Eclipse 3.4 on openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 3 launch problem.

Let me start by saying that Eclipse 3.5 launches without a problem under the recently released openSUSE 11.2 M3. Then, why using an older version? The only current answer is that there is no Google Web Toolkit plug-in for Eclipse 3.5, so I am kind of forced  to use the 3.4 release.

I downloaded the Eclipse 3.4 from eclipse.org. Then, as I tried to launch it, I got to define the location for workspace and then a small and empty window. I thought it could be some missing gtk library or any problem with xulrunner. Checked both and made sure to be using the right versions. And then, after a few lines of chat at the Suse Freenode channel, I found out how to solve the problem. Adding the following line at the very end of the eclipse.ini file does it:

-Dorg.eclipse.swt.browser.XULRunnerPath=/usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9.1/xulrunner

Thanks people at Suse’s Freenode Channel.

openSUSE Day (Chile). Awesome.

And the day came. After a six hours trip on bus, and a few minutes of sleep I got to Santiago de Chile. Francisco Toha picked me up so we headed to Universidad Andres Bello for the openSUSE Day. Huge building and plenty of room for everyone. The event started almost on time. I followed the first talk, a bit hoping to have a decent internet connection so I could show a live SUSE Studio test drive. OK, that didn’t happen. The internet traffic ratio was too slow like waiting 59 minutes to build an JeOS appliance was nuts so that was definitely the low aspect of the talk.
Again, huge thanks to Zonker for all the support. openSUSE 11.1 DVDs and stickers were cool and all loved it. Also big thanks everyone from  Geeko’s, specially Enrique Herrera, Jose Muñoz, and Francisco Toha. Statistic and evaluation have not been finished yet. Anyway, some pictures here:

openSUSE Day (Chile) on June 18th, 2009.

We are hoping to have students, young people, professors, teachers, and professionals from many fields as well. Actually everyone is welcome to attend the event. We’ll have presentations, stands, gaming, and of course the fun install fest (openSUSE 11.1). And yes, you can have an original openSUSE 11.1 Live DVD if you are one of the first 400 people to get there (Thanks Zonker!).

Where? Meet us at Universidad Andres Bello (UNAB), Campus República, República 239/Subterráneo R3. Check the map here.

Time? 10 AM though 8 PM.

Talks:

• Rafael de la Horra, from UNAB: Education for Professionals and the Free Software Environment.
• Enrique Herrera, from Linux Latin America: GNU/Linux, 10 years of progress.
• Myself, openSUSE Ambassador: SUSE Studio.
• Patricia Albornoz, SUN Campus Ambassador: Netbeans and openSUSE.
• Francisco del Castillo, from the Air Force: Linux and the Air Force.
• Rodrigo Romo, from IBM/Tallard: Reducing Costs with IBM and Linux.

See you there. Join openSUSE and have a lot of fun!

Gnome-Shell on openSUSE 11.1

It’s been a while since I installed gnome-shell for the first time and tried it. Let’s say that after a few system re-installations, just because I only have one machine and stepped into the Milestones lands , now I am back to good for production 11.1 and Gnome 2.24, without those annoying system beeps at shutdown (PulseAudio?). Gnome 2.26 ad tools seemed fine, but I would just rather wait a few months or next release to check if that does not happen anymore.

openSUSE 11.2 M2 (Gnome)

Well, today I downloaded the Gnome Live CD first, and had no luck at all. That was no fun watching the busy cursor over and over again after selecting the Live Cd option from the Menu so I decided to get the DVD just to see if things went different (actually not the only reason for), and sure they were. First, I installed the KDE Desktop, not a deal through the install process. Then came the first log in and all well. Of course I chose the Ext4 file system and I can tell it feels faster than our good old Ext3 .

Then it was time for Gnome. As usual, default install took longer than KDE’s. One thing I removed from the software was Desktop Effects, since I started to believe that that could cause the problem with the Live CD Media. So on through the install process, it went down really well. Then at first log in I got alerted over GDM and Metacity. I got this:

By default, the Slab Menu Icon looks like this when Main Panel’s Size is 24 pixels:

Looks like your computer is not your computer, right? Well, I just resized Main Panel so it looks like the following picture:

I must admit that I like the default theme. Absolutely new, darkish, professional. First time I feel comfortable “out of the box”. One feature that is not workig 100% is the System Monitor. At this time I cannot switch between tabs. The rest of the system is pretty running smoothly to me. Here you have a screenshot of my desktop:

Qt4.5 repo for openSUSE 11.1

Glad to have it: http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Qt45/openSUSE_11.1/
Right now it feels that my notebook runs faster with it. I have read there are some issues with plasmoids, but I only use a few of them so I am not aware of those issues, which are always welcome to be reported at the bugzilla system.

zypper update works now

Yes, after a couple days of downtime in openSUSE’s servers, its update system is up. Great!

Changing the openSUSE SLAB’s appearance

The default SLAB looks like this:

Since I don’t need to have the Documents ad Places tabs, I will change their values by calling gconf-editor. So, in therminal:

:~> gconf-editor

My time with openSUSE

I have been less than a year using the openSUSE distro and I can say it is more than I expected. Coming from a deb-based system,  I got used to the rpm, and I feel fine with it, besides packages I use the most are rock solid, pretty much like the whole distro.

Well, when I started looking at the openSUSE distro, and what I could do for it, I just didn’t know where to start. The official website is a cool start point. There you can find all kind of guidelines. Then my best two bets were Translation and Marketing. I’ve been actively contributing with translations and I must say it’s been a great experience, everyone out there has been cool and helpful.

Also I must mention Joe Brockmeier, openSUSE’s Community Manager, and Martin Lasarsch of Core Services. They have been very responsive always.

I am more than ready to keep on colaborating with openSUSE. I am sure it is the best distro for me.

Gtranslator in openSUSE 11.1

You can install kbabel under Gnome still, but I just wanted to use gtranslator for the first time.
First thing to do is logging as root. Then install the following packages:

• gconf2-devel
• gtkspell-devel
• gtksourceview18-devel
• gtk2-devel
• glib2-devel
• libsoup-devel
• gucharmap-devel
• libglade2-devel
• gdl-devel
• db43-devel
• make
• gcc
• gnome-common
• autoconf
• automake
• libtool
• intltool
• gtk-doc
• gnome-doc-utils-devel
• libgtksourceviewmm-2_0-devel
• libdb-4_5-devel

I take for granted you already have installed the subversion package. If you don’t have it, now is a good time to get it. (zypper in subversion).

Now you can create a new folder where you can download gtranslator’s source. I decided to create the new folder in /home/ricardo/gtranslator. Then run a terminal session, go to the just created folder and type:

svn co http://svn.gnome.org/svn/gtranslator/trunk gtranslator

Now we are ready to compile and install gtranslator, so we need to type:

• cd gtranslator
• ./autogen.sh
• make
• make install

And gtranslator should be in the directory /usr/local/bin. Off to contribute! =)