openSUSE 11.1 beta 4 was released earlier this week, and we need to work out the bugs before 11.1 final. Tomorrow we’re having a testing meeting in IRC to try some directed testing of new features in 11.1.

We’ll be meeting in IRC on Freenode, in the #opensuse-testing channel on Thursday, November 6 from 11:00 to 19:00 CET. (That’s 5:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Eastern, and 7:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m. Tokyo time…) We may go later in the day depending on how successful the testing is going — but the participants from our Nuremberg office will probably be ready to check out by 19:00 CET.

We’ll be working off the 11.1 Feature Test list here: http://en.opensuse.org/Testing:Features_11.1 It’s crucial that we get these features tested for the 11.1 release, as they’re new to 11.1 and we want to shake out any bugs we can. Unfortunately, not a lot of testing has been done for this list (at least, if the features have been tested, very little has been reported back…)

The workflow will look like this:

1. Connect to the #opensuse-testing channel, and the topic should have the numbers of the ongoing tests.
2. Look on the wiki page for a feature that isn’t tested. It should show:
   Status: ready to test
   Test Result: idle
3. Announce the number in channel so everyone knows that it’s being worked on.
4. Announce the results once the test has finished
5. One of the openSUSE team will enter the results of the test in the wiki and in the internal feature db.

All you need is a beta 4 install (or possibly just a system running the live CDs) and some time.

We want 11.1 to be the best release possible — which means that it needs to be well-tested before the release. If you want a bug-free (or as close as possible) release, then you can help get there by taking the time to help test. If not tomorrow — and we’re happy to have testers any ‘ol time — then any time is fine. Just grab the feature test page and go. Or, if you happen to encounter bugs in the release that don’t relate to features on the list, fire up bugzilla and let us know about those too.

If you have questions, sign up for the openSUSE testing mailing list, or feel free to ask in the #opensuse-factory channel on Freenode.

Robert Lihm posted the following to the openSUSE-marketing mailing list:

Today we started a openSUSE Build Service Webclient online survey.
We want to get more informations about the OBS-Webclient users, the
used hard and software and (potential) use cases.

If you use, used or want to use the OBS, please participate on the
survey and help us to make a solid Webclient 2.

If you’re a Webclient user, please help ‘em out! Take a few minutes to complete the survey and the results will help improve the openSUSE Build Service Webclient.

Good news, more than 50 percent of eligible voters have cast their ballots for the openSUSE Board Election. The bad news? Almost 50 percent of eligible voters have not cast their ballots for the openSUSE Board Election.

Good news? There’s still time! Ballots close on October 23rd, which gives more than a week before the election.

Still not sure who you want to vote for? Read the platforms over on the wiki. I won’t give any suggestions as to which candidates you should vote for, but I absolutely will say that you should vote! (And yes, I’ve voted already, so it’s too late to campaign for my vote.) As I understand it from the election officials, it looks to be a close race (not surprising) so every vote will count.

Just a quick post to say “Thanks!” to Dinar Valeev for working with the openSUSE Weekly News team to translate openSUSE Weekly News into Russian. (Еженедельные новости openSUSE)

I can’t overstate the importance of translated materials to help make participation in openSUSE easier. Thanks very much to Dinar for his efforts, and I hope to see many more translations of the weekly news. (Thanks also to Jan-Simon Möller for assisting Dinar with the process.)

Internationalization (I18n) is definitely going to be a repeating theme for openSUSE’s community growth over the next year.

You might think that after attending a dozen or so Linux and FOSS-related shows in the last year, that I’d stop getting excited about upcoming shows — but, you’d wrong! Especially when it comes to the Ohio LinuxFest (OLF), which is coming up on October 11, in Columbus, Ohio.

The Ohio LinuxFest is one of my favorite community driven shows. The entire thing is organized by volunteers, and attendance is free for anyone who wants to show up — though they also have a Supporter Package for $65 for the people who want to spend money to support the event. And, yes, a lot of people actually want to spend the $65, since it goes to a good cause and helps ensure that the event continues every year.

I’m doubly excited about this year’s event, because I’m going to be doing the morning keynote. (I’ll be blogging more about that…)

Want to learn more about OLF? One of the Ohio LinuxFest rockstars, Beth Lynn Eicher, is going to be on the Linux Link Tech Show tonight to talk about what goes in to organizing the event, and what there is to look forward to. Beth Lynn will be on at 8:30 Eastern, so don’t miss it. (Well, if you do, they will have podcasts after the fact…)

If you haven’t registered – do it! It’s a Saturday very well spent. Lots of great talks, a great group of people, and a ton of fun. If you’re anywhere near Columbus, Ohio on the 11th, please join us!

There’s also an #ohiolinux channel on OFTC if you want to chat with some of the organizers and enthusiasts around OLF. It’s a good spot to hang out if you have questions about OLF, or want to volunteer. They’re also having a “Digg Party” tonight to try to drive up awareness for the show.

Have you signed up to run for the openSUSE Board yet? If not, you have until Sept. 24, so don’t delay.

If you need inspiration, just check out this poster that Andreas Demmer put together. I need an Uncle Geeko t-shirt. Thanks Andreas!

Well, here we are, it’s September, and everybody’s talking about the election… the openSUSE board election, that is.

Marko Jung, who’s serving on the election committee, sent out a reminder today that the time is running short to declare the intent to run for a board seat, or to stake your claim to openSUSE membership so you can make your voice heard in the election. (Or both) The deadline is September 24th at 12:00 UTC.

The board is still in the formative stages, so I hope we’ll get several motivated and energetic openSUSE contributors to step up and run for the board. I’d also like to see more contributors (in and out of Novell) stepping up to claim membership in the project. We have a number of contributors who do great things for the project, but haven’t taken the time to go ahead and apply for membership.

If you have consistently:

• Worked on code or packaging
• Helped maintain the openSUSE wiki
• Worked on translations for openSUSE
• Provided user support on the mailing lists, IRC, and/or forums
• Promote openSUSE through talks/presentations and other methods

Then you’re member material. See the wiki for the perks involved with openSUSE membership.

Congratulations to the openSUSE Forums team! The merged forums were officially launched on June 10th of this year. In less than three months, the forums have pulled in 10,000 members. (Actually at 10,092 as of this writing, thanks to Kim for the 10K post.)

The forums team really put in a lot of time and effort to make the unified forums happen, and I think the numbers prove that their work was well-worth it.

If you haven’t signed up for the forums, please do so — and if you’d like to contribute to openSUSE in a non-developing capacity, might I suggest that helping other users on the forums is an excellent way to contribute. If you have a question about openSUSE – I would strongly recommend perusing the forums, and posting questions there if your question hasn’t been addressed previously, thus preserving the collective openSUSE wisdom for posterity.

Hack Week seems to be going well so far. Skimming Planet SUSE, I see that several people are blogging about their progress:

• Martin Vidner is working on OpenStreetMap Diaries via a GeoRSS Box Filter.
• AJ has an update from Hack Week in Nuremberg.
• Klaas Freitag is working on cross-compiling apps for Windows in the openSUSE Build Service.
• Jakub Steiner is working on a replacement font for Cholla.

Lots more going on. Looking forward to more updates on lizards.opensuse.org. Later this week, Novell and openSUSE folks will be hacking at the Utah Open Source Conference, so if you happen to be within driving distance of Salt Lake City Community College (Redwood Road campus) be sure to sign up and be there.

In case you missed the flurry of announcements last week and the weeks before, we’re doing Hack Week III this week (also known as “return of Hack Week,” “revenge of Hack Week,” or maybe “son of Hack Week”).

Skimming Planet SUSE I see we’re already off to a great start. Jakub Steiner (jimmac) is working on a free font replacement for Cholla, which is the non-free font used in marketing materials for openSUSE.

Robert Lihm has created some nice materials for us in the past, but because of the font issue, we’ve had a bit of a problem in terms of creating reusable materials that local groups can grab and edit to fit their own events and/or localize for non-English speakers. Obviously, that’s a problem, so I’m particularly pleased to see jimmac doing this for Hack Week.

I do hope we’ll have a healthy participation outside of Novell for Hack Week. I know we’ve got several community members who have been sponsored to travel to Novell offices and collaborate, and we’ve got Andrew Wafaa who’s been sponsored to go to Nuremberg to work on some video documentation of Hack Week and life in the Nuremberg office (”Geekos Gone Wild,” anyone?).

If you’d like to get involved this week, head over to ideas.opensuse.org and/or jump into IRC on the #opensuse-factory channel on Freenode.

And, as always, if this week doesn’t work for you, there’s no reason to feel constrained by an arbitrary set of dates. We have to pick a set of dates for Novell’s planning purposes, but there’s no reason at all that contributors in the larger community have to be bound by our timing. Since we have a three-day weekend coming up in the U.S., that’d be a perfect time for contributors to set aside and attack a project for openSUSE, or any time that’s convenient.