Opensuse on dennogumi.org

Translations available for KDE unstable packages

Fri, 07 Oct 2022 23:10:14 +0200

As many readers of this blog are aware, openSUSE has been offering packages of git snapshots from KDE since quite a while. They are quite useful for those wiling to test, report bugs, and / or hack on the code, but also for those who want to see what’s brewing in KDE land (without touching their existing systems). However, a major drawback for non English speakers was the lack of translations.

Setting up Let's Encrypt certificates for the 389-ds LDAP server

Fri, 22 Oct 2021 21:04:52 +0200

In the past months I’ve set up LDAP at home, to avoid having different user accounts for the services that I run on my home hardware. Rather than the venerable OpenLDAP I settled for 389 Directory Server, commercially known as Red Hat Directory Server, mainly because I was more familiar with it. Rather than describing how to set that up (Red Hat’s own documentation is excellent on that regard), this post will focus on the steps required to enable encryption using Let’s Encrypt certificates.

Setting up OwnTracks Recorder and OAuth2 with nginx, oauth2-proxy and podman

Sun, 01 Aug 2021 00:30:28 +0200

One thing I always wanted to do when going on holiday is to track where I go, the places I’ve been, and see how much I’ve travelled around. This is true in particular when going to places where I walk around a lot (Japan stays at the top of the list, also for other reasons that are not related to this post). Something like viewing a map showing where you were, and where did you go, with optional export to KML or GPX to import into other programs like Marble.

Providing KDE software updates from git for fun and profit in openSUSE

Tue, 05 Jan 2021 15:23:49 +0100

If I look back at the last post I made on ths blog… let’s say quite a lot of time has passed. The reason? Well, first of all, one would call it a lack of motivation¹, and afterwards, the emergence of a small yet quite annoying pathogen which caused a bit of a stir worldwide. But today I’m not going to talk about viruses: perhaps some other time when you can avoid hear about it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Dolphin and openQA and other assorted bits

Sat, 28 Jul 2018 23:20:48 +0000

Part of this post is about openQA, openSUSE’s automated tool which tests a number of different scenarios, from installation to the behavior of the different desktop environments, plus testing the freshest code from KDE git. Recently, thanks to KDE team member Fabian Vogt, there has been important progress when testing KDE software.

Testing the Dolphin file manager
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Those who use KDE software, either in Plasma or in other desktop environments have at least heard of Dolphin, the powerful file manager part of KDE Applications (by the way, have you checked out the recent beta yet?). A couple of weeks ago, in the #opensuse-kde channel, Fabian mentioned the possibility of writing new openQA tests: although there are many tests already, the desktop ones are all but comprehensive given the many possible scenarios. After some discussion back and forth, the consensus was to test Dolphin as it’s a very commonly used in many everyday tasks.

There can never be enough testing

Mon, 07 Aug 2017 14:49:35 +0000

As you may already know (if you don’t, please check these older posts) openQA, the automated testing system used by openSUSE runs daily tests on the latest KDE software from git. It works well and uncovered a number of bugs. However, it only tested X11. With Wayland starting to become usable, and some developers even switching to Wayland full time, it was a notable shortcoming. Until now.

Why would openQA not run on Wayland? The reason lies in the video driver. openQA runs its tests in a virtual machine (KVM) which uses the “cirrus” virtual hardware for video display. This virtualized video card does not expose an interface capable of interfacing with the kernel’s Direct Rendering Manager (DRM), which is required by kwin_wayland, causing a crash. To fix it, “virtio”, which presents a way for the guest OS to properly interface with the host’s hardware, is needed. Virtio can be used to emulate many parts of the VM’s hardware, including the video card. That would mean a working DRM interface, and a working Wayland session!

Danbooru Client 0.6.1 released

Wed, 01 Mar 2017 20:43:48 +0000

A new version of Danbooru Client is now available!

What is Danbooru Client?
#

Danbooru Client is an application to access Danbooru-based image boards (Wikipedia definition).

It offers a convenient, KF5 and Qt5-based GUI coupled with a QML image view to browse, view, and download images hosted in two of the most famous Danbooru boards (konachan.com and yande.re).

Killing the redundancy with automation

Sun, 18 Dec 2016 11:51:57 +0000

In the past three weeks, the openSUSE community KDE team has been pretty busy to package the latest release of Applications from KDE, 16.12. It was a pretty large task, due to the number of programs involved, and the fact that several monolithic projects were split (in particular KDE PIM). This post goes through what we did, and how we improved our packaging workflow.

Some prerequisites
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In openSUSE speak, packages are developed in “projects”, which are separate repositories maintained on the OBS. Projects whose packages will end up in the distro, that is where they are being developed to land in the distribution, are called devel projects. The KDE team uses a number of these to package and test:

Testing the untestable

Sun, 27 Nov 2016 09:27:13 +0000

Admit it: how many times you have seen “software from this branch is completely untested, use it at your own risk” when you checked the latest code from any FOSS project? I bet you have, many times. For any reasonably modern project, this is not entirely true: Continuous Integration and automated testing are a huge help in ensuring that the code builds and at least does what it is supposed to do. KDE is no exception to this, thanks to build.kde.org and a growing number of unit tests.

The heroes we deserve

Sat, 29 Oct 2016 16:43:23 +0000

You may be aware that openSUSE Leap 42.2 is now in the release candidate stage, and there’s a lot of activity aimed at squashing those pesky bugs before they hit the final release. One particular bug proved to be quite tough to fix, and it was only solved thanks to the “heroes” mentioned in the title. This is the history of the bug.

The report
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October 6th, 2016 - A bug iss reported against Plasma reporting a hard freeze of Plasma when using the Noveau driver, but not with the closed NVIDIA blob. Although the effect is deleterious to Plasma and not other desktop environments, there is evidence that the issue is in the driver itself, but there’s only partial indications, and no conclusive proof.

Two in one

Sat, 25 Jun 2016 14:11:01 +0000

As you may know (unless you’ve been living in Alpha Centauri for the past century) the openSUSE community KDE team publishes LiveCD images for those willing to test the latest state of KDE software from the git master branches without having to break machines, causing a zombie apocalypse and so on. This post highlights the most recent developments in the area.

Up to now, we had 3 different media, depending on the base distribution (stable Leap, ever-rolling Tumbleweed) and whether you wanted to go with the safe road (X11 session) or the dangerous path (Wayland):

I have a problem...

Sun, 29 May 2016 09:48:50 +0000

Every day, a sizable number of people posts problems on the KDE Community Forums and the ever-helpful staff does their best to solve whatever issues they’re facing. But what exactly does one do when this happens? This post provides more insights on the process.

NOTE: The following applies to my workflow for the Kontact & PIM subforum.

Step 1: Someone posts a problem
#

The questions posted are various, and range from simple tasks (“how I do XXX”) to very specific workflows. It covers a large spectrum. The first thing I do when reading a post, is to go through a “mental checklist”:

Danbooru Client 0.6.0 released

Sun, 01 May 2016 14:59:16 +0000

A new version of Danbooru Client is now available!

What is Danbooru Client?
#

Danbooru Client is an application to access Danbooru-based image boards (Wikipedia definition).

It offers a convenient, KF5 and Qt5-based GUI coupled with a QML image view to browse, view, and download images hosted in two of the most famous Danbooru boards (konachan.com and yande.re).

Of gases, Qt, and Wayland

Sat, 27 Feb 2016 16:13:11 +0000

Ever since the launch of Argon and Krypton, the openSUSE community KDE team didn’t really stand still: a number of changes (and potentially nice additions) have been brewing this week. This post recapitulates the most important one.

I’d like the most recent Qt, please
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As pre-announced by a G+ post, the openSUSE repositories bringing KDE software directly from KDE git (KDE:Unstable:Frameworks and KDE:Unstable:Applications) have switched their Qt libraries from Qt 5.5 to the recently released Qt 5.6. This move was made possible by the heroic work of Christophe “krop” Giboudeaux, who was able to beat QWebEngine into submission and make it build in the OBS.

Where are my noble gases? I need MORE noble gases!

Fri, 19 Feb 2016 21:03:25 +0000

As KDE software (be it the Frameworks libraries, the Plasma 5 workspace, or the Applications) develops during a normal release cycle, a lot of things happen. New and exciting features emerge, bugs get fixed, and the software becomes better and more useful than it was before. Thanks to code review and continuous integration, the code quality of KDE software has also tremendously improved. Given how things are improving, it is tempting to follow development as it happens. Sounds exciting?

HOWTO: Configure 389-ds LDAP server on openSUSE Tumbleweed

Sat, 23 Jan 2016 21:28:41 +0000

Recently I’ve been setting up LDAP authentication on CentOS servers to give a shared authentication method to all the compute nodes I use for my day job. I use 389-DS as it’s in my opinion much better to administer and configure than openLDAP (plus, it has very good documentation). As I have a self built NAS at home (with openSUSE Tumbleweed), I thought it’d be nice to use LDAP for all the web applications I run there. This post shows how to set up 389 Directory Server on openSUSE Tumbleweed, including the administration console.

KDE Applications 15.08 RC for openSUSE

Sat, 08 Aug 2015 17:57:15 +0000

KDE has recently released the newest Release Candidate of the Applications 15.08 release. Among the new features and changes of this release, there is a technology preview of the new KF5-based KDE PIM suite (including reworked, faster Akonadi internals), new applications ported to KF5 (the most notable ones being Dolphin and Ark). After some consideration and thinking on how to allow users to test this release without affecting their setups too much, the openSUSE community KDE team is happy to bring this latest RC to openSUSE Tumbleweed and openSUSE 13.2¹.

Plasma 5 live images for openSUSE and on the default openSUSE desktop

Mon, 06 Apr 2015 08:35:43 +0000

A lot has been happening on the KDE side of openSUSE… this post summarizes what’s been going on so far.

Live media for Plasma 5
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One of the most-often requested ways to test Plasma 5, given it can’t be coinstalled with the 4.x Workspace, is the availability of live images to test either in VM or bare metal without touching existing systems.

Plasma 5.2 for openSUSE? You bet!

Tue, 27 Jan 2015 15:27:08 +0000

The ever-amazing Plasma team from KDEjust put out a new release of Plasma. I won’t spend much describing how big of an improvement it is - the release announcement at KDE has all the details needed to whet your appetite.

And of course, now it’s the turn of distributions to get out packages for the users at large.

This is also the case for openSUSE. The KDE:Frameworks5 repository hosts the new 5.2 goodness for released distributions (13.1 and 13.2) and Tumbleweed. Packages have also been submitted to Tumbleweed proper (pending legal review, so it will take some time).

KDE PIM changes in openSUSE Tumbleweed

Sat, 17 Jan 2015 09:45:00 +0000

Short version: the KDE PIM in openSUSE Tumbleweed is moving from 4.14.x to the KF5 based version. More details below.

Some history
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As you may know, up to now the default PIM suite for Plasma 5 in openSUSE Tumbleweed was the KDE PIM 4.14, based on kdelibs 4.x. While upstream KDE has offered a KF5-based version since Applications 15.08, it has been originally marked as a technology preview, so we (the openSUSE community KDE team) thought it would be more prudent to stick with the 4.14 version (but offer the KF5 based PIM as an option for the daring).

KDE Applications and Platform 4.14.2 available for openSUSE

Wed, 15 Oct 2014 16:30:53 +0000

Following up on KDE’s announcement of the latest stable release, we have now packages available for 12.3 and 13.1 (a 13.2 repository will be made available after it is out). You will find them in the KDE:Current repository. Current users of this repository will get the new release automatically once they update.

Why you should upgrade? You can take a look at the list of changes to get an idea. These fixes touch many important KDE applications, including KMail, Okular and Dolphin.

Latest 4.13, newest 4.14 beta and Plasma 5 in openSUSE

Wed, 16 Jul 2014 05:43:49 +0000

Congratulations to KDE (of which I’m proud of being a part of) for the newest release of the Plasma workspace! At the same time, the 4.x series has seen a new beta release, and the stable branch got updated, too.

I’m betting a few people will ask “Are these available for openSUSE?” and of course the answer is yes, thanks to the efforts of the openSUSE community KDE team and the Open Build Service.

Changes in KDE Frameworks 5 and Plasma 5 packaging in openSUSE

Sat, 28 Jun 2014 11:59:23 +0000

Since a couple of weeks the packages offered by openSUSE in the KDE:Unstable:Frameworks repository have undergone a series of changes. In particular, the packages now install to /usr. For the libraries (KDE Frameworks 5) this will mean a transparent change for the userbase as they are expected to be co-installable, but the workspace components (Plasma 5) will confict with the existing Plasma 4.11.x installation.

What does this mean in practice? If you want to use Plasma 5 you will not be able to use a 4.11.x Plasma Workspace. The move was made to ease maintenance and packaging, as it meant dropping a number of hacks, and also to make KF5 + Plasma 5 packages suitable for inclusion in openSUSE Factory. At the same time, the 4.11.x workspace packages were adjusted to reduce the number of components conflicting, so that applications depending on workspace libs (such as KDevelop) would remain on the system also with P5 installed.

New acquisition: ThinkPad X220

Sun, 25 May 2014 19:15:10 +0000

Recently I was looking for a laptop: the previous one I had (an Asus EeePC 900) was almost dead (the fan broke, and the idea of dismantling everything to get to it wasn’t appealing).

When looking around, I had the following requirements:

It needed to run on Linux well. No exceptions.
_Portable: _ at home and at my workplace I have rather powerful machines, so a desktop replacement was not needed.

KDE:Current and 4.13 packages for openSUSE

Thu, 24 Apr 2014 20:35:47 +0000

This is a guest post by Raymond “tittiatcoke” Wooninck, with contributions from myself and Hrvoje “shumski” Senjan

In the next hours the KDE:Current repository will publish the latest release from KDE (4.13). As that this release comes with a big change (the new semantic search), we would like some simple steps in order to perform the right upgrade.

Before the upgrade
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In order to migrate data automatically from the Nepomuk store to the new format, you will need Nepomuk up and running, and just for the time needed for the migration. Ensure that Nepomuk is running before the update (in System Settings > Desktop Search). This is only necessary in case Nepomuk is in use on the system.

Being Current

Mon, 31 Mar 2014 19:00:14 +0000

It is not news that openSUSE, through to the effort of the openSUSE community KDE team, offers several third-party repositories for those who want the latest software from KDE. Since a while, stable releases were offered in the KDE:Release:4x repositories, created with every major release of KDE software. These were meant to offer the latest and greatest to the users without having them to track KDE:Distro:Factory, which is instead used to track packaging for the next openSUSE release and is more in a state of flux.

4.13 Beta 1 Workspaces, Platform and Applications for openSUSE: start the testing engines!

Fri, 07 Mar 2014 19:45:27 +0000

Yesterday KDE released their first beta of the upcoming 4.13 version of Workspaces, Applications and Development platform. As usual with the major releases from KDE, it’s packed with a lot of “good stuff”. Giving a list of all the improvements is daunting, however there are some key points that stand out:

Searching: KDE’s next generation semantic search is a prominent feature of this release. It’s several orders of magnitude faster, much leaner on memory and generally is a great improvement from the previous situation (this writer has been testing it for the past months and he’s absolutely delighted about it).

8 months with KDE and openSUSE - looking back after the 13.1 release

Mon, 25 Nov 2013 18:48:09 +0000

And so, finally openSUSE 13.1 is out of the door (I couldn’t celebrate like I wanted, as I’ve been very busy). This release has lots of improvements, and of course, the latest stable software from KDE. It is time (perhaps?) to look back and see what the team has done during this development cycle.

With regards to the KDE software packaging, the past 8 months have seen quite an increase in the involvement of poeple from the community. Aside the “usual suspects” like Raymond “tittiatcoke” Wooninck and Hrvoje “shumski” Senjan, we’ve seen offers from help from the Cloverleaf community (now folded into openSUSE) and in general an increase of non-SUSE contributions. Relationship with upstream has also improved, as a number of changes present in the packages were submitted directly to KDE (which is always a good thing).

KDE:Unstable:Playground is no more (or: adjustments in KDE repositories)

Sat, 02 Nov 2013 22:42:43 +0000

As you may know, there is an ongoing effort to rearrange and adjust the openSUSE KDE repositories. In line with the previously announced deletions, and more recent adjustments, a number of changes went into the organization and layout of the KDE repositories:

KDE:Distro:Factory and KDE:Release:4xy will now hold the “core” KDE packages: this means the base Development Platform, Workspaces and Applications, and additional applications for a basic desktop experience. Other, non-core packages have been moved to KDE:Extra

KDE in openSUSE: repository and maintainership changes!

Fri, 13 Sep 2013 05:37:09 +0000

Summer is ending soon (at least for those living in the northern hemisphere) and while usually cleaning is done during spring, the KDE team decided to do what I’d call… autumn cleaning of repositories.

You may know that the KDE presence in openSUSE, aside being the default desktop, is quite a long one. In the past years different repositories were created by the members of the openSUSE KDE team (at the time mostly made up by KDE people hired by Novell) in order to review and test packages, like newer Qt versions, KDE software, and so on. Fast forward to the present: nowadays the members of the KDE team are almost completely from the openSUSE community, and quite a number of changes went by the repositories as well. For example, newer releases of KDE software are submitted as maintenance updates for the latest available version of the distribution, and there are the KDE:Release:xy repositories for those who want the latest and greatest KDE software.

Qt5 on openSUSE (including experimental KF5 packages)

Tue, 06 Aug 2013 12:40:19 +0000

In the past few days, the openSUSE KDE team has been working hard, following the footsteps of the nice work done by the Kubuntu and Arch Linux communities, to provide Qt5 packages for the distribution. In fact, work was already done in the past, but the packages were not coinstallable with the existing Qt4 installation.

Thanks to a renewed effort, the OBS holds now Qt5 packages that won’t overwrite the existing Qt4 install: they currently live in the KDE:Qt51 repository (Factory and openSUSE 12.3) and they have been submitted to Factory itself, with the plan of having a full set of Qt5 packages for the next version of the distribution. PyQt5 was also packaged, for those who are interested in using Python with Qt.

Last round of testing: 4.11 RC2 packages for openSUSE

Tue, 30 Jul 2013 05:32:23 +0000

The latest release of the KDE Platform, Workspaces, and Applications (4.11) is around the corner: in fact, the last RC was recently made available. We’re almost there, but it doesn’t mean that testing and reporting should stop: on the contrary, it is needed even more to ensure that no bad bugs crawl up in the final release.

As part of this effort, openSUSE packages for RC2 have been released through the OBS, and are available in the KDE:Distro:Factory repository. Like always, please report upstream bugs to KDE directly, and use Novell’s Bugzilla for packaging or openSUSE specific issues.

KDE releases 4.11 RC1, and openSUSE packages follow!

Tue, 16 Jul 2013 21:30:11 +0000

The latest release from KDE moved from beta to RC stage, thus finding and reporting bugs is more important that ever. At the same time, the distribution packaging teams are also working in polishing their packages.

As far as openSUSE is concerned (not dissing other distros, just mentioning the one I’m involved in ;), you can kill two birds with one stone by installing the packages provided in the KDE:Distro:Factory repository. There are two kinds of issuses you need to report:

4.11 beta 2 openSUSE packages available

Mon, 01 Jul 2013 18:18:12 +0000

KDE released the second beta of the KDE Platform, Workspaces and Applications 4.11, and after the necessary time for the OBS to build packages from the released tarballs, packages are available for openSUSE 12.3 and openSUSE Factory. Like the previous beta, they are available through the KDE:Distro:Factory repository. 4.11.x is is targeted for inclusion in the upcoming openSUSE 13.1.

So far 4.11 has been pretty stable for me, but you should never forget these packages are for testing and bug reporting purposes: don’t use them on production systems. In case you find a bug:

4.11 beta 1 packages available for openSUSE 12.3

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 05:50:55 +0000

As a consequence of the recent changes in the repositories, the openSUSE KDE team is happy to announce the availability of packages containing the first beta of the KDE Platform, Workspaces and Applications 4.11.

Packages are available in the KDE:Distro:Factory repository. As it is beta software, it may have not-yet-discovered bugs, and its use is recommended only if you are willing to test packaging (reporting bugs to Novell’s bugzilla) or the software (reporting bugs directly to KDE). For specific queries on the 4.11 beta not related to specific openSUSE packaging, use the KDE Community Forums 4.11 Beta/RC area.

Upcoming changes to openSUSE KDE repositories

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 06:11:07 +0000

Since KDE has released the first beta of Platform, Workspaces, and Applications 4.11, there will be some changes in the packages offered in the openSUSE repositories.

In short:

KDE:Distro:Factory will now start tracking 4.11 betas and RCs: packages are being worked on. Use this version to test packages and to report bugs upstream.
KDE:Release:410 has been decoupled from KDE:Distro:Factory. If you were using 4.10 packages from KDF, you’re highly encouraged to move to this repository.
KDE:Unstable:SC will keep on carrying snapshots from KDE git repositories.

If you test the 4.11 packages, report bugs in the packaging (or openSUSE-specific functionality) to Novell’s bugzilla, and bugs in the software to bugs.kde.org. Also, please use the dedicated area on the KDE Community Forums to discuss issues.

KDE Platform Workspace, and Applications 4.10.4 for openSUSE

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 05:47:41 +0000

These posts kind of sound like a broken record, right? ;) Anyway, since KDE has released new versions of Platform, Workspaces and Applications as part of the stable release cycle, thanks to the OBS we have packages available for openSUSE 12.2 and 12.3. The 4.10.4 update will also be released as an official update for 12.3 in due time.

Where you can get the packages? Two places, as usual:

KDE:Distro:Factory in case you are interested in contributing to packaging for the next openSUSE release;
KDE:Release:410 (openSUSE 12.3 or openSUSE 12.2) in case you just want to upgrade to the latest and greatest version

What to look forward to in this release? More than 50 bugs being fixed, including:

KDE Platform, Workspaces and Applications 4.10.3 for openSUSE

Tue, 07 May 2013 18:46:56 +0000

KDE released 4.10.3 versions of the Platform, Workspaces and Applications yesterday, with more than 70 bugs being fixed. Notably:

Several fixes in handling encrypted mails in KMail
Fixes for KDEPIM syncing and ownCloud
A number of improvements in Dolphin, including crash fixes
Optimizations in the Plasma Workspaces

[The full list](https://bugs.kde.org/buglist.cgi?query_format=advanced&bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=VERIFIED&bug_status=CLOSED&bugidtype=include&chfieldfrom=2013-01-01&chfieldto=Now&chfield=cf_versionfixedin&chfieldvalue=4.10.3&order=Bug Number&list_id=638034) has other important changes.

As usual, there are two different repositories from which you can get them:

KDE:Distro:Factory in case you are interested in contributing to packaging for the next openSUSE release;
KDE:Release:410 (openSUSE 12.3 or openSUSE 12.2) in case you just want to upgrade to the latest and greatest version

In case you upgrade now, you should be aware of an issue with KDM that makes it not start: thankfully there’s a workaround available, and updated packages are already being built by the OBS, so it will be solved soon.

KDE Platform, Workspaces and Applications 4.10.2 packages available for openSUSE

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 16:04:13 +0000

KDE has released its monthly update for the 4.10 release, and after a brief wait while the Open Build Service worked over the released tarballs, the openSUSE KDE team is pleased to announce the availability of the 4.10.2 release packages for openSUSE 12.2 and 12.3.

Despite being a minor release, more than 100 bugs were fixed, in particular there were many KDEPIM fixes touching both the low level stack and KMail/KAddressbook/Kontact. Some highlights on the fixed issues:

KDE Platform, Workspaces and Applications 4.10 available for openSUSE

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 06:47:14 +0000

Hot on the heels of the announcement from KDE, the openSUSE KDE team is happy to announce the availability of packages for the latest stable release of the KDE Platform, Workspaces, and Applications.

Packages are available in the KDE:Distro:Factory repository (which is where the packages to land in 12.3 are tested) for openSUSE Factory (soon to be 12.3) and openSUSE 12.2 and soon (when the Open Build Systen finishes rebuilding a number of packages) in the KDE:Release:410 repository for openSUSE 12.2 users.

Package updates in openSUSE 12.3 KDE

Sat, 02 Feb 2013 13:46:30 +0000

During the discussions for the release of openSUSE 12.3, the topic of update notifications and applets was brought up again. Originally openSUSE shipped with a custom update applet, but since it was basically unmaintained, the decision was made to switch to Apper for openSUSE 12.2

The original Apper used in that version had a number of issues, which the upstream developer (Daniel Nicoletti) fixed in a newer version, which also had a lot of other improvments. However we originally couldn’t switch because it depended on a newer, API-incompatible version of PackageKit, meaning that the PK bindings for libzypp (the heart of openSUSE’s package management) needed to be adjusted and ported.

KDE Platform, Workspaces, Applications 4.10 RC3: openSUSE packages available

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 21:03:52 +0000

Following up on the announcement from KDE, the openSUSE KDE team is happy to announce the availability of 4.10 RC3 packages. Remember that they are packages meant for testing and reporting bugs, so that the next release will be as polished as possible.

You will find the packages in the KDE:Distro:Factory repository. An updated live media based on the upcoming openSUSE 12.3 (see previous post) is also available (files named KDE4-4.10.RC3) . The openSUSE 12.2 based version is also available (files named KDE Reloaded) at the same address.

Test the upcoming openSUSE 12.3 and KDE Workspace, Applications and Platform 4.10 RC2

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 13:38:45 +0000

Following up on my previous post, a different type of image has been made by the openSUSE KDE community members. In particular, alin has created images sporting the same software from KDE (4.10 RC2) but using the upcoming openSUSE 12.3 as base.

Download links:

32 bit version
64 bit version
Release directory (in case the above links go 404; the files are named KDE4-.4.10.RC2-Live)

These images are provided not only to test 4.10 in openSUSE, but also to test part of the distribution itself, without touching existing systems. Should you encounter a bug, please report it as follows:

KDE Workspaces and Applications 4.10 on live images courtesy of openSUSE

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 23:24:10 +0000

The 4.10 release for the KDE Development Platform, Workspaces and Applications is drawing nigh… as you may have read, there is now an additional release candidate in order to test some last-minute changes.

Of course, the KDE developers can only do so much: it’s impossible to test all possible combinations. That is, unless the community at large helps by finding and reporting issues the developers can fix. But doing so requires a 4.10 install. You can of course use packages from distributions, but you may not feel comfortable installing a prerelease on your system (and no one would blame you for that). Of course, if you had something to test without touching your own system…

Testing KScreen packages available for openSUSE

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 09:29:17 +0000

Yesterday Alex Fiestas showed on his blog a video of a recent development version of the KScreen library, created to handle easily multiple monitor setups in KDE, almost in an “automagic” way. As this is a project where configurations and setups are highly heterogeneous, a lot of testing is required to ensure things work reliably.

Of course, you cannot ask a developer to have all sorts of screen combinations, but remember one of the strengths of FOSS: “many eyes make bugs shallow”. And that’s why the KDE team prepared testing packages for KScreen for openSUSE users.

Systemd and KDE Workspaces in openSUSE 12.3

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 14:01:31 +0000

openSUSE is migrating to the use of systemd for the upcoming 12.3 version, given the difficulties that emerged in trying to co-maintain two different init systems (SysV + systemd). While I am not going into the details of this choice (I leave this to more informed people), this has some consequences for software higher in the stack.

As ConsoleKit is deprecated, systemd offers its own daemon to keep track of sessions and assigned seats in a system. However, the KDE Workspaces rely on ConsoleKit to handle user switching, reboot, shutdown and a lot of ther things. Removing ConsoleKit would mean that users would suffer feature loss. On the other hand, with something that’s been deprecated and no longer actively worked on, you have issues with maintenance.

4.10 Beta 2 packages available for openSUSE

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 19:17:48 +0000

The KDE community has just released Beta 2 of the upcoming 4.10 release of the Development Platform, Workspaces, and Applications. Of course, distributions are providing binary packages for the adventurous… and how could the green distro be left out?

In fact, it is not. Beta 2 packages were uploaded and built in the KDE:Distro:Factory repository. Updated packages have also been submitted to the development version of openSUSE (Factory) as the ultimate goal is having 4.10 in openSUSE 12.3.

New theme for KDE openSUSE 12.3 is now in!

Sun, 25 Nov 2012 08:30:30 +0000

Following up my earlier post, the new openSUSE 12.3 theme has finally landed into the official openSUSE repositories and will be part of the upcoming 12.3. A lot of work has gone into the new theme since I last posted about it, so this post will show how things look at the moment.

A few caveats:

The theme targets the 4.10 release of the KDE Workspaces, so it may be not be perfect under 4.9;
The default wallpaper has not been chosen yet.

Without further ado, let’s get down to seeing what’s improved.

openSUSE KDE Bug Squashing Days

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 19:52:04 +0000

Like everything, openSUSE is not perfect. Bugs crop here and there, or there is missing / quirky functionality that users may run into. Being a distribution of heterogeneous software, this means that bugs fall into these categories:

Upstream bugs in the software shipped by openSUSE
Bugs in the packaging
Bugs in distribution-specific setups or that derive from interactions with these setups (e.g. kernel, low level software stack, etc.)

To improve the distribution and to act like good FOSS citizens, distribution bugs need to be divided from upstream bugs: the former need to be properly fixed by openSUSE, the latter need to be communicated upstream so that everyone would benefit when they are fixed, including our favorite green distro.

What's cooking for KDE in openSUSE 12.3 - theming

Sun, 28 Oct 2012 13:04:20 +0000

Although the release of openSUSE 12.3 is yet to come, the people of the openSUSE community contributing to KDE are already at work to bring the best possible KDE experience for the new release.

Story of a patch, or: united we stand

Sat, 22 Sep 2012 20:26:44 +0000

Recently Fedora’s Lukas Tinkl pushed to kdelibs (for the 4.10 release) a patch that enabled Solid to talk to udisks2, which is a replacement for udisks. Fedora already moved to udisks2 (and killed HAL) and future GNOME releases will only use udisks2, so the need for a working backend was a necessity, and at the same time they acted like good open source citizens, and pushed the code both to 4.10 and the KDE Frameworks branch of kdelibs.

Opensuse on dennogumi.org

Translations available for KDE unstable packages

Setting up Let's Encrypt certificates for the 389-ds LDAP server

Setting up OwnTracks Recorder and OAuth2 with nginx, oauth2-proxy and podman

Providing KDE software updates from git for fun and profit in openSUSE

Dolphin and openQA and other assorted bits

Testing the Dolphin file manager #

There can never be enough testing

Danbooru Client 0.6.1 released

What is Danbooru Client? #

Killing the redundancy with automation

Some prerequisites #

Testing the untestable

The heroes we deserve

The report #

Two in one

I have a problem...

Step 1: Someone posts a problem #

Danbooru Client 0.6.0 released

What is Danbooru Client? #

Of gases, Qt, and Wayland

I’d like the most recent Qt, please #

Where are my noble gases? I need MORE noble gases!

HOWTO: Configure 389-ds LDAP server on openSUSE Tumbleweed

KDE Applications 15.08 RC for openSUSE

Plasma 5 live images for openSUSE and on the default openSUSE desktop

Live media for Plasma 5 #

Plasma 5.2 for openSUSE? You bet!

KDE PIM changes in openSUSE Tumbleweed

Some history #

KDE Applications and Platform 4.14.2 available for openSUSE

Latest 4.13, newest 4.14 beta and Plasma 5 in openSUSE

Changes in KDE Frameworks 5 and Plasma 5 packaging in openSUSE

New acquisition: ThinkPad X220

KDE:Current and 4.13 packages for openSUSE

Before the upgrade #

Being Current

4.13 Beta 1 Workspaces, Platform and Applications for openSUSE: start the testing engines!

8 months with KDE and openSUSE - looking back after the 13.1 release

KDE:Unstable:Playground is no more (or: adjustments in KDE repositories)

KDE in openSUSE: repository and maintainership changes!

Qt5 on openSUSE (including experimental KF5 packages)

Last round of testing: 4.11 RC2 packages for openSUSE

KDE releases 4.11 RC1, and openSUSE packages follow!

4.11 beta 2 openSUSE packages available

4.11 beta 1 packages available for openSUSE 12.3

Upcoming changes to openSUSE KDE repositories

KDE Platform Workspace, and Applications 4.10.4 for openSUSE

KDE Platform, Workspaces and Applications 4.10.3 for openSUSE

KDE Platform, Workspaces and Applications 4.10.2 packages available for openSUSE

KDE Platform, Workspaces and Applications 4.10 available for openSUSE

Package updates in openSUSE 12.3 KDE

KDE Platform, Workspaces, Applications 4.10 RC3: openSUSE packages available

Test the upcoming openSUSE 12.3 and KDE Workspace, Applications and Platform 4.10 RC2

KDE Workspaces and Applications 4.10 on live images courtesy of openSUSE

Testing KScreen packages available for openSUSE

Systemd and KDE Workspaces in openSUSE 12.3

4.10 Beta 2 packages available for openSUSE

New theme for KDE openSUSE 12.3 is now in!

openSUSE KDE Bug Squashing Days

What's cooking for KDE in openSUSE 12.3 - theming

Story of a patch, or: united we stand

Testing the Dolphin file manager
#

What is Danbooru Client?
#

Some prerequisites
#

The report
#

Step 1: Someone posts a problem
#

What is Danbooru Client?
#

I’d like the most recent Qt, please
#

Live media for Plasma 5
#

Some history
#

Before the upgrade
#