openSUSE

The openSUSE Board is calling for the formation of a working group to explore topics focused on project governance, operational models and rebranding for the project.

This follows a call on the openSUSE Project mailing list to formalize efforts, ideas and suggestions by community members in a centralized location.

In recent testing scenarios involving a build and NetworkManager, a significant issue has surfaced: the network stack becomes non-operational.

Users are advised to postpone system updates for now, but if users have already updated, use Snapper to rollback; it’s important to note that while the issue primarily affects GNOME setups with Wicked, it can also impact servers without these components.

This problem has been consistently reproducible since at least the 20240825 Tumbleweed build. Bind 9.20.1 received an update has changes to DNS query handling and system controls, which may have inadvertently contributed to the network stack issue.

Slowroll, which has a more modest update cadence than Tumbleweed, is gaining acceptance as a balance between the rapid updates of Tumbleweed’s rolling releases and the traditional Leap release.

Slowroll is nearly ready for full deployment and the development team has been working diligently to prepare the next version bump, with planned updates scheduled for July 9, August 9 and Sept. 9. These updates are expected to maintain a consistent monthly cadence to ensure users have timely and stable updates.

One of the critical updates pulled in will include the latest OpenSSH CVE fixes, which have already been made available in Tumbleweed. This fix enhances the security of Slowroll & ensure that it remains a robust and reliable distribution for users.

Highlighted Features of Slowroll

Balanced Update Cadence: Slowroll offers a monthly rolling update cycle that provides users with the latest features and security updates while ensuring stability through extensive testing and validation.

Beta Phase: Slowroll is now in the Beta phase, indicating its near readiness for full deployment. Users can expect a reliable experience with continuous improvements.

Continuous Improvement: The distribution integrates big updates approximately every month, alongside continuous bug fixes and security patches, ensuring a secure and up-to-date system.

Statistics and Status

According to the latest statistics available on the Slowroll Stats page:

Tumbleweed had 2813 updated packages since the last version bump

Slowroll received 1316 updates from 871 different packages and only 339 updated rpms are Slowroll-specific builds

Origins and Purpose

Slowroll, introduced in 2023, was designed as an experimental distribution. Its primary goal is to offer a slower rolling release compared to Tumbleweed, thus enhancing stability without compromising on access to new features. The distribution continuously evolves with big updates integrated approximately every month, supported by regular bug fixes and security updates.

It’s crucial to understand that Slowroll is not intended to replace Leap. Instead, it provides an alternative for users who desire more up-to-date software at a slower pace than Tumbleweed but faster than Leap.

If you try Slowroll, have a lot of fun - rolling… slowly!

Based on https://old.reddit.com/r/openSUSE/comments/1d798rc/another_update_breakage/ one option is to wait for the next snapshot, what are you guys doing?

Tried to update the packages this morning, got the following error:

Dependency resolution failed:

the to be installed Mesa-32bit-24.0.5-1699.376.pm.1.x86_64 requires 'Mesa = 24.0.5', but this requirement cannot be provided the installed Mesa-libGL1-24.0.3-372.1.x86_64 requires 'Mesa = 24.0.3', but this requirement cannot be provided the installed Mesa-24.0.3-372.1.x86_64 requires 'Mesa-libGL1 = 24.0.3', but this requirement cannot be provided

Follows a list of dependency issues.

I am using a mix of packman and opensuse repos, which might be the cause of the issue.

I had a look at this thread (sorry it's Reddit), and the general advice is to wait for a few days for the packman package to be updated. https://old.reddit.com/r/openSUSE/comments/1bo3yix/issues_with_packman_mesa_update/

I'll hold on for now, and see how it goes in a few days

cross-posted from: https://swg-empire.de/post/842090

Finally the Onboard on screen keyboard works on Wayland

This is too great not to share. Wayland devs hate this trick! I'll copy what I did from the bug report.

As a workaround you can use https://github.com/Supreeeme/extest to make Onboard work. Compile it as a 64 bit library and launch onboard with

env LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib64/libextest.so onboard

If you want to use it with KDE you can add

X-KDE-Wayland-VirtualKeyboard=true

to its desktop-file.

I used kwin rules to get rid of window decorations and have it always on top without stealing focus. If someone knows how to make all other windows smaller when it's active that would be great.

Only problem remaining is that sometimes the keys get stuck on touch input. At least on my Steam Deck on OpenSUSE.

I installed it over the weekend and so far it's working great! I'm using Wayland with my AMD GPU, and the only hiccup I had was I needed to change my shell to bash (I use fish), which is fine since I have Konsole set to use fish as well.

Have you used KDE Plasma 6 yet? Thoughts?

I have a soft spot in my heart for SUSE, started with it from Windows many years ago, since have tried many distros. I always kind of want to come back, but Tumbleweed always seems to break on me, last time it was some kind of libsoup something that managed to make every XMPP app broken. I have been on Arch since then, but was thinking Slowroll might have fixes in before the next update.

I am not sure where I want to land, want rolling release but maybe more stability.

The openSUSE community is pleased to announce that it will have short sessions aimed at encouraging people on how to contribute to the project.

A group of volunteers will present short 15-minute sessions that are streamed and/or recorded on openSUSE’s YouTube channel that are aimed at teaching people about packaging, using the Open Build Service, creating tests for openQA and other development areas.

The first session about “Basic use of OBS/osc using a version bump as an example” is set to begin tomorrow, on Feb. 15 at 21:00 UTC.

Another talk, “Packaging Guidelines (Patch Policies) and Submission of New Packages”, is scheduled for Feb. 27 at 16:00 UTC.

More sessions are expected to be scheduled for future dates.

The sessions are listed on the openSUSE Calendar; look for the Contribution Workshop sessions marked in orange.

Those who are interested in presenting should fill in the blank area for future sessions listed in the email about the events.

Giving a session is a great way to give back to the community and provides opportunities to teach others skills and knowledge about open-source development.

Might be a noob question, but I dont understand this. I'm running Tumbleweed with Gnome. When I search for LibreOffice (the whole suite, not a single program) in the Software app, I can only install it as flatpack. Still I can install it via zypper install libreoffice which installs it from the repos, I guess. Why doesn't Software find LibreOffice in the repos?