Novell has huge wealth of information all over their websites. Although a link for developers’ website is right on the Novell website front page, it is quite easy to miss it.

“The Novell University for Developers is a collaborative initiative by developers, designed for developers to share their knowledge on how easy it is to create software on Novell products and technologies. Download the Get Started Kit for developing on Linux and check out the latest tutorials below.”

It has some interested tutorials for developers, make the most of it.

Here is a step-by-step ‘how to create your own isoboot, vmxboot, xenboot or usbboot images’ on openSUSE 10.3 Beta1.

1. What you require installed on your system:

kiwi-pxeboot
kiwi-desc-vmxboot
kiwi-desc-xennetboot
kiwi-desc-netboot
kiwi >= 1.49
kiwi-desc-livesystem
kiwi-desc-isoboot
kiwi-desc-usbboot
kiwi-desc-xenboot

2. Download Beta1 i386 DVD iso, you can choose to use internet repository if you got good bandwidth (skip step 3 if using internet repo)

3. Download the following RPM and put it in any folder e.g., /home/cyberorg/kiwiextra

squashfs
squashfs-kmp-default
aufs
aufs-kmp-default

suse-live-installer

4. Download these config files extract, rename to config.xml and copy them to their respective location:

/usr/share/kiwi/image/isoboot/suse-10.3/config.xml

/usr/share/kiwi/image/kwliveDVD-suse-10.3/config.xml

5. Edit the above two files and change your installation source repository path.

6. Run the following commands once you have installation source corrected :

kiwi –root /tmp/kwlive –prepare /usr/share/kiwi/image/kwliveDVD-suse-10.3 –logfile terminal

(Double dashes in –root, –prepare and –logfile)

If that completes successfully

kiwi -c /tmp/kwlive -d /tmp/ –logfile terminal

The above command will create a live DVD here: /tmp/liveDVD-suse-10.3.i686-1.1.2.iso

7. To test your DVD:

qemu -m 256 -cdrom /tmp/liveDVD-suse-10.3.i686-1.1.2.iso -boot d

Optionally you can run kiwi -c -t <imagetype> to create other image types.

Username, password and root password is ‘linux‘.

Result:

Compiz-Fusion 0.5.2 is released, so are the new packages for openSUSE 10.2 and 10.3(Factory).

You can get them in the usual place X11:XGL repository.

Or visit http://software.opensuse.org/search and search for ‘compiz’. If you are among the lucky ones who has ‘1-click’ working, install compiz-fusion-<whateveryoulike>

In case you have something to share or have problem, here is openSUSE community support thread on Compiz-Fusion Forum.

Edit: Traditional method of installation using zypper:

zypper sa http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/X11:/XGL/SUSE_Factory xgl

zypper refresh

zypper in compiz compiz-gnome compiz-kde compiz-fusion-plugins-main compiz-fusion-plugins-extra compiz-fusion-plugins-unsupported compizconfig-settings-manager

Have fun!

When guys like Richard Stallman are fighting to maintain the freedom of software developers and users, compiz-fusion project goes and picks a paid, closed source and proprietary software for it’s community forum

I had made my views quite clear when the discussions were going on and I am still not convinced that this is the thing to do. It seems there is no free alternative the guys who do all the hard work of maintaining the forums could use, so here it is. But then again, I also think that we could have found someone from such a large community who would be more than willing to take on the challenge of keeping the free forum running smoothly.

A bit dramatic, but I’ll quote this I just read on Jeremy Allison’s blog post Tablets from the Mountain.

“Freedom isn’t free
No, there’s a hefty in’ fee.
And if you don’t throw in your buck ‘o five
Who will?”

Adrian Schröter made an announcement on the openSUSE Build-Service(OBS) ML that OBS now supports storage of .ymp files which makes ‘one-click’ installation of patterns (group of pacakges) possible.

This announcement ties in with one of the long list enhancements going on over at www.opensuse.org, which incidentally got a new home page with a mischievous message developer left in it’s source
New portal was also launched last week news.opensuse.org that should keep you all up to speed with whatever is going on in and around SUSE world, this makes a very good ‘official’ addition to Planet SUSE maintained by James Ogley where blogs of all the people involved with SUSE are syndicated.

Very soon we are to have a software portal where you can go and install anything you want directly by clicking in the browser. Work is already underway and you can install KDE4, Pidgin, Multimedia support etc using Benji’s one-click installer(does not work with the latest metapackage handler) from HERE.

Get and install the latest YaST2 meta package handler for your version of openSUSE, open konqueror and click on any of the .ymp from here:

KDE4

Compiz and Compiz-Fusion (see also this link)

Currently one-click works out of box with konqueror only, to use it with firefox you can do the following:

Create a file called /sbin/FirefoxMPHandler containing:

#!/bin/bash
/sbin/YaST2 OneClickInstallUI $@

change it’s permission: chmod +x /sbin/FirefoxMPHandler

Click on .ymp and select ‘Open With’ -> /sbin/FirefoxMPHandler -> ‘Do this for file like this from now on’

Note: Firefox instructions are temporary only, it should be fixed by 10.3 release so you would not have to do that at all ;).

For systemwide association you can put this in /etc/mailcap:

YMP;/sbin/FirefoxMPHandler

If you are a packager on OBS, create and upload some patterns we can click and install.

Have fun with it!

Edit: Preview of the software portal with one click install is already here: http://software.opensuse.org

Please note that the metapackage handler has changed and the above instructions of manually launching it may not work anymore.