 11.1:
# zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/cgoncalves:/playground/openSUSE_11.1/ home:cgoncalves:playground
openSUSE Factory:
# zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/cgoncalves:/playground/openSUSE_Factory/ home:cgoncalves:playground

# zypper ref home:cgoncalves:playground
# zypper in smolt-snapshot smolt-popup

As always, please give us feedback!

The new shiny Smolt client

It has been a long since I last blogged (last dating from January)... I haven't blogged since then mostly because I'm not that good when it comes to write more than 5 lines of text and also because I've been busy with my studies/exams which have finished 2 weeks ago. So... what I've been up to in these last 2 weeks?! Well, first week was dedicated to random useless stuffs like catching up on new movies, going out with friends (lots of drinks involved, obviously!) and, most of all, sleeping (yesterday when I woke up and looked at the clock it was 4pm!) - it fells so good sleeping with nothing to worry you about, doesn't it?!

Since end of last week I restarted working on my Smolt Qt Client, which was born during first semester exams (nothing to do in that boring and meaningless period, right?). But before I continue, let me quote what the Smolt project is all about:

Smolt is, very simply, a hardware reporting tool for Linux based systems. It was originally written for Fedora and now also supports SuSE, Debian and Ubuntu. It gathers information from users, and stores them in a queryable database with a web frontend that produces statistics.

More information about Smolt here. The original Smolt client was written in GTK but the Smolt maintainer decided to replace it by mine - "With great power comes great responsibility".
The client is quite a straightforward port of the GTK one as you can see:

Smolt GTK client

Smolt Qt client

Noticed the new "Distribution" tab? In a near future it will provides distribution specific information such as installed packages. It has been developed by Sebastian Pipping as a Google Summer of Code 2009 project to support Gentoo, though support for other distributions are currently under development (openSUSE/SUSE Linux, Fedora and Debian):


I will be fixing last bugs found to then push a new release version out late this week, so before openSUSE 11.2 feature/version freeze. In the meantime if you want to try it and even report bugs, checkout my home:cgoncalves:playground repository for the smolt-snapshot package:

openSUSE 11.1:
# zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/cgoncalves:/playground/openSUSE_11.1/ home:cgoncalves:playground
openSUSE Factory:
# zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/cgoncalves:/playground/openSUSE_Factory/ home:cgoncalves:playground

# zypper ref home:cgoncalves:playground
# zypper in smolt-snapshot

Please, give us feedback! We want to know your opinion about Smolt!

openSUSE 11.1 KDE3 - torrents and final thanks

Torrents are now available:

• openSUSE 11.1 KDE3 Live CD: i686 (md5, sha1), x86_64 (md5, sha1)
• openSUSE 11.1 KDE3 Live USB: i686 (md5, sha1), x86_64 (md5, sha1) (instructions)

Thanks to...

• ... Benjamin Weber, Masim Sugianto, Andre Duffeck and Magnus Boman for have mirrored openSUSE 11.1 KDE3 Live CDs and USBs.
• ... Marcus Rueckert for have created torrents, and Andreas Jaeger (you know why ;-) )
• ... Stephan Kulow for the useful tips given on how to create the ISOs.
• ... Stephan Binner for patches, suggestions, and feedback.
• ... Joe Brockmeier for the release announcement.
• ... you (!) for the time spent reading this crap of blog :-P
  

Finalizing, even though I strongly encourage users to upgrade to KDE 4 not only for how awesome it is (KDE 4.1.3 on openSUSE 11.1 is solid as rock!), but also because KDE 3 will be officially unsupported and thus not included on openSUSE 11.2 and later versions, I would like to hear what's in users mind about a possibility of having KDE 3 and openSUSE 11.1+ KDE3 Live CDs maintained and released by the community - any volunteers?

(Yes, I use KDE 4 and hell not stepping back to KDE 3! heh)

openSUSE 11.1 KDE3 - urgent mirroring (updated)

Update: Situation is again under control. Benji Weber, Masim Sugianto and Andre Duffeck have setup mirrors (THANKS!) - see MIRRORS file. Temporarily the Live CDs (not the USBs) will be automatically redirected to Benji's.

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Since the release announcement of the Unofficial KDE 3.5 Live CD for openSUSE 11.1 the server where the ISOs are hosted at has been running out of bandwidth due to the huge amount of requests for downloading those files, and since the server also host other important client accounts, the sysadmin offered me two choices:

1. disable the account
2. get mirrors around
   

In the meantime I was forced to move the files away and wait for some mirrors to fight back all the download requests. So, whoever can provide mirroring of these files please contact me (comment, email or IRC)! Torrents are also allowed and recommended!

My apologies for any inconvenience caused...

P.S.: I didn't expected all this traffic around the ISOs... the openSUSE 11.0 KDE3 Live CDs didn't get that many attention. Well, it's a good sign though ;-)

Unofficial KDE 3.5 Live CD for openSUSE 11.1

Quoting "Unofficial KDE 3.5 Live CD for openSUSE 11.1" story from openSUSE News:

Want classic KDE on openSUSE, without the full DVD download? Carlos Goncalves has you covered. openSUSE 11.1 Live CDs and USB images featuring KDE 3.5 are now available for download.

Created by openSUSE community member Carlos Goncalves, the KDE 3.5 Live CD and USB images contain openSUSE 11.1 plus several key updates.

In addition to KDE 3.5, the Live CD offers OpenOffice.org 3.0, Smolt, Amarok 1.4.10, KDEPIM3, Firefox 3.0.4, K3b, and many other useful applications. You can see the entire package list here: package-lists-openSUSE

And, of course, openSUSE has the current KDE releases covered as well. You can download the official openSUSE 11.1 KDE4 Live CDs based on KDE 4.1.3, or if you want to follow KDE development, Stephan Binner has created a KDE Four Live CD featuring KDE 4.2 Beta 2.

Note that the KDE 3.5 live CD is an "unofficial" release. Even though it's not a formal release, we're excited by the work Carlos has put into supporting KDE 3.5 and showing what can be done with the build service. Want to create your own Live CD featuring openSUSE? See Carlos Build Service Live CD project on creating a Live CD here: home:cgoncalves:LiveCD, and Masim's "How to Make openSUSE 11.1 KDE 3.5 LiveCD or LiveDVD" article.

Download

openSUSE 11.1 KDE3 Live CD and USB are available for i686 and x86_64 architectures:

• openSUSE 11.1 KDE3 Live CD: i686 (md5, sha1), x86_64 (md5, sha1)
• openSUSE 11.1 KDE3 Live USB: i686 (md5, sha1), x86_64 (md5, sha1) (instructions)

If you want to report any bug found use Novell's Bugzilla for better tracking. Feedback can be sent via email, IRC and comment in here.

A huge thanks to Stephan 'Beineri' Binner, Stephan 'coolo' Kulow, and Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier for their assistance and effort!

We hope that the openSUSE community will find it useful and have a lot of fun with KDE 3.5!

Mirrors administrators around the world, I think I will need your help! Please mirror these files and let me know the URL so I can point people out to your mirrors instead ;-)