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SuSE

Submission + - HP to also Preload Machines with the Linux Desktop

Submitted by
apokryphos
apokryphos writes: "Hewlett-Packard has become the next major OEM to preload SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop on selected notebooks and desktop machines. As Jaffe notes, one of the biggest obstacles to making Linux a credible desktop alternative to Windows has been the lack of OEM partners willing to preload and support the operating system. This deal with HP is yet another milestone down that road."
Novell

Submission + - HP to sell Linux laptops and PCs (idg.com.au)

Submitted by
Titus Germanicus
Titus Germanicus writes: "According to an article on PC World HP is planning to introduce desktop and laptop computers that come with Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop operating system preinstalled. In an interview at the Novell Brainshare conference in Salt Lake City, Roger Levy, vice president for open platform solutions with Novell, typified the HP deal as significant. "Having any additional distributor that has worldwide reach and has a large market share who will bring enterprise grade Linux in as an option, is very significant to us," Levy said. The systems are scheduled to start shipping worldwide in select geographies in the second quarter of 2008, according to a source familiar with the matter. And the two vendors will jointly develop software drivers and provide support to end-users."
Graphics

Submission + - Petition for Open Nvidia Drivers (opentheblob.com) 3

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Want to tell Nvidia that you want a more open, or fully open driver? Or want to tell them to open their hardware specifications before AMD/ATI and Intel leave them in the dust? Tried of the blob on your otherwise pristine GNU system? This is the place to leave your signature.
Graphics

Submission + - Open Letter For Open Drivers To NVIDIA (phoronix.com)

Submitted by metalzelot
metalzelot writes: For those interested in seeing official open-source support from NVIDIA or open specifications, there is an open letter for open drivers to NVIDIA at OpenTheBlob.com. With both AMD and Intel now supporting open-source X.Org drivers and releasing specifications/documentation, the community is looking for the same (if not more) from NVIDIA.
Announcements

Submission + - FOSDEM conference to focus on languages, packaging (fosdem.org)

Submitted by
Floris
Floris writes: "The Free and Open Source Developers European Meeting, one of Europe's oldest free technical conferences, will kick of in two weeks.

Developers from all over the world will join over presentations, lightning talks, developer rooms and delicious Belgian beer in Brussels for the eighth edition of FOSDEM.

In the published speaker interviews, the various project leaders enlighten us on their talk topics in advance. This year the main track focuses on programming languages, build systems, packaging, virtualization and web technologies."
SuSE

Submission + - SUSE Build Service expands support to RH, CentOS

Submitted by apokryphos
apokryphos writes: The openSUSE Build Service, a framework that provides an infrastructure for software developers to easily create and compile packages for multiple Linux distributions, has extended its support to now build packages for CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The openSUSE Build Service already supports several Linux distributions including openSUSE, Debian, Fedora, Mandriva, SUSE Linux Enterprise and Ubuntu.
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Germany's Employment Office Switches to Linux (heise.de)

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "It was announced that by the end of last year, Germany's Federal Employment Office had completely transferred from Windows NT to OpenSuse 10.1. The reason given for the switch was "The previous combination of Windows NT and Internet Explorer could no longer keep pace with technological developments in how current media content is displayed and was not up to the demands of modern hardware.""
Linux Business

Submission + - Lenovo Releases SLED 10 Linux T61, R61 ThinkPads (laptoping.com)

Submitted by
InlawBiker
InlawBiker writes: "Another hardware vendor offers Linux on their machines. Dell's Ubuntu offering to the general public was big news, but this news is more intriguing. What's interesting about this is it's aimed at "large enterprise customers." One might surmise that corporate customers have been asking for it, and now Lenovo is delivering."
Software

Submission + - RPM Package Manager (RPM) version 5.0.0 released (rpm5.org) 2

Submitted by
Robert Scheck
Robert Scheck writes: "http://rpm5.org/ — 2008-01-05 — After seven months of comprehensive development, the popular Unix software packaging tool RPM Package Manager (RPM) was released as stable version 5.0.0. The relaunch of the RPM project in spring 2007 and today's following availability of RPM 5 marks a major milestone for the previously rather Linux-centric RPM. RPM now finally evolved into a fully cross-platform and reusable software packaging tool.

WHAT IS NEW IN RPM 5.0.0

The Automake/Autoconf/Libtool-based build environment of RPM was completely revamped from scratch and as one major result mostly all third-party libraries now can be linked externally and in a very flexible way. Support for the ancient and obsolete "rpmrc" files was completely removed, as everything is now configured through RPM "macros" under run-time only.

The RPM code base was ported to all major platforms, including the BSD, Linux, Solaris and Mac OS X Unix flavors and Windows/Cygwin. Additionally, the code base was heavily cleaned up and now can be compiled with all major C compiler suites, including GNU GCC, Sun Studio and Intel C/C++.

The RPM packages, in addition to the default Gzip and optional Bzip2 compression, now support also LZMA compression. Additionally, initial support for the XML Archive (XAR) file format was added where the implementation establishes a wrapper archive format for mapping the four sections used in RPM format packages (Lead, Signature, Header and Payload) to files with the same name in a XAR format package. Finally, support for the old RPMv3 (LSB) package format was removed to cleanup and simplify the code base. RPM 5, with respect to RPM format packages, now supports RPMv4 format only.

Additional features for use in package specifications (.spec files) were added, including new standard and even custom tags, new standard sections, etc. Most notably, RPM is now able to automatically track vendor distribution files with its new vcheck(1) based "%track" section and now can automatically download the vendor distribution files, too.

ABOUT RPM

RPM is a powerful and mature command-line driven package management system capable of installing, uninstalling, verifying, querying, and updating Unix software packages. Each software package consists of an archive of files along with information about the package like its version, a description, and the like. There is also a library API, permitting advanced developers to manage such transactions from programming languages such as C, Perl or Python.

Traditionally, RPM is a core component of many Linux distributions, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Fedora, Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise, openSUSE, CentOS, Mandriva Linux, and many others. But RPM is also used for software packaging on many other Unix operating systems like FreeBSD, Sun OpenSolaris, IBM AIX and Apple Mac OS X by the cross-platform Unix software distribution OpenPKG. Additionally, the RPM archive format is an official part of the Linux Standard Base (LSB). RPM is released as free software under the GNU LGPL distribution license.

HISTORY OF RPM

RPM was originally written in 1997 by Erik Troan and Marc Ewing for use in the Red Hat Linux distribution. Later the development of RPM became a classical free software community effort, now lead since many years by RPM's primary developer Jeff Johnson. In spring 2007 the RPM project was relaunched by Jeff Johnson on a new infrastructure provided by the OpenPKG project and its Ralf S. Engelschall. With the RPM 5 milestone, RPM finally evolved into a fully portable and vendor-agnostic packaging tool, which especially is no longer tied to its historical Linux roots."
KDE

Submission + - KDE 4 uses 40% less memory despite 3D eye-candy

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Pro-Linux reports that KDE 4, scheduled to be released in January 2008, consumes almost 40% less memory than KDE 3.5, despite the fact that version 4 of the Free and Open Source desktop system includes a composited window manager and a revamped menu and applet interface. KDE developer Will Stephenson showcased KDE 4's 3D eye-candy on a 256Mb laptop with 1Ghz CPU and run-of-the-mill integrated graphics, pointing out that mini-optimizations haven't even yet been started. Will this combination of resource efficiency and consumer appeal make KDE 4 the leader in the booming Linux-based ultra mobile laptop and energy efficient desktop markets?
Upgrades

Submission + - Will Linux save the planet? (softpedia.com) 6

Submitted by 00_NOP
00_NOP writes: Acoording to a report on Softpedia, citing a UK government study, Linux PCs are likely to be used for 6 — 8 years instead of the typical 3 — 4 years of a Windows-based PC. With the price of copper and other commodities rocketing, seems like it is good news for the bank balance as well as, errr, the penguins. My oldest Linux box is from 2001 — what's yours?
Education

Submission + - First KDE Education Project Meeting a Great Succes (kde.org)

Submitted by
Jure Repinc
Jure Repinc writes: "Last weekend members of the KDE-Edu team met in Paris for a meeting about the KDE Education project . The meeting took place at the Mandriva office, where members got to know each other and started vivid discussions about their free and open source educational applications, life in general, as well as the future and vision of the Educational module, which is part of the KDE desktop project."
Graphics

Submission + - 2007 Linux Graphics Survey Results (phoronix.com)

Submitted by
Michael
Michael writes: "At Phoronix we have finished our 2007 Linux Graphics Survey and the results are now available with over 20,000 submissions. This survey sought to find out the most popular graphics hardware in use, which closed and open-source drivers are being used, and how many are using accelerated desktop effects. The survey found that nearly half of those polled were using NVIDIA hardware, about 60% of Linux desktop users are using Compiz Fusion, Compiz, or Beryl, and that most still end up modifying their xorg.conf manually..."

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