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! =)

And I got the openSUSE contributor box =)

I would like to thank openSUSE for sending me the contributor box which includes: A t-shirt (openSUSE logo on front, iContribute string on the back), an install DVD/CD, a couple stickers, a start up guide book, a lightflash, and a Linux Magazine subscription offer. That is what I got for being a member of the translation team. So if you want to start contributing, visit www.opensuse.org and check out how you can participate.

openSUSE 11.1 contributor box.

Qt 4.5 to be LGPL

Good news for KDE users, Qt developers, and the open source community in general. As stated by Nokia, Qt cross-platform User Interface (UI) and application framework for desktop and embedded platforms will be available under the Lesser General Public License (LGPL) version 2.1 license from the release of Qt 4.5, scheduled for March 2009. Read more about it here.

How to get Glui to work with Openglut?

I am trying to port a Glui+Glut project into Glui+Openglut, and it’s been a hard time.  So far I’m having a lot of warnings about duplicated fuction definitions such as:

• 284:1 C:\Dev-Cpp\include\GL\glut.h [Warning] “GLUT_RGB” redefined.
• 288:1 C:\Dev-Cpp\include\GL\glut.h [Warning] “GLUT_DOUBLE” redefined.
• 289:1 C:\Dev-Cpp\include\GL\glut.h [Warning] “GLUT_ACCUM” redefined .
• 414:1 C:\Dev-Cpp\include\GL\glut.h [Warning] “GLUT_WINDOW_STENCIL_SIZE” redefined.

In the header I only have the following graphics libraries:

• #include <GL/openglut.h>.
• #include <GL/glui.h>

And  in the linker added:

• -lglui.
• -lopenglut.

So if you know how to make it work, won’t you please drop me aline? Thank you.

2008 is gone..review (kind of)

It’s just too late for reviews and things like that, but I’m sure some of you would like to read (in brief) about my last year.

Best thing of the year is my first daughter, Antonia. She came into this world on the last day of march, which was a surprise. Since I was working for a MS sell out enterprise at that time, and about 200 Kms away, I traveled as soon as I could to see her. Swear to me she is wonderful, and I see her as a Linux user in the near future as she enjoys so much as I play with Compiz =)

Work was fine while it lasted. Learned a lot of SQL tricks thanks to Alex Albanez, and had fun with Karen (.NET is not that bad) and Aldo (Gnexus genius) as well.   Great people and I wish I still worked with them but when you are not having fun and disagree with so many things such as wrong technology choices, and others that I am not allowed to publish (screw it anyway), the best thing to do is to move on.

Talking about Linux, I became a proud translator for the openSUSE project, and lately joined the marketing team too. Also discovered the wonders of the KDE 4 desktop environment. It feels great giving it back, and real part of the community.

Now I’m looking for a job, so I hope it’s open source related. So far vacations are going well, fun with the family, in the right place.

MYSql Workbench works now! (under openSUSE)

After a long time, MYSQL Workbench works right after installation. I tryed to run it under openSUSE 11, selecting the package from YaST, the only thing I could get after clicking the shortcut to it was a screen freeze, having to restart the system. Bad.

What is MYSQL Workbench? It’s just a cross-platform, visual database design tool developed by MySQL.

Now with the openSUSE 11.1, it runs well so far. Here is a screenshot:

mysqlworkbench

Richard Wright (R.I.P.)’s Broken China

Now that I got my Sennheiser HD 202 earphones back, I have been listening to Richard Wright’s Broken China a lot on my Cowon Iaudio 7. It sounds really well and it’s a pleasure to my ears. Nice lyrics, great melody, the whole album is like a story. Songs I enjoy most are Woman of custom, Far from the harbour wall, Reaching for the rail, and Breakthrough. Sinead O’Connor sings for a couple songs (Reaching for the rail, Breakthrough).

By the way, it feels strange listening to music done by someone who is dead already. I do believe that life does not end when death comes, and after watching him alive so many times (because he also played the keyboards with the Pink Floyd, one of my favorite bands) on DVDs or so, I tend to believe he achieved something very important in all of us, his music stays in our hearts in time.

Changing computer name (openSUSE 11.1)

It seems to me openSUSE gives your computer a random name. So how to change it?.

Simple, via terminal create a new Kate session and then edit the file /etc/HOSTNAME. There you should find something like this:

RandomComputerName.site

All you need to do is replace RandomComputerName with the desired name for your machine. Of course change is not made right away so you better restart or logout in order to see the change.

openSUSE 11.1 out now! (go get it)

Finally the day has come and the new version is out now!. I’m downloading the openSUSE 11.1 right now, the DVD image so it’s going to be about 4 hours until I can do a fresh install…how exciting.

This release includes more than 230 new features, which you can check out here. Also there are improvements to YaST, major updates to GNOME, KDE, OpenOffice.org, and more freedom with a brand new license, Liberation fonts, and openJDK. This is also the first release built entirely in the openSUSE Build Service.

To find out more about this release, visit the openSUSE news page. Click here.

Have a lot of fun.