Looking for a greener distribution?

Join the thundring herd of geekos!

Last week we released openSUSE 12.3 and the responses from the community and the press were better than ever before. Lots of journalists announced we've moved firmly in the top spot or top-three of favorite distro's and quite a few are running openSUSE now. Seeing the many blog posts, tweets, facebook posts and Google+ discussions, the community feels very much the same!

Now maybe you're not 100% happy with your current distribution. Maybe it isn't entirely stable or you sometimes would like it if things just worked. Or you worry about the decision making process and the future of your current choice. Maybe you don't want to wait for stuff to compile anymore.

I know, the technical differences between distributions are not huge. I'd even argue they are small - differences in philosophy and how they are developed are bigger, however. And I can imagine one feels more comfortable with a project which picks collaboration and sharing over secrecy and Not Invented Here. I know what I prefer. Technically, openSUSE belongs to the top distributions as well. And while nothing is perfect we at least make it darn easy to fix stuff without administrative sillyness.

So whatever the reason for looking somewhere else - I think it is fair to say that openSUSE should be on your short list of distributions to try.

To help with the trying, I called in help from our community and created an openSUSE introduction and a cheat sheet for moving over to openSUSE from a variety of other distributions. Check it out on news.opensuse.org!

As bonus, I'll just give you three links that'll be helpful getting your openSUSE up and running quickly:

• Androbit offers some proprietary applications and drivers
• opensuse-community.org has a one-click-install for patented multimedia stuff
• the software.opensuse.org packages overview is the easiest way to find and install extra or updated software on openSUSE.
• Get some more software installation tips and read some interesting KDE and GNOME tips & tricks.
  

And of course you can download openSUSE 12.3 on software.opensuse.org and find out what is new in the announcement.

Have a lot of fun!

openSUSE 12.3 is out!

Edit: So, now, really, the smoke is green and openSUSE 12.3 is out!

It's been an interesting release cycle for me. It was my first full release cycle (ok, short one, just 6 months) with the new openSUSE team. Interesting ride.

But today, it is party time. Tonight I will finally see the famous Artefakt as that's where the party will be - see the event here. Yay!

In the last days we released three sneak previews of what's new in openSUSE 12.3, each getting a lot of reads and comments:

• For desktop users with a intro to GNOME (I'm new to that, still) and a series of more 'pro' tips for KDE apps as well as a newbie-friendly intro video to KDE Plasma Desktop by +Cameron Wiebe.
  
  I must admit that writing the GNOME part was a tad frustrating, used as I am to a KDE environment and all its perks and some things drove me almost mad (or wonder what @#$%@ designed $SPECIFIC_THING). But at the same time, it is completely obvious that a great many things are extremely well designed in GNOME Shell. A number of basic workflows are clearly well thought out and polished and that is very noticeably missing on the KDE side. As Alex Fiestas said: you notice that not many KDE developers ever start their favorite desktop on a 'fresh' user account. Application windows which require resizing is really the least of the problem there - yes, the defaults are still not very nice. But once you start configuring, you can have it any way YOU want, an unbeatable advantage if you've got a busy life like me. As I write in the preview, I think it's a trade-off.
• Will and Michal wrote a "openSUSE 12.3 for servers" article with OpenStack and some other things. Personally, I'm not exactly deep into that stuff but hey, if you run a server I bet it is awesome ;-)
• The third sneak preview was about software handling and getting new stuff on openSUSE. We've got our famous Open Build Service - yes, the 200K packages on it and the 35K accounts do not all point to unique packages or active packagers but there is plenty of action there. We've got a great search front end with software.opensuse.org and a less-nice-but-still doing-the-job one-click-install to get the goodies. When will that new one-click-install be finished, I wonder?

Now, let me include two video's I'm extremely happy with: the KDE intro and a demonstration of installing the new LibreOffice 4.0 from OBS.




PS I hope to go to the Owncloud 5 release party in Berlin, maybe cu there ;-)

Now, go, get openSUSE 12.3!

Impressive popcorn

Yesterday, our little Popcorn had to undergo an operation on her knee. Of course we were very worried and when we got back a completely loopy doggy, Camila almost canceled her trip to Spain. But in the end, she entrusted our girl to my care.

This morning I gave Popcorn some time to sleep in and asked her if she was interested in talking a walk around 11:30. Well, she was - almost jumped out of the bed, which probably would've landed us right back at the hospital. Outside, she limped around like she didn't have a big surgery last night! The resilience of this little girl surprises me. I'll have to keep a close eye on her, if I don't she'll be walking stairs and jumping on stuff in no time and the doctor said she can't...

For your amusement, some pictures. No pictures of a drugged Popcorn, that's not appropriate for little children and besides, we didn't take any.


My girls :D

Running around like nothing's ever gonna take her down

"I usually can get under there so why wouldn't I be able to do that now? Sure I can..."

This is where she'll stay so I can keep an eye on her!

Time for a nap

On Open Innovation and Open Governance

Heya,

As I wrote in my blog yesterday, on Thursday the 15th I'll be leading a discussion session about open governance in the Open Innovation track at the 'Summit of new thinking' in Berlin.

Edit: The video of my talk is up...

#SON12: Jos Poortvliet - Open Governance done right: creating rules without ruling from newthinking on Vimeo.

Open Innovation

I'm actually looking forward to that: the 'open innovation' thing was what once got me professionally interested in Free Software communities (while studying Organizational Psychology) and I still consider it an exciting topic. I did my thesis on open innovation but 10 years ago there was barely any research done in the area of open source governance and when I asked questions to my professors, blank stares where the result. These days, things are different (see for example this interview): the Academic world has seen what open source organizational methods can do and there is quite a bit to read about it.

Open Governance

The idea behind Open Innovation is to involve the entire organization with innovation and improving things. Both big and small - we're not just talking about creating 'The Next Big Thing' but also improving current products, structures, processes and more. Think about it as bottom-up innovation.

That only works if you have the right governance: the right structure and rules. Innovation is the first thing you stifle if you make mistakes in how you set up an organization. And you can't just create a 'department of innovation', stuff a bunch of folks in a room and tell them to innovate. It just doesn't work that way. Innovation comes from interaction: people talking to people. Sales together with Engineering, that kind of stuff. Creating an organization which is conductive to innovation is not easy.

Open Source communities of course excel at this: their organically grown structures and informal rules let people 'do what they want' and freedom is the foundation of innovative cultures. But these ways of working have their limitations - you can't be informal forever, not if you grow big. At some point, some guidance has to be there to prevent things from clogging up the wheels of innovation. Things like personal conflicts, fights about creative directions, strategic disagreements. And this is, again, where governance comes in. My session is sub-titled "creating rules without ruling", as in my opinion, it is more about writing down existing but implicit rules than creating new ones.

Qt Open Governance

Interesting in this regard is the Open Governance the Qt project is working on: building such structures 'from scratch' is not easy. You have to find out where you agree, yes, but while writing things down, implicit things become explicit and that goes for (potential) conflicts then too. But being able to do this in a fresh community, before ideas get entrenched! Having a chance to set direction in a 'soft' way. Terribly exciting!

Meet me, talk to me!

If you want to share thoughts with me on this topic, meet me at QtDevDays or at the Summit of New Thinking - or other events in the future (how about FOSDEM?).

In a while, Crocodile!

Edit:
A few video's has been created for the conference. Esp the first one is funny ;-)

Check 'em out:
What is Open Innovation? (Chinese Whispers Game)
Open Innovation Track Day 1
Open Innovation Track Day 2
Rule No.1 for innovation: Have fun!

Pre and post conference blues...

Heya all,

Since the Akademy conference in Estonia beginning of August I've been rather quiet as I have been struggling with health issues. After loosing some blood and undergoing a few *scopy's the people with stethoscopes don't seem too worried so neither am I but it has been unpleasant at times. Not too many tests left - an MRI and another 'scopy' in December, I hope they can give me a diagnosis by then.

It has been frustrating to have had to cancel trips to the openSUSE Summit, COSCUP, Brazil and more. And at the openSUSE Conference (my first trip in 3 months) I had to skip the evening fun - instead opting for quiet food-in-the-hotel and early bed. Believe me: not nice.

new team: 'the openSUSE team'

Luckily, I'm getting back on my feet and at a recent visit to Nürnberg I even went out a night with my new team mates. Yup, a new team - if you're following the openSUSE mailing lists, you probably have heard that already. In my two years of 'community manager' of openSUSE, I've worked with people around the company and community - but I was not really part of a formal team. Independence is nice but it also can make you take on a few things too many - I know I did. So, when it was decided to try and re-arrange things with regards to the openSUSE Boosters team, I decided it was a good idea to join the team and help it find directions. Together we can do more, and all that.

It means the scope of the former boosters team (now just 'openSUSE team') has widened: I will of course continue to care about the things I used to care about. Things like the atmosphere in the community, governance, strategy - and of course marketing, the ambassador program and presenting a friendly face to the wider Free Software world. But I'll be doing that together with the rest of the team now, not alone!

Things are quite different now, so let's see how it'll go.

Conference last month

So, the openSUSE conference was my first event since a while. It was quite awesome, with a lot of faces I hadn't seen in a while and a lot of excitement. We organized a bunch of interviews with people, which will be released over the coming months. On the openSUSE days, a few important things were discussed, results of which have been posted to mailing lists. I'm working on a summary of that but it'll take a bit longer. One thing I already managed to change: Richard gave some feedback on the 'we believe' poster and we decided it needed a fourth item. Which I added, see the image on the right.

You can get the source for the poster in our github repo.

Conferences coming

There'll be more events, of course. On short notice, I'll be at the QtDevDays in Berlin - it's practically next door and a great way to meet people. I've heard we can expect 500+ people there from all over the (huge) Qt ecosystem. It'll be interesting to talk to people outside of the usual Linux crowd: Qt has managed to grow well beyond the Linux Desktop into an industry standard for a wide variety of use cases.

Open Innovation and Open Governance

On Thursday the 15th I'll be leading a discussion session about open governance in the Open Innovation track at the 'Summit of new thinking', also in Berlin.

I'll write a tad more about that in a blog tomorrow.

For now, I have a conference to dress up for, so see you later, alligator ;-)

Video interviews with some very interesting folk

Heya,

In the last week I've been doing some video interviews with a bunch of interesting people who will speak at the upcoming LinuxDays/oSC/Gentoo/SUSE conf in Prague. Except for Agustin they all speak at the special 'Future Media' track which I proposed after having visited Re:Publica in Berlin. At Republica I saw a challenge for Free Software: connect better to people outside of our 'usual' crowd. This track was initially more ambitious but due to my recent health issues it hasn't turned out all that I wanted - still, it features a number of really interesting speakers and subjects.

In the following video's you can hear these speakers explain what they will talk about. Note that there are a few more speakers, most notably Shane Coughlan who will talk about open source flying Drones to help people in disaster area's and Ramon Roca who build up a 'free and open' broadband network in Spain!!!

Bas van Abel: If you can't open it, you don't own it!

Bas van Abel told me to start demanding open products. I found this interview really, REALLY interesting. I knew Open Source and Software Freedom have spawned movements well outside of the realm of software (Creative Commons anyone?) but this idea of decentralized production, getting closer to the products we use daily - really cool.

Bas explains fablabs and his vision in the interview below. Click here for blip.

Armijn Hemel

Many of you probably know 'Linux Defender' Armijn "I've been suing big companies since 2005" Hemel. He's been active at GPL-violations.org (hence the lawsuits) and is now official "European coordinator of the Linux Defenders" at OIN. I published this I believe last week already, watch it:

Click here for a blip.tv link.

Agustin Benito

Agustin Benito, our keynote speaker, who will talk about the importance of Small and Medium businesses for Linux World Dominance. See here for Agustin on youtube or click here for a link to blip.tv

Thijs de Vries: Gamification and Engaging Design

Thijs de Vries' presents session on Gamification, using concepts from gaming in software design.

Thijs de Vries' talk on Gamification provides inspiration for software developers who want to explore design concepts and create a richer user experience. Discover how software developers are using ideas from the world of gaming to create more intuitive user inferfaces, engaging websites and fun. As Free Software developer, getting your users engaged in your application is a good thing - the more people care, the more likely they are to be willing to contribute.

Watch Thijs de Vries below or click here for blip.tv if you prefer that.

Why Groupware matters

Georg Greve's 'What you don't understand will still control you' takes a look at the importance of Free Software. This interview was also enlightening despite me having known Georg quite well since a few years. His explicit goal after leaving the FSFE he founded was to 'solve' the problem of moving businesses to Free Software. According to him, the 'office challenge' consists of three pillars: the browser; the office suite; and groupware. While the browser and the office suite are well taken care off, free software groupware solutions are still very limited. And that blocks the other pillars. If you get a free office license with your groupware solution, why use LibreOffice? And if the collaboration tools integrated with our office and groupware require you to use a Microsoft browser, why also install Firefox?

The current Groupware solutions have issues, be it technical, governance-wise or in terms of licensing. Kolab seemed the best solution, but it needed commercial backing for stuff like enterprise level support, marketing and assisting in deployments. So he started KolabSys! It's a tad longer, this interview, and the video quality might not be perfect, but just listen. Georg really has something to say!


Click here for blip.

More

There's a more extensive article at news.opensuse.org with a quick Q&A with Ramon Roca (thanks zoumpis!) about the Broadband he set up and later this week (that'll be weekend, I think) we'll publish a Q&A with Shane about his flying drones!

And even more!

Of course these are just a few speakers from one track, there's really a lot of interesting stuff at the conference in Prague and it starts next week Saturday! So, go, book, register (really, don't forget to register: your stomach will thank you for the food and beer!) and come join us.

As usual, this isn't a only-openSUSE-thing, we've got people from Ubuntu, Fedora, Gentoo (heck, we co-locate with Gentoo) and many other distro's there. It is Linux for Everyone and it's shaping up to be a great event! We have well over 500 registrations already and I'm betting lots of folks haven't registered yet.

As the interviews show, we have an incredible schedule lined up with speakers about a wide variety of topics, both going in-depth into core Linux technologies as well as folks talking about the why and how of Software (and hardware!) Freedom.

And of course, entrance is free. What else?

The conference will start at October 20 and end on the 23th. Be there!

Help the openSUSE Conference Team

At the LinuxDays* conference in Prague we have a 'special' track about the effects of modern Media on our life - think about the risks of not owning your data in the cloud (and what is done against that by awesome people building Free networks and open cloud software), the benefits open source can bring (using open source technology and methods for disaster relief), and more.

I specifically wanted this track because I believe it is important to think about why we do what we do and to introduce people to the 'spirit' behind Free Software.

We've got a handful of really interesting speakers lined up there and we should promote that. The topic is important and of course it'd be good if more people showed up!

A good way of promoting this is by giving people a taste of what will be discussed through doing a few interviews with these speakers. You can find the list of speakers on this page and I have contact details of all of them. As questions, the following would most likely get (and keep) them talking:

• Tell us about yourself
• What will you talk about
• How did you get involved with that and why do you care about it so much, why does it matter?
• What do you have to say to the (potential) visitors of the conference, what would you say is your message?

It would of course be even more awesome if we could interview some of these folks on video, say via a Skype or Google Hangout session...

Anyway, I need someone to help me with this. It is easy: all you have to do is mail these folks (I'll give you their addresses), ask them if they ware OK doing an interview, if OK either do the skype/google hangout session (maybe together with me?) or mail the questions, collect the answers, maybe do a bit of back-and-forth if things are unclear, and put it all in 1 or a few articles with me.

Upside: you not only get to help a big Linux event in Prague and do a bit of writing with someone who has some experience, but you also get to chat with these very interesting folks!

Who wants to help? Mail me... jos at the opensuse servers ;-)





* and openSUSE Conference and GENTOO miniconf and SUSE Labs conf... If you have a 4-in-one conference, no common name (but a common slogan: Bootstrapping Awesome), how do you call it? Hard, hard... Poor me... need to think about that next time we co-locate :D