European Wafaa

One of the first things that I got involved in with regards to openSUSE was packaging, and using the openSUSE Build Service. Actually this was one of my first means of contribution to an Open Source project - packaging Hula on SUSE 9.2. Back then I used my old laptop (which I still have) - PIII 650MHz with 512MB RAM - and was limited to packaging only for the release that I had installed; which was fine as I was scratching my own itch, I wanted to use Hula and thought "heck if I'm using it maybe someone else will too".

Now when I started to package I had no understanding of what I was doing, all I knew was that my packages would build and install/un-install. So from a simplistic point of view Job done. If I was younger and not so concerned with keeping a roof over not only my head but that of my growing family I would have lusted after true understanding of this mystical art that is packaging. Was not to be, at least not immediately.

When speaking to friends and colleagues who were Debian users, they always scoffed at RPM and at how dirty the packages were. This was yet another weapon in their elite armoury, not only did they have the Aptitude packaging backend but they also had high quality packages. I never really cared about that, if people used my packages then be it on their own heads I hold no responsibility for any borkages that may occur. I still kind of hold that thought apart from the tough cheese stand point, I care if something goes wrong and I'll do my best to fix it.

With each release of openSUSE and its inclusion in the Build Service there have been more and more stringent packaging checks. This is a kind of double edged sword for me, and I'm sure many others. Why? Well I have never professed to being all knowing in the ways of packaging, actually I have to ask for help pretty often. Thankfully the guys and gals of openSUSE are tremendously helpful, just pop along to the buildservice IRC channel or if it's a package for GNOME or KDE you could ask in their respective channels. From there I have managed to dig myself out of pretty much most holes. With the earlier releases, basically <= 10.3 I would be able to get away with using the RPM spec file that krpmbuilder would generate, with 11.0 I met a delightful chap called rpmlint, and with 11.1 I think he's been fed steroids and been eating young children for breakfast.

This might seem a bit harsh, but bugger me are the checks more stringent now. For anyone that understands packaging the chances are you'll manage to get on just fine, but for a hobby packager like myself you'll possible come to blows on more than one occasion. So this seems all negative, where's the positive side? Well the positive side is that we now get much much cleaner packages. The Debian advantage has been further eroded away, we have zypper which really does float my boat and now we have clean compliant packages.

Why have openSUSE introduced the tighter checks? I don't know, I can only guess at the answer(s). The peeps at SUSE and Novell don't rest on their laurels too often, they strive to make openSUSE a truly brilliant distro and project in general, so cleaning up the packages that they effectively serve is a natural step. Another reason could be the upcoming Contrib repo which will be live for 11.2 (I think), packages need to be of a similar quality to those offered by the SUSE and Novell staff through the distro itself so having these tough checks makes sense.

All in all without the Build Service my contributions to the openSUSE Community and other Open Source projects would be in a shabby state. Thank you for providing a great service with some great tools, and remember people these checks are for the greater good you just have to look past the descending red haze of anger

General IRC TIP: Just remember to be patient, there's nothing worse than joining a channel asking a question and within an hour buggering off again, or re-asking the question within five minutes. Ask and then wait patiently whilst taking in the karma of those around you, the solution may appear out of the ether before anyone responds (it's happened to me before).

A while ago Gabriel Burt mentioned something called Muinshee. What is it? Simply put it is Banshee but with a Muine-like interface. Some people thought that Banshee's normal interface was overly cluttered, bloated, blah blah; Gabriel and Brad Taylor were just hacking and having fun. Make of it what you will.

So what does it look like? Well below are some comparisons first the default interface:

Banshee's default interface

Banshee playing queued tracks

Now the Size 0 Muinshee interface:

The Muinshee interface

Finding some music to play in Muinshee

Muinshee playing queued tracks

Do you like it, do you want it? Yes? Well thanks to Garrett LeSage's tip earlier today you can have it, easily! Muinshee is actually part of openSUSE 11.1 (possibly 11.0 but I'm not sure). All you need to do is download this script to somewhere useful (don't forget to make it executable ), I use ~/bin/muinshee but you could use almost anywhere in your $PATH. Once the Muinshee script is in place you can launch the minimal interface either by Alt+F2 and entering muinshee (or whatever you called the script), or doing the same in a terminal or other CLI. There is no easy way of switching atm, but I'm sure this is in the pipeline. Talking of pipelines, please oh please hurry with the DLNA support

Happy audio times abound for all, and thanks to Aaron, Brad, Gabriel, Garrett and all the other fine hackers out there that make all this possible!

At the launch of 11.0 there were several little projects started by the community these projects were actually really helpful and we would like to think contributed to the uptake and success of the 11.0 release. Now I will admit that I can’t substantiate this with any hard (or soft) facts, but none the less that’s our gut feeling

So what are the projects in question? Well they are: Helping Hands, openSUSE-Tutiorials and openSUSE TV. Funny I can hear some people moaning and groaning that these are GNOME Team projects, WRONG!! These projects have indeed been started by members of the GNOME Team, but they are for the whole distribution and project. I know suseROCKs has tried in the past to try and get some contributions from other teams, so don’t blame the GNOME Team for the content blame yourselves.

Actually on second thought, drop the whole blame game thing. A better solution is to start a fresh and keep up the momentum. I am basically asking members of the openSUSE Community (that means ALL of you!) to step up and take the wild Geeko by the reigns and help teach all those non-believers that it really is easy to use, has some brilliant features (easily found and hidden), and generally a great distro and project to use and be involved in.

So if we take each item in turn:

1) Helping Hands: HH (as we affectionately call it) is aimed at giving an insight into certain aspects of the distro that a user may come across or wish to use. In the past we have had sessions on Inkscape, Evolution, Banshee, general GNOME usage and other applications. We are hoping to have one on packaging RPMs and using the Build Service in the not so distant future. We would love to see members of the KDE community enlighten us (yes some of the GNOME users are scared of things that begin with K) about things that are going on in there, I know there are loads of great things I’m just really knowledgeable in them or even know 25% of them. We would also like members of XFCE and any other desktop environment that’s out there to do the same. You can focus on a specific application, a suite of applications or anything that will be helpful to users. If possible get someone from upstream join in, it makes things much more interesting and actually opens eyes on both sides of the fence as to what is going on. If you are interested (why wouldn’t you be?) and are willing to help out (you know you want to) then please let wither myself (FunkyPenguin) or suseROCKs know on IRC, we hang out in most of the openSUSE channels.

2) openSUSE-Tutiorials: oS-T is aimed at being a repository of insights, tips & tricks etc on applications and other things with the distro. Why not just use the Wiki? Well in a nutshell there are times when the Wiki just isn’t suited, and this way topics can be easily grouped so are ultimately easily searchable. Not only by the big search engines, but also by any user who visits the site. Content is moderated prior to being published, and before you start screaming of a conspiracy to silence the truth it is actually to try and ensure that those items published are actually of good quality and will genuinely be of use. For more info on publishing something for oS-T then please ask either decriptor or suseROCKs on IRC (again they loiter in most channels).

3) openSUSE TV: oS TV is aimed at providing a medium to show all the wonderous videos that we have on and about openSUSE. These don’t have to be any of the official videos that are done at conferences but can also include screencasts, interviews and almost any other form of video that we have about openSUSE (both distro and project). The channel is part of the blip.tv service and as such is aimed at all platforms, not just Linux. We want to try and grow our user base and community which means looking at the competing Operating Systems. I am hoping to do a series of interviews at the upcoming FOSDEM show similar to those that I did in Nurenberg for Hack Week III; I have pencilled in the title of “Face to Face @ FOSDEM’09″. So if you’re going to be at the event (try and make it if you can because it is really a great event), and you have a specific topic you’d like to speak about then let me know. I would love to get more content on there, screencast would be great as would videos from LUG meetings where openSUSE is used/showcased etc. Remember oS TV is about the community, for the community, by the community. So your input is needed!

There is no reason why you can’t do an item on all three of the above and have them linked. For an example you could do a HH item on the KDE desktop (general first look etc), you could also do a screencast of that item and have the screencast posted to oS TV and to finish it up you could have an oS-T article on tuning your desktop to get the best out of it. If you feel that any of these are wrong/bad/need improving/$COMMENT then please keep those comments to yourself!! In all seriousness, they can only improve with your help so please let us know all and any feedback that you may have. Most importantly, please join in

Yes people I'm going to FOSDEM (again) I've booked my ferry crossing from Blighty to France and hope to have a pleasant drive over to Brussels. As I mentioned previously I am planning on doing a bit more "Marketing" type pieces; mainly getting my camcorder out for "Face 2 Face @ FOSDEM", this will basically entail me shoving my camcorder in people's faces, asking a few questions etc.

So if you're going to the great event and have something you'd like to advertise (preferably something openSUSE related), catch me either around the openSUSE booth or in the openSUSE Dev Room. I will of course be attending the great Beer Event on Friday but don't expect me to remember much from the night I'm looking forward to seeing so many faces from openSUSE & Novell camps, as well as lots of community members not just from openSUSE but from the greater ecosystem that we exist in - Open Source

I have a little pet project on the go that requires some involvement from other distros and projects, so hopefully I can rope them into helping me out whilst there. I may blog about it shortly, providing I have enough to show people. See you in Brussels in a couple of weeks.

There have been many people that have complained that Dropbox no longer works on openSUSE 11.1

Well thanks to ivanz you can now enjoy your box dropping without issue. ivanz also provides some nice tips/workarounds for a few other common issues that have cropped up.

Quoting Ivan:

Create a ~/.xinitrc file with the following content:
xhost local:root
/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc

Thanks ivanz and don't forget if you want to get Dropbox, just click