Thanks to Rodrigo’s work, simple-ccsm now has a switch to easily enable/disable Compiz.

On openSUSE 11.0 users will not have to fiddle with any commandline, hack scripts or xorg.conf to enable Compiz. AIGLX is enabled by default on all the supported hardwares, and as soon as ATI/NVIDIA drivers are installed via 1-click, so all that is required is launch simple-ccsm (Desktop Effects) application and enable compiz.

In case you are wondering what theme I am using, it is just the default openSUSE gilouch theme, greened just the way I like it. Download and drag and drop the tarball on “Appearence” caplet if you want it too.

Here is one more of “cube” mode to make users of other OS jealous

openSUSE users grab compiz-fusion-git packages from home:cyberorg (experimental/unstable) repository. Wait till all the packages (except emerald*) are synced out to the mirrors and have the same version (080502).

I am very happy to announce that LTSP GUI, that I’d be mentoring along with Lars Rupp of openSUSE-EDU project, has been selected for this year’s Google Summer of Code through openSUSE project.

Announcement on http://news.opensuse.org

Jan Weber would be working on the project, here is the idea page:

http://en.opensuse.org/Easy-LTSP

Here are the mock-ups screenshots made by the student:

http://www.luckylemon.de/ltspgui/

Looking forward to all of your help and a successful project.

Wishing all the luck to Jan

Compiz Fusion Git packages got updated in home:cyberorg repository, this time it has a cool new effect “Cube Cylinder” from onestone. This picture would tell more.

Notice the details on the fishes, atlantis has received a lot of love too. Use compiz-git-all 1-click to get it. Note that these are unstable packages meant for testers and developers use only.

In other news, I went at the client’s place today for OpenOffice.org training, the lab setup that I required was not available, they had windows machine with OpenOffice.org installed which do not have all the goodies that Novell Edition that is available on openSUSE has.

So in a minute we converted one openSUSE 10.3 machine into a KIWI-LTSP server, PXE booted all the 10 clients from the server and the training session was safely conducted on that

April 12 and 13, 2008 we organized a Symposium on Open Source Software at the Computer Center, Maharaja Sayajirao University(MSU) of Baroda, Vadodara, India. The event was attended, well over our capacity, by varied group such as students, educators, professionals working in industries around Baroda.

Thanks to Sandeep Menon, Novell India, for sending excellent kits for all the participants. Huge thanks also goes to Dr Dhanesh Patel, the symposium Director, Mr Vinay Pandya, Mr Devendra Jadav, Mr Kishor Gorasia - the symposium co-ordinators, Mr Dhaval Pancholi, Mr Brijesh Bhatt, Mr Ambrish Vadnekar, the technical team of the Computer Center for setting up entire IT infrastructure required, Mr Sandip for handling all our accounting and Punjabhai and all the other staff of the centre for their contributions.

The event inauguration panel consisted of the Chief Guest, Mrs Shobhna Jain, the Director General of the Railway Staff College, presided by the MSU Pro Vice-Chancellor Professor S M Joshi and the guest of honor Mr Ashok Shah, IT head of Modern Petrofils.

The training sessions were conducted by Mr Vinay Pandya and Mr Devendra Jadav on MySQL administration on openSUSE, Mr Nilesh Vaghela on Mailserver and Clustering on Red Hat Linux, Mr Ashish Bhavalkar on Squid proxy server on openSUSE and Oracle 10g implementation on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 and sessions on Virtualization and Thin Client Computing using KIWI-LTSP on openSUSE by me. We will be putting up online, the slides and other documentations given to the participants.

Professor Bhuvan Parekh, the Dean, the Faculty of Engineering and Technology presided over the closing ceremony.

I would not be doing the review of the event instead here is the review by Ishan, one of the participating students to give you an idea about how the event went (btw, yaar with any number of ‘a’ means ‘friends’).

Here is the walk-through of the event in pictures.

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday tried building Compiz Fusion git packages, compiz-fusion-plugins-git packages, that has new cmake build system, are broken in home:cyberorg repo

Thursday getting everything organised for Symposium on Open Source Software this Saturday and Sunday

Phew!

Dennis “onestone” Kasprzyk announced the release of Compiz 0.7.4 followed by an announcement of Compiz Fusion 0.7.4 release from Guillaume “iXce” Seguin.

Here is the major changes in Compiz from the last release:

• Configurable handling of overlapping output devices.
• Enhanced focus stealing prevention with configurable amount of focus stealing prevention.
• Added configurable, optional delay for edge actions to prevent accidental invocation.
• Generalized vertex system to improve plugin compatibility.
• Optimized Gaussian blur shader to support more hardware.

Highlight of Compiz Fusion release are:

• Expo has a new transformation mode: “Curve”
• New plugin: bicubic, which adds shader based bicubic filtering to improve the quality of scaled textures
• CCSM got Improved look of edge and button selector widgets and Advanced Search rewrite
• simple-ccsm got little enhancements: Added expo plugin to effects page, widget to configure global edge settings, and ed ‘mag’ plugin as ‘area zoom’ to zoom page

As always  packages for openSUSE are available via 1-click install from the openSUSE Build Service X11:XGL replository,  for more information of how to install or set everything up, see http://en.opensuse.org/Compiz_Fusion

THE MAHARAJA SAYAJIRAO UNIVERSITY OF BARODA

would like you to take part in

SYMPOSIUM ON OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE

(SOSS08)

12-13 April 2008.

IN ASSOCIATION WITH:

VIBRANT GNU/LINUX USER GROUP

Organized by

Computer Center,
The M.S.University of Baroda,
Opp DN Hall, Pratapganj
Vadodara – 390 002.
India

I’d be giving a talks and workshops on KIWI-LTSP, LTSP5 implementation on openSUSE and various Virtualization technologies on GNU/Linux operating systems. Talks and workshops on other advanced topics by eminent trainers and solution providers from the region also scheduled.

Download Programme flyer pdf

Edit: In case you have trouble downloading from above link, use this mirror.

Last week openSUSE 11.0 Alpha 3 was released, very early development release of what is to come in form of openSUSE 11.0 just a couple of months later.

On 11.0 release there is a plenty of choice for desktop effects, there is Compiz with all Compiz Fusion enhancements, there is KWin4 a composited window manager for KDE. To enable users to easily get their window manager of choice activated, openSUSE’s Stefan Dirsch and xorg team have worked to enable AIGLX by default on supported hardwares, and upon the installation of 1-click for binary blob drivers.

To enable Compiz, Rodrigo is working on “Desktop Effects” tab in gnome’s control-center “Appearance” caplet that would make it really easy to turn on effects. He is also working on getting something that is usable by all distributions in upstream gnome.

Compiz:

Compiz 0.7.2 in X11:XGL repo has been updated with the latest patch from Matthias Hopf which now enables to launch compiz without any startup hacks by just launching compiz –replace ccp or compiz –replace core glib gconf. So you can even use fusion-icon to launch compiz no matter what rendering method you are using (Xgl, AIGLX or nvidia native).

The home:cyberorg repo has been updated to the current git, allowing you to build experimental plugins that are not already packaged. Check out onestone’s cool new curved expo effect.

Google Summer of Code 2008:

Google Summer of Code 2008 has started, the organizations for this year have been selected, openSUSE project is one of them.

This is once in a lifetime opportunity for all the students to getinstant recognition, fame and fortune :). Only the best will be chosen for the projects from all over the world.

I along with Lars Vogdt, will be mentoring students interested in developing GUI front end for KIWI-LTSP if you are or you know anyone
in your College interested in taking up this project check out:

http://en.opensuse.org/Summer_of_Code_2008

There are other great project on offer, go through the whole list there and take up any that interests you.

See: http://code.google.com/p/google-summer-of-code/ for information on how to go about applying for internship.

Here is the list of all organizations participating in the SoC this year: http://code.google.com/soc/2008/

Spread this news to all your friends, mailing-lists you are member of and there are even a flyers that you can put up in your institute.