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I have been a long and faithful SuSE and openSUSE user since SuSE Linux Professional 9.0, and I followed its development closely, and quite often critically, since the distribution has become a completely Open Source project, with some contribution, essentially to the Italian translation and filling bug reports.  However things changed: with openSUSE 11.1 the number of problems on my machines increased significantly (system freezes, X performance and stability problems, …). As a consequence, I have recently decided to switch to another distribution, ubuntu, which is currently offering what I need, without the troubles I had on openSUSE 11.1, which is surely very far from the SuSE (yes, with the small u ) I knew at the beginning, and that made me think “This is the distribution I want to use” and kept me thinking that way until now.

SuSE used to be a distribution you installed and forgot: you knew that for two years your system was set, and you could enjoy it without many troubles. OpenSUSE 11.1 is a distribution prepared in a hurry, without the care for those details that used to be the unique signature of SuSE, and that made the difference. To be able to use openSUSE 11.1 I should rely on unsupported repositories to obtain more recent packages (kernel included), which might be OK for my home system, but not for a production machine.

There are interesting plans for openSUSE 11.2, and I sincerely hope openSUSE will go back to be the distribution I want to use very soon: there are good developers, and motivated community members that are trying to make it possible., and openSUSE has the nicest mascotte ever, the lovely chameleon Geeko! I hope that the longer release schedule, the recent effort for the creation of a community testing team, and a more equilibrated set of decisions with respect to what should go in the final release and what should be held until the next release, will work and convince me to go back.

In the meanwhile, I’ll give ubuntu a chance to show me how good it is, and at the moment it seems to work without troubles, even if I have to become familiar with its tools, and while configuring it I missed the nice YaST control centre offered by openSUSE.

Funny smiley translation: have fun!

Today openSUSE communty week started, with a rich series of events for new and old openSUSE users interested in knowing more about what’s going on behind the scenes of openSUSE. If you want to know what Geeko, openSUSE chamaleon is working on, join openSUSE developers and volunteers by checking the calendar here! The openSUSE community week will finish on May Sunday 17th.

Microsoft^TM released Office^TM 2007 Service Pack 2, which contains various improvements to the latest version of Office. Among them, one is particularly important: the capability to read OpenDocument Format, the same format used by default by OpenOffice.org, Novell^TM OpenOffice (go-oo),  and KOffice, which has been approved as ISO standard. This addition empowers you to choose which format to use, in order to be backwardly compatible, and at the same time make your document easier to share, independently from the platform the receiver of the document is working on. In addition, the format has been adopted or is under adoption in various countries, and further details can be found here.

Edit (Apr 29^th) – Some example of what is the compatibility level of the filter added with SP2 is shown here. Details on Word, Excel and PowerPoint features are summed up too (click on the application name).

Collecting bibliographic information and keeping them in order might become a complicated task. However things are made simpler thanks to Zotero a Firefox 3.0 extension that allows references to be captured directly from scientific search engines, and to store them in a easily manageble database, together with attachment (for example the paper in PDF format), noted and abstracts. Zotero can export the references in Bibtex format, and integrates with Microsoft Word and OpenOffice Writer, to allow the references to be inserted in a straightforward manner. Moreover, the database and the attachments are indexed, and can be searched. The list of references can be organized in a multi-level library, and the whole library can be stored on a remote server or easily backupped to move it to another system.

Salome^® is a very powerful open source  integrated platform for numerical simulations, including an advanced computational code, called Code Aster^®. My interest in Salome is due to its geometry generation capabilities, because it integrates a versatile CAD and a mesher, with automatic generation of hexahedral and tetrahedral meshes. The geometry generation is very useful also to create .stl files to use with tools like OpenFOAM^® snappyHexMesh automatic mesh generator.

Installing Salome from sources might be challenging, and packaging it for a specific distribution represents a lot of work. However, an alternative and easier way to install Salome on a Linux system is represented by the self-contained package Salome-Meca, which can be downloaded and promptly installed following these simple instructions, written for a local, per-user installation:

• Download the Salome-Meca package from this webpage. Before proceeding with the download, you might want to check if newer versions of the package are available here.
• Extract the content of the package using the command: tar xzf SALOME-MECA-2009.1-GPL.tgz
• Move the directory SALOME-MECA-2009.1-GPL generated during the extraction process in your ~/bin directory.
• Open your ~/.bashrc file using a text editor.
• Add the following lines, replacing <your_user_name> with your actual Linux username:
  • PATH=/home/<your_user_name>/bin/SALOME-MECA-2009.1-GPL:$PATH
  • export PATH

At this point, simply open a terminal, and type runSalomeMeca. Remember that to close Salome, you have to exit its graphical user interphace, and then press Ctrl-D to close the python interpreter which is automatically launched when Salome is executed.

Enjoy!

A new version of Adobe Reader is available from Adobe’s website. To download it select the English version, and Linux – x86 RPM to obtain the RPM package. No 64 bit version is available, as a consequence some additional work is necessary to make the browser plugin work. The procedure is very simple:

• Download the RPM and install it using the command:
  • rpm -Uvh AdbeRdr9.1.0-1_i486linux_enu.rpm
• Type the following command in a root console:
  • ln /opt/Adobe/Reader9/Browser/intellinux/nppdf.so /usr/lib/browser-plugins/nppdf.so

At this point Firefox will use the browser plugin to open PDF files.

Note: If you have a previous version of Adobe Reader installed, remove it before proceeding with the installation. To perform this operation in the case you are using the version provided by openSUSE, type rpm -e acroread in a root terminal.

OpenSUSE has now a new page, dedicated to who needs help inside the community, and also to those looking for information on how to help and participate to the openSUSE project. The page is dedicated to the lovely chameleon, and as a consequence I called it Geeko wants you!

The content and the design of the page are of Rémy Marquis (spyhawk on IRC), who actually reorganized the whole Task page. Thank you! On my side, I simply merged it with the new page, adding some explanation and modifying the structure here and there.

Come, join openSUSE and enjoy!

I have recently proposed the creation of a community-based openSUSE testing team, and prepared a short presentation to illustrate what are, in my opinion, the current situation and some of the problems, looking at how these could be fixed. My proposal came probably a bit late, because during the openSUSE 11.1 development phase, some step in the creation of a testing group was done, and I did not know of it. In particular, I would like to sum up the efforts already done:

• Testing wiki page.
• OpenSUSE testing mailing list: opensuse-testing@opensuse.org. Email here to subscribe.
• IRC channel: #opensuse-testing on Freenode servers.

The idea of creating the testing team has been positively commented during the discussion on the mailing list, and is considered a good move to improve openSUSE quality and possibly involve more people in the community. So, if you want to learn something about testing openSUSE, and help in making it better, feel free to join!

Dropbox is an online file storage and syncronization tool, that offers to its users 2GB of free space or a commercial option with 50GB of space. The service is managed using a small application, available for Windows, Mac and Linux, directly using the operating system file manager. On Linux, dropbox provides a plugin for the Nautilus GNOME file manager, and an applet for the GNOME panel.

To install Dropbox under openSUSE 11.1, you simply need to follow this procedure:

• Install it from the openSUSE buildservice, using 1-click install.
• Open a terminal in your home directory and execute:
  • cp .xinitrc.template .xinitrc
  • Edit your ~/.xinitrc file
  • Locate the “# Add your own lines here…” comment
  • Add: `xhost local:root` under that comment
  • Save the file and exit your editor
• Logout from your GNOME session and login again.

At this point, you should see the Dropbox icon in your system tray. Click on it and start using your Dropbox.

P.S. Thansk to Moro for suggesting Dropbox. And thanks to the openSUSE packagers for providing the RPM on buildservice, and to jimmac for the installation procedure!