The long wait is almost over. 11 long months have passed in the unusually long release cycle since openSUSE 11.1, and tomorrow 11.2 will be released. The repositories are already available so I updated my RC2 installation to the gold master yesterday. Naturally 11.2 comes with all the latest and greatest from upstream, as well as a bunch of new SUSE features, here are some of the highlights.

Base System

• Live CD ISOs are now hybrid ISOs – simply ‘dd’ it to a USB stick to create a live USB.
• Online dist upgrade (‘zypper dup’) has been available since 11.0 but is now officially supported.
• Ext4 is now the default file system.
• A -desktop kernel flavour is provided configured specifically for desktop use.
• Zypp now uses Aria2c for download management and is supposed to cache mirror URLs so it should work even when the download.opensuse.org redirector is down.
• There’s no xorg.conf anymore. X is configured by HAL/autodetection instead of SaX2. I guess this should be considered an improvement, but it’s also likely to cause problems for some.

KDE

• For once reason has prevailed over politricks and KDE is again the default desktop on the DVD after some years of openSUSE having no default desktop.
• Firefox is now the default browser in KDE, but don’t despair, SUSE employee Lubos Lunak has performed miracles to make it use the KDE file dialog, be aware of KDE applications/file associations and integrate well in other ways.
• OpenOffice.og comes with KDE 4 integration (icons, file dialog, general look and feel)
• Much of the artwork has been done by Pinheiro to create a special openSUSE look and feel, while preserving the look and feel of upstream vanilla KDE
• YaST control center has finally been ported to Qt4
• All default apps are now native KDE 4 – including Kaffeine, Konversation, K3b and KNetworkManager – of which SUSE employee Will Stephenson has been the primary developer.
• Kopete comes with support for Facebook chat, written by SUSE employee Duncan Mac-Vicar.
• PulseAudio doesn’t run by default and Phonon Xine backend is installed by default.
• KDE 3 is finally no longer supported (but is still available on the OBS).

The Project

Of course many things have happened on the project level in the past 11 months too. Some of the highlights are:

• Factory is now open for everyone
• Presumably openSUSE should follow a fixed 8 month release schedule from now on (November -> July -> March -> November and so forth)
• The openSUSE Boosters team has been created.
• openSUSE releases now only receive security updates for 18 months (used to be 24)
• Susestudio.com has come into existence providing a webinterface for creating your own custom images – and even testing the image before downloading it – using some kvm and vnc magic.

The Issues

All distro releases have bugs – including openSUSE, many of which will of course be fixed via online updates in the coming weeks and months. However so far I’m not aware of any major bugs that will cause a lot of grief to legions of people.

I predict that the thing that will cause the most people to say “wtf!?!” in 11.2 is actually intended behaviour. YaST/zypper will not show nor perform updates that involve “vendor changes” (i.e. updating an official package to a newer version of the same software from packman) unless the user explicitly does some extra work.

You roughly have these coping strategies:

• Don’t worry about it and stick with the old versions included in the distro no matter how many 3rd party repositories you add.
• Manually go to the Repositories tab or the Versions tab in YaST Software Management, and manually select the updates you want – or manually specify the versions you want on the command line with zypper (note, you only have to do the extra work to change vendor once per package).
• Set AllowVendorChange = true in /etc/zypp/zypp.conf – this way YaST/zypper will update everything to whatever has the highest version number – and let you ping-pong back and forth between package vendors, if that’s what you want.

In the future the tools are expected to be improved, so that the vendor stickyness becomes less annoying and obtrusive.

Almost two years ago now, I bought some clothes in shop.opensuse.org for my nephew to be.

Since then my lil’ nephew has actually been born and grown big enough to fit the stuff.

I guess most cultured people above the age of 25 or so have played some version of Sensible (World of) Soccer on the Amiga at some point – younger people may have tried the not-so-great retro edition released for the Microsoft Xbox a couple of years ago.

Senible Soccer was one of the premier time consumers for me in my early teens – only rivaled by Civilization, Championship Manager, the turn based AD&D games and school. I still play SWOS now and then to this day using UAE and my Competition Pro usb joystick. The experience comes pretty close to the real deal. I still have an Amiga 600, but, well.. it’s not GNU/Linux with KDE, so I end up using UAE more.

I also competed at the annual Danish Open held by Amiga Club Denmark in 2004, 2005 and 2006, with some success. So as you can see Sensible Soccer is very much still alive.

Enter Open World Soccer. It’s a project that not only aims to create a free clone of Sensible World of Soccer but also to develop it further.

There’s a simple howto for compiling svn snapshots on openSUSE 11.1 here, and the project releases binaries for a distribution called Ubuntu also.

EDIT: Turns out Toni has been building packages on Packman since February. Unless you really want latest svn, simply ‘zypper in ows’.

It still seems to need quite a bit of work to be much fun but they’re off to a great start, so if you’re a C++ developer looking for a project to work on…

PS: And please, don’t bring up Kick Off or Goal, they completely lacked the sophistication of SWOS >:-)

If you use KDE4 with openSUSE Build Service repositories you should read this very carefully, because I will write this only once. A lot of major changes are happening right now.

Repository changes

A new set of repos have been created with KDE 4.2 packages, because of the factory repository moving to KDE 4.3 beta1 within 2-3 weeks. If you’re currently running KDE 4.2 from the factory repository and you want to stay with KDE 4.2 you should move to this set of repositories ASAP.

A new Playground set of repositories has been created for alphas, betas and CVS snapshots of KDE4 applications.

The Extra-apps set of repositories have been terminated. The packages can now be found either in the KDE4:/Community/ or KDE4:/Playground repos. Depending on the release status of the package.

For a complete overview of the different KDE versions and URLs for the repositories see this wiki page: http://en.opensuse.org/KDE/Repositories

Package naming changes

Until recently KDE4 packages where KDE3 packages also existed were layed out like this “kde4-[package name]“. That naming convention has been reversed. KDE4 packages will no longer have a prefix, and instead KDE3 packages will be prefixed, like this “kde3-[package name].

If you want to keep using some KDE3 applications after updating – e.g. Konversation or K3b – add the KDE3 repository for your openSUSE version and install kde3-k3b or kde3-konversation:
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/KDE3/

Installable openSUSE 11.1 Reloaded Live CD with KDE 4.2

Stephan “Beineri” Binner has created a respin of the openSUSE 11.1 live CD with KDE 4.2, called openSUSE 11.1 Reloaded. If you’re doing a fresh installation of openSUSE 11.1 and you want to use KDE 4.2 you should consider using this live CD to save yourself a bunch of trouble.

Get the ISOs here:
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Medias/images/iso/

If you encounter problems, consider reporting them on the opensuse-kde@opensuse.org mailing list or try catching Beineri in the #opensuse-kde IRC channel on Freenode.

You may or may not have noticed bug 439015. Which is hicolor icons being used in the Kickoff application menu, and not Oxygen icons as you’d of course expect and prefer.

So I went through the trouble of finding suitable Oxygen replacements for the ~130 icons in the openSUSE menu system making the desktop experience just a little more polished. I’ve submitted them to bugzilla and I expect them to be in openSUSE 11.2. I also rebuilt the desktop-data-openSUSE package with Oxygen icons in my home repository on the Build Service, enabling you to easily fix the problem on 11.1 too, with 1-click install

Here’s how it looks…

Hicolor (before)	Oxygen (after)

Over on news.opensuse.org Zonker is pushing the Build Service KDE 4.2.0 packages in a major way. While I share the enthusiasm for KDE 4.2, I think that it’s a bit dangerous to push an unsupported upgrade to untested, under development packages of an entire desktop environment on the general public. At least I think that not all openSUSE users are geeks and experts, hopefully some of them are regular people who like their GNU/Linux operating system to be reliable and functional, and don’t just use it for play. So here’s what I think you should know about upgrading openSUSE to KDE 4.2.

1) Before installing 4.2

Before you decide to install the KDE 4.2 packages you should know that:

• The 4.2 packages for openSUSE 10.3, 11.0 and 11.1 on the /KDE4:/Factory:/Desktop/ repository are actually packages under active development for openSUSE 11.2 (Indicated by the word “Factory” in the URL). There can be (minor or major) breakage at any time if you update – or install at the wrong time.
• Installation is not 100% simple and convenient
• If you decide that you want to install despite the above, first make sure you remove any build service KDE repositories, that you may have added before at some time.

2) Installing 4.2

2.1 Adding the repository

Start YaST -> Software -> Software Repositories -> Add -> Specify URL… -> Paste this URL: http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/KDE4:/Factory:/Desktop/openSUSE_11.1/ (replace “11.1″ with “11.0″ or “10.3″ depending on your distro version.)

EDIT: The above factory repo moves to KDE 4.3 beta in early May. For KDE 4.2 use this repository instead:
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/42/openSUSE_11.1/

2.2a Upgrading (you already have KDE 4.1/4.0)

Start YaST Software management -> Filter by Repositories -> Select the KDE4:/Factory/Desktop/ repository -> Right click a random package -> Select “All in this list” -> Update unconditionally

When you press “Accept” you’ll be met with a conflict dialog. A lot of people panic at the sight of it, but it’s perfectly simple, you just have to uninstall a few packages to resolve the conflicts. As you can see in the picture YaST offers you 3 different solutions – it should be obvious that our preferred solution will be to uninstall compiz-kde4.

Press “Ok, try again” until you’re done.

2.2b Installing KDE 4.2 (you don’t have any version of KDE4 previously installed)

If you wish to install KDE 4.2, and have previously been using a different desktop like KDE3, Xfce, IceWM or GNOME, you can do this easily – alongside your existing desktop, your display manager (kdm, gdm, xdm) will let you choose which session to start.

Start YaST Software Management -> Filter by patterns -> Check “KDE4 Base System” and “KDE4 Desktop Environment”

3) After installation of KDE 4.2

After the packages have finished installing, log out and log back in. If you come from a different desktop you can select to log into KDE 4.2 under “Session Type” at your display manager.

If your KDE4 desktop looks strange after the upgrade you can reset it with this command:

And the last thing. Now that you’re using the KDE4:/Factory/Desktop/ repository, you have to follow planetsuse or join the opensuse-kde mailinglist. This way you’ll be notified about future repository changes – in about 3-4 months Factory is expected to move to KDE 4.3 beta – and this will cause you serious problems if you don’t pay attention.

Ever heard a beautiful woman, who also happens to be very intelligent, complain about not being taken seriously? KDE 4 seems to experience something similar. It appears that quite a lot of people simply can’t get past the sexy looks and appreciate the substance underneath (e.g. lots of powerful and highly configurable applications for users, excellent cross platform libraries and frameworks for developers, huge potential, great community.)

Since a lot of the KDE4 critics and the anti-eyecandy crowd in general care so much about how things look (do I have to point out the irony?), I thought I’d demonstrate how to make KDE 4.2 look like it’s ready to party like it’s 1999.

My KDE 4.2 before…	My KDE 4.2 after…

You can achieve the same in a couple of minutes, by following these simple steps:

• Use Aya plasma theme (right click desktop -> appearance settings -> desktop theme
• Folderview as your desktop activity (remove existing desktop widgets -> right click desktop -> appearance settings -> desktop acitivity type -> Folderview – this gives you traditional icons on the desktop)
• Classic menu (right click menu icon -> switch to classic menu style)
• Disable desktop effects (systemsetings -> desktop -> desktop effects)
• Switch Qt widget style (systemsettings -> appearance -> style -> Windows – you might also want to consider Motif or Cleanlooks)
• Switch windeco (systemsettings -> appearance Windows -> Redmond – kde2 or plastik might also be candidates)
• Replace “Places” pane in Dolphin with Folder tree (press F9 -> press F7)
• Switch to detailed view in Dolphin (Ctrl+2)
• Disable taskbar tooltips and force tasks into two rows (right click taskbar -> uncheck “Show tooltips” -> check “Force row setting
• Use a colour as background instead of an image (right click on desktop -> appearance settings -> Background image type -> Colour)

You can easily take it much further if you want, this is just a quick proof of concept. Maybe it’ll help some people to think more about the technology and less about the looks.

UPDATE: You might also find this tip useful: http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2009/01/todays-tip-kdeskipargbvisuals.html