From Wikipedia, ‘IPCop is a Linux based firewall distribution, which aims to provide a simple-to-manage firewall appliance based on PC hardware. IPCop is a Stateful firewall built on the Linux netfilter framework. Originally a fork of the SmoothWall Linux firewall, the projects are developed independently, and have now diverged significantly.’ Im upgrading now, wish me luck. If I am not back in 10 minutes, just wait longer.
Today, December 7, 2006, marks the release of OpenSuSE 10.2. After the lackluster 10.1 release with its numerous and long-standing package management issues, OpenSuSE 10.2 promises to redeem the distro. Please check the OpenSuSE 10.2 Release Notes for more information.
The following list are few highlights of OpenSuSE 10.2:
I have been running OpenSuSE 10.2 on my machine since Alpha 5. Since then, it has evolved into a great release. If you had problems with SuSE 10.1 package management and moved to an alternative package manager, such as Smart, rest assured that YaST package management is working very well again. In fact, I have even left all of the ZenWorks applets running with syncing enabled and YaST starts and operates with perfectly acceptable speeds as well as offering the benefit of delta rpms. I have not pulled out a stopwatch, however it appears to load faster than Smart GUI now. All of this considered, I am going back to using YaST as my primary package manager. I have not used ‘rug’ yet, but I plan to give it a shot soon. I was very glad to see that some non-ZenWorks tools had been included. I do not know about a default GNOME install, but with a default KDE install, zypper and opensuseupdater are installed as well as ZenWorks. If it does not work out with ZMD and rug, I will just remove ZenWorks. Some additional points of interest, as of 10.2, the released distribution is known as, OpenSuSE. This was done to clear up the confusion created by having the project/community known as OpenSuSE, but a distro called SuSE Linux. Also, I have Intel 2200 wireless in my laptop and I cannot get Network Manager to connect to my WPA AP(worked fine in 10.1) and if I disable network manager and use traditional ifup method, then ipw-firmware endlessly eats all of the system resources. I’m still looking into this, but if you have had similar experience, please let me know.
OpenSuSE 10.2 can be downloaded in any number of ways. I suggest going to http://en.opensuse.org/Released_Version for download links, torrents metalinks, and mirrors. If you are on SuSE Linux 10.1 and looking to upgrade, just supplement my Upgrade to SuSE Linux 10.1 article with the OpenSuSE 10.2 sources given below.
Life has gotten a lot busier for me recently so I will not be doing a big article detailing the setup process of OpenSuSE 10.2. Instead, I will pass along a few short notes to point people in the right direction.
Adding sources to YaST is quiet easy in 10.2. It is the same procedure as it was in 10.1, but now It actually works. Adding the online Install repository still takes a very long time. With a good mirror and a 3mbit connecting it took a good 10 or 15 minutes on my machine. That said, Guru, Packman, NonOSS sources added very quickly. Below I have provided a must-have list of sources to get multimedia codecs such as mp3.
These may not be ideal mirrors for you, but I leave it to you to find additional mirrors. These sources can be added by going to YaST -> Installation Sources -> Add -> Specify URL. With the above sources, you can add mp3 playback to amarok by installing ‘libxine1′ through YaST -> Software Manager. Sorry, thats all folks, leave a comment if you have a specific question and I will try to come back and address it.
As many of my readers are aware, I can usually be found in #SuSE on irc.freenode.net. I have been a regular there since I started using SuSE ~1.5 years ago. Before SuSE 10.1 was released, most of my time there was spent chatting with other SuSE users and helping new users with basic tasks like: adding MP3 support, using YaST, getting around in KDE, and other benign user-goals. That all changed for the worse with the release of SuSE Linux 10.1.
Since SuSE 10.1 was released, almost ALL of my time in #SuSE has been spent explaining why the package management is broken and what can be done to fix it. As one can imagine, this is NOT my idea of contributing to the SuSE community. Doing damage control for someone else’s disastrous mistakes is less than rewarding. In fact, it is a royal pain in the ass. The users experiencing these issues are already upset and are not always appreciative of your efforts to help them. The package management issues with the SuSE 10.1 release are raised in the channel an average of 6-10 times per day! This results in myself and other regulars, whom are normally more than happy to help new users, becoming jaded and apathetic.
If you have tried to install FreeNX on SuSE Linux recently you may of had some trouble. This because on the 22 of June, NoMachine released an updated NX suite. SuSE 10.0 and 10.1 shipped with an older version of the NX Server. As a result, you cannot use the 1.5 NX Server that ships with SuSE Linux and the 2.0 NX Client . Instead, you should download the latest RPM’s from the NoMachine website. If you do not know what NX is all about then here is the description from their website:
NoMachine NX is a Terminal Server and Remote Access solution based on a comprising set of enterprise class open source technologies. Thanks to the outstanding compression, session resilience and resource management developed on top of the X-Window system, and the integration with the powerful audio, printing and resource sharing capabilities of the Unix world, NoMachine NX makes it possible to run any graphical application on any operating system across any network connection as if you were sitting in front of your computer.
Recently, I setup a Samsung ML-2010 Monochrome laser printer. This printer actually said SuSE Linux on the box, so I had high hopes that it would be easy to setup. (more…)
Novell Released updated packages for SuSE Linux 10.1 today, June 9, 2006. I installed these packages via Smart and then Added a few Repositories to YaST. Previously, it could take as long as 20 minutes for the ‘Installation Source’ module to close after you had clicked ‘finish’. Now that the package management seems to be fixed, I intend to give Rug a shot, but I think im done with YaST -> Software Manager. It is just too slow. You can get the updated packages from the SuSE 10.1 Update Repository or from a mirror of it.
SuSE Linux 10.1 has lot of great stuff to offer; Linux Kernel 2.6.16, XGL, AppArmor, KDE 3.5.1, and numerous fixes and improvements. However, they released SuSE Linux 10.1 with a severely broken package manager. For those of you that do not know, Novell decided to switch package management libraries with 10.1 and thought that they would be able to get all the bugs worked out before the release date. Unfortunately, they were not even close! 10.1’s release date was pushed back just over a month and the package manager is still extremely slow and buggy, to the point of being unusable. *Update 06/09/2006* Novell has released updates that address the YAST package management issues.
Luckily, Pascal Bleser, who is better known as Yaloki on IRC and maintainer of the Guru software repository, has come to the rescue. He built a custom version of the Smart Package Manager for SuSE Linux 10.1 that contains the most important installation repositories built in and ready to go. His custom Smart package contains the following repositories and mirrors for those repositories: the main Install Source, Non-OSS Install Source, SuSE Linux 10.1 Update Source, Packman Repository, and his own Guru Repository. For most people, these are all the sources you will need.
*Update 09/05/2006* A more efficient and less error prone method of installing the Smart Package Manager can be found here, on the SuSE Wiki. When I have a chance I will mirror its contents on this page. (more…)
SuSE Linux 10.1’s YaST -> Software Manager may look the same, but infact it is running on a completely different set of libraries known as ZYPP. As a result of this change, you can no longer add sources via a root console and the ‘installation_sources’ command. On the bright side, thanks to a bug report by Benjiman from #SuSE, They have made adding network sources via the YaST -> Installation Sources interface much easier than in previous releases.
*UPDATE* WARNING! Do to some major bugs in the new and ‘improved’ package management libraries of YaST in SuSE Linux 10.1, I can no longer recommend the following method . Feel free to try it anyway, but chances are REALLY good that you will have some serious trouble doing so. *Update 06/09/06* Novell has released a couple dozen updated packages that fix the package management issues in SuSE Linux 10.1. However, I still recommend using Smart Package Manager with SuSE Linux 10.1 because it is considerably faster than YAST Software Manager. Then again, if I was just browsing the packages, I would want to use YAST Software Manager. (more…)
After several people requested that I write a how-to on updating SuSE Linux 10.0 to 10.1, I have decided to do so. Personally, I do not care for or trust OS upgrades. This is because I like to run a tight ship that is lean and mean. Since Linux doesn’t have a registry like Windows and I can easily backup my home dir to save my settings, I don’t find doing a clean install much more involved than an upgrade. This is why I always do a clean install. That said, people still insist on upgrading their OS. So, this article will cover 3 ways in which you can upgrade your SuSE Linux install to the newest release, SuSE Linux 10.1.
The much anticipated SuSE Linux 10.1 was finally released today. So far the mirrors seem to be holding up fairly well, but OpenSuSE.org is dead in the water. So if you need any information from it, such as how to make a DVD from the CD ISOs, you will need to use Google Cache. Some new features 10.1 provides are; 2.6.16 Linux Kernel, XGL, AppArmor, ZMD, and my personal favorite feature, the installer now offers to do a MD5Sum check of the install media.
There are some minor differences between SuSE Linux 10.0 and 10.1. From what I gather, there will not be an EVAL DVD this time. Before, the EVAL DVD released by Novell contained non-OSS packages like Flash, Acrobat, Java, and the ipw-firmware for intel 2200, and 2910 wifi adapters. Now, they have released a non-OSS Add-On CD that contains these packages, as well as providing a non-OSS-install-source that you can add if you don’t want to use the ISO. This non-OSS-install-source is the same as the ‘Extra-install-source’ from 10.0, but with a more accurate and descriptive name.
If you would like to do a net/ftp install, I suggest that you visit the mirror with a browser, find a large file like one of the ISOs, start to download it to insure you get a good speed.
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