European Wafaa

I thought I should let anyone that cares know what the latest status of my work is.  What work?  Getting MeeGo on openSUSE, of course!  I'm calling it Smeegol – SUSE MeeGo Linux, and this just happens to be the Teal Goblin – Teal is the code name for 11.3 ;-)

Well I'm not quite there yet (unfortunately) :-(  I have one major issue which is the Network Panel not displaying properly, and as such is difficult to use.  I also have a smaller issue with the web panel, but that is more of an annoyance rather than a blocker.

So in a nutshell that's the state of play.  Now I'm concentrating on getting things working on 11.3 and getting a working image, but if people would like to see things get into openSUSE 11.4 then there are some low hanging fruit for people to pick up and run with.  In a nutshell before things can make it into Factory, the spec files need to be cleaned up and made to comply with the Geeko's high standards.

So please join in the fun and have a look at the Meego:Netbook repo, and help out where you can.  I wanted to get things working first before I started to look at housekeeping.  Some packages already comply, but others most certainly don't as they were straight imports from upstream.

Oh and if you want to try Smeegol as it stands now, warts and all, you can grab the live image from here. If you're brave (or stupid) you can get the goodness via 1Click for 11.3 or Factory. Yes it is 32bit only at the moment, as when packaging I had too many x86_64 errors.  Please note that the Goblin may chew fluffy bunnies, sodomise gorrilas and generally be an imp!  You can file bugs if you wish over on BNC just select the Moblin Component

So please join in the fun and help clean up the Goblin :-)

I thought it was about time that I enlightened people as to what the
state of play is with my efforts of getting MeeGo 1.0 for Netbooks on
openSUSE.

The good news is I think I'm pretty much there :-)  I believe all the
essential packages are built now, although there is a *lot* of work to
be done in getting the packages into Factory.  The outstanding work is
mostly spec file housekeeping but non the less it will be a relatively
laborious task.

I am currently looking at getting a hybrid iso image built so that
people can install the goodness straight of the bat and have the image
available pretty close to 11.3's release - this may or may not happen as
fast as I would like but we'll see.

For those that are interested all the packages etc live in
Meego:Netbook, and the image stuff lives in the meego-live package in
there.  Any and all help with cleaning spec files and creating an image
is most appreciated.

Talking of thanks, none of this would have happened without the huge
amounts of help from DimStar, darix, dl9pf, joeyli, glin, mchang, mlin, mmeeks
and vuntz. Thank you *SO* much chaps!

I will try and get a 1-Click done whilst I work on an image.  If people could have a look at the repo and let me know if anything is missing that would be great - don't forget you can submit anything that is missing ;-)

As soon as I have anything new I'll let you know.   So if you want to join in the fun, then head over to #opensuse-moblin on IRC and the opensuse-goblin mailing list.  There are lots for people to do, and if you want to start contributing this is a good way to do so :-)

It looks like I've been asking you, the community, a load of questions recently on this here blog.  As such I thought it only fair to turn the tables and let you guys and girls do the asking :-)

If we can make a bit of a game out of this I would appreciate it.  So first up I'll give you a deadline of 1200UTC 17June2010 to get you questions in by.  What's the game?  Simple, I would like you lot to pretend you are interviewing our prospective Community Manager.  Does this sound a bit bitchy to you because I'm no longer in the running?  If so I genuinely don't mean it to be.  I just want you to actually search within yourselves, to work out what you feel is important to you when it comes to the role.

So all good games have a prize right? Well this shall be no different, the top 5 questions will each receive a prize.  So get to it and post your questions in the comments.  When thinking about what to ask, think about what you would like from the role, and why.  Also many big employers ask what appear to be oddball questions, but they are in fact very relevant - these types could earn brownie points ;-)

So get questioning!

It's been a while since I mentioned anything about Goblin and anything netbook related, sorry.  Anyhow as everyone is aware, Moblin has since been superseded by MeeGo.  The timing was a bit of a PITA for me, as it coincided with the Factory freeze, which means I couldn't update the relevant packages etc in-time for 11.3.

As it stands, 11.3 should have an almost fully functional Moblin environment – I say 'almost' as there were two packages that I just couldn't get to co-operate and build (the modified Moblin browser, and the Web panel).  They should not affect your enjoyment of the UX so I'm not going to kick myself too hard.   I have learnt several lessons though trying to get Moblin into Factory:

1: Getting things into the next distro release is NOT difficult.

I don't care what anyone says, the process is very simple and straight forward.  Importantly, there is a huge amount of help from all parties that deal with the acceptance etc.  If you need help or guidance, just ask! I can't stress enough how much help is available to people.  I would personally like to thank everyone that helped, but I know I will miss some people off due to my feeble brain.  As a start these people have been invaluable to the process - Andreas Jaeger, Marcus Ruckert, Stephan Kulow, Michael Meeks, Henne Vogelsang, Pascal Blesser, Andrea Florio & Dominique Luerenberger.  Thank you all (and sorry to those whom I missed of listing).

2: You need to plan, and plan well.

I started off with great intentions, but I didn't take into account how disruptive my daytime job would be.  Unfortunately I haven't wopn the lottery and as such I have to deal with “The Man”, otherwise I have no food or house :-(  Part of my bad planning led to me missing the cut-off for getting Moblin listed as an installable option from the get go.

3: Spread the love.

There's a saying I've heard many times and from many different places – A burden shared is a burden eased.  Do you know what?  It's absolutely true!  Even if there are only a couple of you dealing with a project, it makes things so much easier, and having more is just plain fun :-)  I tried to get some of you reprobates to join in, but you were all too busy.  As such the pace of progress was fairly slow.

4. Have fun doing it. 

This applies to almost anything you do, but especially when doing any form of contribution. If you feel that it is getting you down, take a break, try and pass the baton to someone else to carry it forward for a bit.  What ever you do, don't let it burn you out!  Loosing a contributor to burn-out is disastrous for the community, and is something we should all be aware of and on the look out for.

So that's the past/present, what about the present/future?  Well Goblin will live on, and incorporate all the new goodness that is coming out of MeeGo.  I do genuinely think that MeeGo is a vast improvement on Moblin, but as always there's room for improvement; and what better way to start improving than by getting the Geeko involved? :-)  As my contribution to HackWeek 5, I have started the importing process for all the MeeGo packages, into the OBS.  Believe it or not, there are only a handful of packages that can be carried over from Moblin which is a bugger.  Regardless I think I have got pretty much all the needed pieces in.

Problem is the way I've done it is pretty hacky – I basically just  dropped the contents of the SRPMs in and hoped for the best.  This was done mainly for speed, and I know that it isn't good enough.  Problem is I'm trying to balance my regular job and dealing with managing the renovation of my parent's house at the same time, so I really don't have a huge amount of spare time :-/  So this is where YOU come in.

Please help me to not only get Goblin updated to the latest and greatest that MeeGo has to offer, but also prove to everyone outside of the openSUSE community that we are a coherent and cohesive force to be reckoned with!  Too many people discount us, and just say that without Novell nothing would get done.  Please help me to help you to prove this assumption to be a load of rubbish.  We have the tools and knowledge available to us, so let's get on with it and get it done!  Oh and we have the real opportunity to be a leader here – the first distro to provide a full MeeGo experience!

So if you can help, then please join in on IRC (#opensuse-moblin), and on the mailing list ( make sure you are subscribed first).  The first step is to get everything building, from there we can move forward.  Oh by the way, this initial push is for the Netbook UX, but I'd love to see use get the Handheld/Tablet UX when that is released ;-)  I'm tempted by Garrett's name suggestion of Smeegol, but let's get it building and working first ;-) 

I've had a lot of people ask me both within the openSUSE community and outside of it, whether I applied for the vacant openSUSE Community Manager role.

In a nutshell, yes I did apply for it.  Why the past tense?  Well I got notified almost two weeks ago that I was unsuccessful :'(  The good thing that did come out of it, is that there seem to be some very good candidates in the running - let's face it, they would have to be pretty damned good to beat me ;-)

I would like to thank Novell for considering me for the role, and wish those that are in the running the best of luck!  Oh I'd also like to ask you, the community, to extend your support to whomever is successful in getting the role.  This doesn't mean that I'm giving up on the Geeko - hell I've invested too much time & effort to throw it away, and I have far too many friends within the community.

To the successful person: Please ensure you look after all aspects of the community, your colleagues working for "The Man" as well as those of us who do it for the love.  Let's not loose what we have by chasing that which we haven't :-)

Now back to some Smeegol madness with the Goblin!

Enterprise in the Community

It has been mentioned that the Geeko is somewhat of a schizophrenic at times, and do you know what I kind of have to agree.  The difference is I disagree on how the schizophrenia affects our dear friend.  Most people think that the multiple personalities are desktop related  - you know, KDE vs GNOME vs XFCE vs $DE.  I on the other hand feel it is to with audience - Enterprise vs Consumer.  Now don't get me wrong, the Geeko does a great job at both.  The problem is there doesn't seem to be a great deal of interaction between the two personalities.

Yes, some features from the enterprise product feed into the consumer product and vice versa which is lovely and vital.  What is missing is community interaction.  As it stands I see very little evidence of SLE customers interacting with the openSUSE community, and to an extent SLE is somewhat shunned as the illegitimate love child by many within the openSUSE community – which is just plain wrong!  There are times when SLE deadlines get on my nerves, but that is no reason to shun the staff working on it or disrespect the product.

In my job working for a major systems provider and integrator in the UK, we use a lot of SLE and others including Red Hat, AIX, Solaris and HP-UX.  The one thing that is constant is we don't interact with the communities of the OSes, unless it is via the Sales/Support departments.  Now it might be because of time constraints, but I'm not convinced.  I haven't seen any “customers” interact with the openSUSE community other than maybe with the Build Service.  Which is a real shame, as there are some great customers of the SLE product and some great people employed by them.

So how do our peers deal with it? To be honest I have no idea :-) I can only guess that they encounter the same issue, well potentially Red Hat & Fedora.  Ubuntu on the other hand have somewhat of an advantage, in so much as their enterprise product isn't a separate product but in fact part of the standard release.  So when it comes to getting ISVs, partners and customers involved they can safely say that *all* Ubuntu users can benefit from it – not just the enterprise customers.  This is a crucial point, as more people are likely to use the distro and play with it and then sign the big fat cheque for the support.  By that time they have already got involved with the community and will most likely continue to do so.

I'm not trying to tell Novell that they need to change their business model, all what I'm saying is we need Novell's help to engage their customers and partners to be part of OUR community – N.B Our Community == openSUSE *&* SLE.  At the end of the day it's a win/win situation for all parties – they can then get maximum exposure, an element of testing of their product without having to start from scratch to get things certified etc. We benefit from a bigger community thanks to their involvement, and have many more cool things to use/play with :-)   A key one here is that of ISVs, there are a shed load of ISVs that are certified against SLE – iirc somewhere in the region of 5000 apps.  That's an impressive number, but unfortunately openSUSE sees bupkiss! Absolutely nada, niet, nil points, zilch :-(  Looking at Ubuntu they apparently have a fraction of that amount – somehere in the region of 200 or so.  The big difference is that almost *all* Ubunteros can use or access those apps.  The same goes for IHVs – hardware is only certified against SLE products which is great, but openSUSE doesn't get a look in.  There are some vendors that sell their kit with openSUSE pre-installed but there isn't the same sort of love coming from the mothership for them which really could do with changing.

Looks like I digressed somewhat – sorry.  So getting back on track(ish) how many of you guys and gals use SLE professionally?  It could be either SLES or SLED.  If you do use a SLE product do you partake in the openSUSE community professionally or is it purely part of your undying love for the Geeko? If you don't is there a particular reason why not, anything blocking you joining in, or do you just choose not to?  If you do participate as part of your job, what issues do you encounter, what could be improved etc?

As always I would love to hear from you if you have anything to discuss on the topic of Enterprise in the Community. Remember this is for your benefit as part of the openSUSE community. So please join in and get discussing.