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News: openSUSE Membership; Community Manager Joe Brockmeier

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Apart from the openSUSE 11.0 Alpha 2 release coming this Thursday, there are a couple of exciting things happening in the openSUSE world:

openSUSE Membership

For a long time the openSUSE project had no fully defined way of distinguishing active and continuously helpful people in the openSUSE project. If you’re in the project then it becomes quite palpable quickly who is doing a lot of great stuff and whatnot, but many people in the project echoed a need for better processes of handling, for example, @opensuse.org email addresses and IRC cloaks.

The result of this can be seen by what we think of as openSUSE Members (see the page for all the details). So, if you are doing great stuff for openSUSE, please do apply and let us know!

At the moment only the board members are listed, but during our next meeting I hope to publish a much longer list of openSUSE members. If you are an openSUSE member, please try to provide a wiki page or at least a page where you can specify your contributions so anyone else can easily find out about you.

openSUSE Community Manager: Joe Brockmeier

It’s great to see that after many months of interviews and work for a Chief openSUSE Linux Evangelist, openSUSE has a new community manager: Joe Brockmeier. One thing that has sorely been needed in the openSUSE project is extra marketing and community management. It’s wonderful to see both of these very key and essential issues being tackled and I’m confident now that Joe will do remarkable things for openSUSE.

If you want to find out a little more, take a look at a few of his recent interviews or articles about the new job-position:

• CIO.com: Interview: OpenSUSE’s New Tech Evangelist
• DownloadSquad: Interview: openSUSE’s new Community Manager, Joe Brockmeier
• ComputerWorldUK: OpenSUSE’s new tech evangelist spells it out
• Bruce Byfield: Zonker Brockmeier, openSUSE Community Manager

KGet - KDE’s Download Manager

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KGet, KDE’s download manager, was ok in KDE 3 but lacking in many areas.

KGet in KDE3

Below you can see a screenshot of KGet in KDE3 (taken from Wikipedia):

..and it had some nice things about it:

• Easy to track multiple downloads and their speeds in one window
• Integrates well with KDE

But it had a lot of not-so-nice things about it: far too many cluttered and unclear toolbar entries, old-fashioned look, and not that powerful in terms of download capabilities. Anyway, enter KDE4’s KGet:

KGet in KDE4

And a lot of nice things to notice here. Of course the Oxygen icons and style make it look wonderful, but there’s been a lot of shuffling around in the UI here: only four clear text-aligned icons now, for the very common download actions. Downloads can now be sorted into groups, and you can choose to have the view of any particular download expanded:

Save to Location by Extension

This feature was already available in KDE3’s KGet, but it is very handy, not well-known, and can save a lot of time. Here you can also see the changes that the configuration settings of KGet received as well:

Metalinks

Torrent support isn’t available in the 4.0 branch, but work for it is being worked on and available in trunk. Another very exciting fact about the new KGet is the Metalink support. Metalinks are one of the best ways for releasing downloads such as ISOs, which are large and can receive a lot of hype around a release time.

They are small XML files that, when plugged into the client, can use multiple mirrors for download (hence spreading the load), can connect with torrents as well, and also have checksum support so they’re one of the best ways to download large files reliably. In the early stage of a distribution release while the torrents are taking time to pick up, with Metalinks you’ll be downloading from multiple mirrors so you will always get pretty much the maximum speed.

With KGet now all you need to do is drag the Metalink file and the download will start straight away! Above you can see one of these metalink downloads.

Wrapping Up

KGet has probably become the world’s best downloader thanks to the great new work from the developers. If you use KDE, you should seriously consider making it your default download manager (just start it up).

If you’re on openSUSE 10.3, you can install the latest version of it with this 1-click-install:

KDE4 Desktop Effects (KWin Composite) Video Tour

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I’ve now updated to the latest openSUSE KDE4 Packages and got another video (first one being: KDE 4.0 RC1+ Video Tour) to add, and it’s one all about the new KDE 4.0 KWin composite; that is, the new desktop effects that will be available with KDE 4.0.

The desktop effects are coming along nicely, with many plugins available. You will no longer need to run Compiz to get many standard and convenient composite features: they will be available right inside KDE. In many cases the plugins improve window management (like “present windows” or Compiz’s “scale” plugin), provide a little eye-candy to the desktop (like translucent windows), or are just useful in various situations, like mouse mark (handy when doing a presentation).

Thanks goes to liquidat for informing me about recordmydesktop’s --full-shots option, which is required when taking videos of window managers using composite effects.

KDE 4.0 RC1+ Video Tour

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I got the chance to play a little more with KDE4 since the first release candidate was announced, so I made a brief video tour of a few things that particularly interest me. You can easily get going with the openSUSE KDE Packages, KDE 4 Live CD, or the new KDE4Daily QEMU image.

KWIN Composite (the new KDE desktop effects) was the only thing that I didn’t get to demonstrate as xvidcamp/recordmydesktop completely fail if it is enabled. Nevertheless, that is certainly something to try out for yourself.

Things covered in this little tour:

Killer Applications

• Kickoff, new KDE Menu
• Dolphin, new File Manager
• Konqueror
• JuK, audio Player
• KDE System Settings — KControl Replacement
• Kopete
• KMplot, Kalzium, Kate

Oxygen, the beautiful style and icon theme
Plasma, with convenient/attractive widgets for your desktop

Why Live USB Distribution Images Are the Way Forward

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Lately I’ve been playing a little more with KIWI — our amazing Image Creator — this time experimenting more with USB images. I made a nice 10.3 customised image (with codecs etc.), and a KDE Four Live USB image (believe or not, you only need to alter one line in the kiwi config.xml). Maybe the KDE Four Live one can be available in time for RC1.

Anyhow, while you can easily create an openSUSE Live USB image, we don’t officially release one. Still, the more I think about it, the more I begin to think that Live USB images for Linux distributions, in contrast to Live CDs, are a really great idea. Here’s why:

USB Sticks are Writable

The biggest problem with a live CD is that it’s always just a stock image. Of course CD/DVD-RW discs are available, but these are not widely used, and are not as compact and convenient as a USB stick, as I’ll mention below.

If you have a Live USB image there’s absolutely nothing stopping you from turning it into your customised operating system. Want to store your music and documents in your /home? Not a problem. When you plug it into another computer after it starts up you’ll have everything you saved, right there available to you. Similarly you can change your background, change your menu items and shortcuts around, etc.

USB Sticks are Compact and Convenient

You’re not likely to go around with a CD/DVD in your jeans, whereas a USB stick is so small and compact that it can fit right onto your keyring. Want to show your friends what Linux is like? Reach into your pocket, pull it out, and show them right away

USB Sticks Are Cheap

The price of USB sticks have gone dirt cheap. Larger 8GB USB sticks are a little more on the expensive side (say ~£40), but all smaller images are reasonably priced. 1GB sticks here are less than £10 for example. Most distributions can easily squeeze themselves down to a CD size, leaving you a few extra hundred megabytes of space.

Still, it is only a matter of time until 8GB or even 16GB USB sticks shoot down in cost.

Finally, USB sticks don’t take up your CD-rom drive :). Computers always have more USB ports, while most people just have one CD/DVD drive, typically.

Cons

It’s hard to imagine a USB stick ever becoming as cheap as a single CD, so this makes it not as practical for wide-scale distribution, and this is probably the biggest problematic point.

So go, follow the easy instructions and get going :).

Enabling Compiz Fusion On An OpenSUSE GNOME 10.3 Desktop (ATI Mobility Radeon 9200)

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Enabling Compiz Fusion On An OpenSUSE GNOME 10.3 Desktop (ATI Mobility Radeon 9200)

This tutorial shows how you can enable Compiz Fusion
on an OpenSUSE 10.3 GNOME desktop (the system must have a 3D-capable
graphics card - I’m using an ATI Mobility Radeon 9200 here). With
Compiz Fusion you can use beautiful 3D effects like wobbly windows or a
desktop cube on your desktop.

Read more…

Quick Look at KDE4 in openSUSE: Plasma, Kickoff, JuK, KmPlot, KGet

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With a little bit of extra time, I thought I would try out KDE4 to see how it’s progressing; if you’re on openSUSE, all you need to do is install the latest KDE4 packages which are always available. Alternatively, you could always try the openSUSE-based (which can be easily created with KIWI) live CD: KDE Four Live. My overall opinion: it’s looking really really great.

Since a review and screenshot tour of the overall desktop has been well-covered elsewhere, I thought I would just take a look at a few things, some of which particularly interest me.

The Desktop: Plasma

Plasma is actually progressing pretty well. You shouldn’t expect it to be bug-free, but I can really see everything coming together. Plasmoids are definitely going to take off, and I’m sure you’ll be able to eventually find one for just about anything you want. Obligatory desktop shot:

Kickoff

Kickoff is being developed in upstream KDE now, and Robert Knight is leading development of Kickoff in KDE4. There are some nice new touch-ups compared to the openSUSE version so far, including the raise animation on-hover, and a small graphic to represent disk usage:

JuK

JuK is progressing well and it’s incredibly speedy. Loading my 6000+ track playlist takes quite literally 2 seconds. It’s light, fast, very tidy, and has all the features you would need and expect: album cover art, tag guessing from Internet, etc.

KmPlot

Many others have blogged about KMPlot as well, but it’s really nice to see it becoming so mature, featureful, and quite genuinely an all-purpose function plotter. The layout has nicely improved, you can trivially plot first and second derivatives, show the integral, and a lot of other cool stuff around the place everywhere:

KGet: now with Metalink support!

I’m really beginning to feel that KGet is becoming the world’s best downloader. In KDE4 it has a plethora of modifications, while of course still remaining simple for the very general use-case of downloading a single file or document. One of the new features I’m most excited about is the Metalink support that it will come with. Metalink is an Open Standard that bundles the various ways (FTP/HTTP/P2P) to get files into one format for easier downloads.

In openSUSE we recommend metalinks a lot to users during release time, since it spreads the load on the mirrors and pretty much guarantees that they’ll be downloading at the maximum of their broadband’s capacity. Metalink support in KDE4’s KGet is working already, take a look below:

Conclusion

KDE4 is set to be truly awesome. What really makes things that extra bit wonderful is not only great new desktop innovations like solid, plasma and phonon — but even more so: the improvements in just about every single application (as you can see, with some examples, above). In this new release all of KDE is getting a full and much improved makeover.

The Perfect Server - OpenSUSE 10.3 (32-bit)

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The Perfect Server - OpenSUSE 10.3 (32-bit)

This is a detailed description about how to set up an OpenSUSE 10.3
server that offers all services needed by ISPs and hosters: Apache web
server (SSL-capable), Postfix mail server with SMTP-AUTH and TLS, BIND
DNS server, Proftpd FTP server, MySQL server, Dovecot POP3/IMAP, Quota,
Firewall, etc. This tutorial is written for the 32-bit version of
OpenSUSE 10.3, but should apply to the 64-bit version with very little
modifications as well.

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Installing Lighttpd With PHP5 And MySQL Support On OpenSUSE 10.3

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Installing Lighttpd With PHP5 And MySQL Support On OpenSUSE 10.3

Lighttpd is a secure, fast, standards-compliant web server designed
for speed-critical environments. This tutorial shows how you can
install Lighttpd on an OpenSUSE 10.3 server with PHP5 support (through
FastCGI) and MySQL support.

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Preventing Brute Force Attacks With Fail2ban On OpenSUSE 10.3

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Preventing Brute Force Attacks With Fail2ban On OpenSUSE 10.3

In this article I will show how to install and configure fail2ban
on an OpenSUSE 10.3 system. Fail2ban is a tool that observes login
attempts to various services, e.g. SSH, FTP, SMTP, Apache, etc., and if
it finds failed login attempts again and again from the same IP address
or host, fail2ban stops further login attempts from that IP
address/host by blocking it with an iptables firewall rule.

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