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action #743 » test.html

asciidoc output - _miska_, 2013-09-03 06:57

 
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="application/xhtml+xml; charset=UTF-8" />
<meta name="generator" content="AsciiDoc 8.6.8" />
<title>openSUSE 12.3 – Free, Open and Awesome</title>
<style type="text/css">
/* Shared CSS for AsciiDoc xhtml11 and html5 backends */

/* Default font. */
body {
font-family: Georgia,serif;
}

/* Title font. */
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6,
div.title, caption.title,
thead, p.table.header,
#toctitle,
#author, #revnumber, #revdate, #revremark,
#footer {
font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
}

body {
margin: 1em 5% 1em 5%;
}

a {
color: blue;
text-decoration: underline;
}
a:visited {
color: fuchsia;
}

em {
font-style: italic;
color: navy;
}

strong {
font-weight: bold;
color: #083194;
}

h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {
color: #527bbd;
margin-top: 1.2em;
margin-bottom: 0.5em;
line-height: 1.3;
}

h1, h2, h3 {
border-bottom: 2px solid silver;
}
h2 {
padding-top: 0.5em;
}
h3 {
float: left;
}
h3 + * {
clear: left;
}
h5 {
font-size: 1.0em;
}

div.sectionbody {
margin-left: 0;
}

hr {
border: 1px solid silver;
}

p {
margin-top: 0.5em;
margin-bottom: 0.5em;
}

ul, ol, li > p {
margin-top: 0;
}
ul > li { color: #aaa; }
ul > li > * { color: black; }

.monospaced, code, pre {
font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;
font-size: inherit;
color: navy;
padding: 0;
margin: 0;
}


#author {
color: #527bbd;
font-weight: bold;
font-size: 1.1em;
}
#email {
}
#revnumber, #revdate, #revremark {
}

#footer {
font-size: small;
border-top: 2px solid silver;
padding-top: 0.5em;
margin-top: 4.0em;
}
#footer-text {
float: left;
padding-bottom: 0.5em;
}
#footer-badges {
float: right;
padding-bottom: 0.5em;
}

#preamble {
margin-top: 1.5em;
margin-bottom: 1.5em;
}
div.imageblock, div.exampleblock, div.verseblock,
div.quoteblock, div.literalblock, div.listingblock, div.sidebarblock,
div.admonitionblock {
margin-top: 1.0em;
margin-bottom: 1.5em;
}
div.admonitionblock {
margin-top: 2.0em;
margin-bottom: 2.0em;
margin-right: 10%;
color: #606060;
}

div.content { /* Block element content. */
padding: 0;
}

/* Block element titles. */
div.title, caption.title {
color: #527bbd;
font-weight: bold;
text-align: left;
margin-top: 1.0em;
margin-bottom: 0.5em;
}
div.title + * {
margin-top: 0;
}

td div.title:first-child {
margin-top: 0.0em;
}
div.content div.title:first-child {
margin-top: 0.0em;
}
div.content + div.title {
margin-top: 0.0em;
}

div.sidebarblock > div.content {
background: #ffffee;
border: 1px solid #dddddd;
border-left: 4px solid #f0f0f0;
padding: 0.5em;
}

div.listingblock > div.content {
border: 1px solid #dddddd;
border-left: 5px solid #f0f0f0;
background: #f8f8f8;
padding: 0.5em;
}

div.quoteblock, div.verseblock {
padding-left: 1.0em;
margin-left: 1.0em;
margin-right: 10%;
border-left: 5px solid #f0f0f0;
color: #888;
}

div.quoteblock > div.attribution {
padding-top: 0.5em;
text-align: right;
}

div.verseblock > pre.content {
font-family: inherit;
font-size: inherit;
}
div.verseblock > div.attribution {
padding-top: 0.75em;
text-align: left;
}
/* DEPRECATED: Pre version 8.2.7 verse style literal block. */
div.verseblock + div.attribution {
text-align: left;
}

div.admonitionblock .icon {
vertical-align: top;
font-size: 1.1em;
font-weight: bold;
text-decoration: underline;
color: #527bbd;
padding-right: 0.5em;
}
div.admonitionblock td.content {
padding-left: 0.5em;
border-left: 3px solid #dddddd;
}

div.exampleblock > div.content {
border-left: 3px solid #dddddd;
padding-left: 0.5em;
}

div.imageblock div.content { padding-left: 0; }
span.image img { border-style: none; }
a.image:visited { color: white; }

dl {
margin-top: 0.8em;
margin-bottom: 0.8em;
}
dt {
margin-top: 0.5em;
margin-bottom: 0;
font-style: normal;
color: navy;
}
dd > *:first-child {
margin-top: 0.1em;
}

ul, ol {
list-style-position: outside;
}
ol.arabic {
list-style-type: decimal;
}
ol.loweralpha {
list-style-type: lower-alpha;
}
ol.upperalpha {
list-style-type: upper-alpha;
}
ol.lowerroman {
list-style-type: lower-roman;
}
ol.upperroman {
list-style-type: upper-roman;
}

div.compact ul, div.compact ol,
div.compact p, div.compact p,
div.compact div, div.compact div {
margin-top: 0.1em;
margin-bottom: 0.1em;
}

tfoot {
font-weight: bold;
}
td > div.verse {
white-space: pre;
}

div.hdlist {
margin-top: 0.8em;
margin-bottom: 0.8em;
}
div.hdlist tr {
padding-bottom: 15px;
}
dt.hdlist1.strong, td.hdlist1.strong {
font-weight: bold;
}
td.hdlist1 {
vertical-align: top;
font-style: normal;
padding-right: 0.8em;
color: navy;
}
td.hdlist2 {
vertical-align: top;
}
div.hdlist.compact tr {
margin: 0;
padding-bottom: 0;
}

.comment {
background: yellow;
}

.footnote, .footnoteref {
font-size: 0.8em;
}

span.footnote, span.footnoteref {
vertical-align: super;
}

#footnotes {
margin: 20px 0 20px 0;
padding: 7px 0 0 0;
}

#footnotes div.footnote {
margin: 0 0 5px 0;
}

#footnotes hr {
border: none;
border-top: 1px solid silver;
height: 1px;
text-align: left;
margin-left: 0;
width: 20%;
min-width: 100px;
}

div.colist td {
padding-right: 0.5em;
padding-bottom: 0.3em;
vertical-align: top;
}
div.colist td img {
margin-top: 0.3em;
}

@media print {
#footer-badges { display: none; }
}

#toc {
margin-bottom: 2.5em;
}

#toctitle {
color: #527bbd;
font-size: 1.1em;
font-weight: bold;
margin-top: 1.0em;
margin-bottom: 0.1em;
}

div.toclevel0, div.toclevel1, div.toclevel2, div.toclevel3, div.toclevel4 {
margin-top: 0;
margin-bottom: 0;
}
div.toclevel2 {
margin-left: 2em;
font-size: 0.9em;
}
div.toclevel3 {
margin-left: 4em;
font-size: 0.9em;
}
div.toclevel4 {
margin-left: 6em;
font-size: 0.9em;
}

span.aqua { color: aqua; }
span.black { color: black; }
span.blue { color: blue; }
span.fuchsia { color: fuchsia; }
span.gray { color: gray; }
span.green { color: green; }
span.lime { color: lime; }
span.maroon { color: maroon; }
span.navy { color: navy; }
span.olive { color: olive; }
span.purple { color: purple; }
span.red { color: red; }
span.silver { color: silver; }
span.teal { color: teal; }
span.white { color: white; }
span.yellow { color: yellow; }

span.aqua-background { background: aqua; }
span.black-background { background: black; }
span.blue-background { background: blue; }
span.fuchsia-background { background: fuchsia; }
span.gray-background { background: gray; }
span.green-background { background: green; }
span.lime-background { background: lime; }
span.maroon-background { background: maroon; }
span.navy-background { background: navy; }
span.olive-background { background: olive; }
span.purple-background { background: purple; }
span.red-background { background: red; }
span.silver-background { background: silver; }
span.teal-background { background: teal; }
span.white-background { background: white; }
span.yellow-background { background: yellow; }

span.big { font-size: 2em; }
span.small { font-size: 0.6em; }

span.underline { text-decoration: underline; }
span.overline { text-decoration: overline; }
span.line-through { text-decoration: line-through; }

div.unbreakable { page-break-inside: avoid; }


/*
* xhtml11 specific
*
* */

div.tableblock {
margin-top: 1.0em;
margin-bottom: 1.5em;
}
div.tableblock > table {
border: 3px solid #527bbd;
}
thead, p.table.header {
font-weight: bold;
color: #527bbd;
}
p.table {
margin-top: 0;
}
/* Because the table frame attribute is overriden by CSS in most browsers. */
div.tableblock > table[frame="void"] {
border-style: none;
}
div.tableblock > table[frame="hsides"] {
border-left-style: none;
border-right-style: none;
}
div.tableblock > table[frame="vsides"] {
border-top-style: none;
border-bottom-style: none;
}


/*
* html5 specific
*
* */

table.tableblock {
margin-top: 1.0em;
margin-bottom: 1.5em;
}
thead, p.tableblock.header {
font-weight: bold;
color: #527bbd;
}
p.tableblock {
margin-top: 0;
}
table.tableblock {
border-width: 3px;
border-spacing: 0px;
border-style: solid;
border-color: #527bbd;
border-collapse: collapse;
}
th.tableblock, td.tableblock {
border-width: 1px;
padding: 4px;
border-style: solid;
border-color: #527bbd;
}

table.tableblock.frame-topbot {
border-left-style: hidden;
border-right-style: hidden;
}
table.tableblock.frame-sides {
border-top-style: hidden;
border-bottom-style: hidden;
}
table.tableblock.frame-none {
border-style: hidden;
}

th.tableblock.halign-left, td.tableblock.halign-left {
text-align: left;
}
th.tableblock.halign-center, td.tableblock.halign-center {
text-align: center;
}
th.tableblock.halign-right, td.tableblock.halign-right {
text-align: right;
}

th.tableblock.valign-top, td.tableblock.valign-top {
vertical-align: top;
}
th.tableblock.valign-middle, td.tableblock.valign-middle {
vertical-align: middle;
}
th.tableblock.valign-bottom, td.tableblock.valign-bottom {
vertical-align: bottom;
}


/*
* manpage specific
*
* */

body.manpage h1 {
padding-top: 0.5em;
padding-bottom: 0.5em;
border-top: 2px solid silver;
border-bottom: 2px solid silver;
}
body.manpage h2 {
border-style: none;
}
body.manpage div.sectionbody {
margin-left: 3em;
}

@media print {
body.manpage div#toc { display: none; }
}


</style>
<script type="text/javascript">
/*<![CDATA[*/
var asciidoc = { // Namespace.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Table Of Contents generator
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

/* Author: Mihai Bazon, September 2002
* http://students.infoiasi.ro/~mishoo
*
* Table Of Content generator
* Version: 0.4
*
* Feel free to use this script under the terms of the GNU General Public
* License, as long as you do not remove or alter this notice.
*/

/* modified by Troy D. Hanson, September 2006. License: GPL */
/* modified by Stuart Rackham, 2006, 2009. License: GPL */

// toclevels = 1..4.
toc: function (toclevels) {

function getText(el) {
var text = "";
for (var i = el.firstChild; i != null; i = i.nextSibling) {
if (i.nodeType == 3 /* Node.TEXT_NODE */) // IE doesn't speak constants.
text += i.data;
else if (i.firstChild != null)
text += getText(i);
}
return text;
}

function TocEntry(el, text, toclevel) {
this.element = el;
this.text = text;
this.toclevel = toclevel;
}

function tocEntries(el, toclevels) {
var result = new Array;
var re = new RegExp('[hH]([1-'+(toclevels+1)+'])');
// Function that scans the DOM tree for header elements (the DOM2
// nodeIterator API would be a better technique but not supported by all
// browsers).
var iterate = function (el) {
for (var i = el.firstChild; i != null; i = i.nextSibling) {
if (i.nodeType == 1 /* Node.ELEMENT_NODE */) {
var mo = re.exec(i.tagName);
if (mo && (i.getAttribute("class") || i.getAttribute("className")) != "float") {
result[result.length] = new TocEntry(i, getText(i), mo[1]-1);
}
iterate(i);
}
}
}
iterate(el);
return result;
}

var toc = document.getElementById("toc");
if (!toc) {
return;
}

// Delete existing TOC entries in case we're reloading the TOC.
var tocEntriesToRemove = [];
var i;
for (i = 0; i < toc.childNodes.length; i++) {
var entry = toc.childNodes[i];
if (entry.nodeName.toLowerCase() == 'div'
&& entry.getAttribute("class")
&& entry.getAttribute("class").match(/^toclevel/))
tocEntriesToRemove.push(entry);
}
for (i = 0; i < tocEntriesToRemove.length; i++) {
toc.removeChild(tocEntriesToRemove[i]);
}

// Rebuild TOC entries.
var entries = tocEntries(document.getElementById("content"), toclevels);
for (var i = 0; i < entries.length; ++i) {
var entry = entries[i];
if (entry.element.id == "")
entry.element.id = "_toc_" + i;
var a = document.createElement("a");
a.href = "#" + entry.element.id;
a.appendChild(document.createTextNode(entry.text));
var div = document.createElement("div");
div.appendChild(a);
div.className = "toclevel" + entry.toclevel;
toc.appendChild(div);
}
if (entries.length == 0)
toc.parentNode.removeChild(toc);
},


/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Footnotes generator
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

/* Based on footnote generation code from:
* http://www.brandspankingnew.net/archive/2005/07/format_footnote.html
*/

footnotes: function () {
// Delete existing footnote entries in case we're reloading the footnodes.
var i;
var noteholder = document.getElementById("footnotes");
if (!noteholder) {
return;
}
var entriesToRemove = [];
for (i = 0; i < noteholder.childNodes.length; i++) {
var entry = noteholder.childNodes[i];
if (entry.nodeName.toLowerCase() == 'div' && entry.getAttribute("class") == "footnote")
entriesToRemove.push(entry);
}
for (i = 0; i < entriesToRemove.length; i++) {
noteholder.removeChild(entriesToRemove[i]);
}

// Rebuild footnote entries.
var cont = document.getElementById("content");
var spans = cont.getElementsByTagName("span");
var refs = {};
var n = 0;
for (i=0; i<spans.length; i++) {
if (spans[i].className == "footnote") {
n++;
var note = spans[i].getAttribute("data-note");
if (!note) {
// Use [\s\S] in place of . so multi-line matches work.
// Because JavaScript has no s (dotall) regex flag.
note = spans[i].innerHTML.match(/\s*\[([\s\S]*)]\s*/)[1];
spans[i].innerHTML =
"[<a id='_footnoteref_" + n + "' href='#_footnote_" + n +
"' title='View footnote' class='footnote'>" + n + "</a>]";
spans[i].setAttribute("data-note", note);
}
noteholder.innerHTML +=
"<div class='footnote' id='_footnote_" + n + "'>" +
"<a href='#_footnoteref_" + n + "' title='Return to text'>" +
n + "</a>. " + note + "</div>";
var id =spans[i].getAttribute("id");
if (id != null) refs["#"+id] = n;
}
}
if (n == 0)
noteholder.parentNode.removeChild(noteholder);
else {
// Process footnoterefs.
for (i=0; i<spans.length; i++) {
if (spans[i].className == "footnoteref") {
var href = spans[i].getElementsByTagName("a")[0].getAttribute("href");
href = href.match(/#.*/)[0]; // Because IE return full URL.
n = refs[href];
spans[i].innerHTML =
"[<a href='#_footnote_" + n +
"' title='View footnote' class='footnote'>" + n + "</a>]";
}
}
}
},

install: function(toclevels) {
var timerId;

function reinstall() {
asciidoc.footnotes();
if (toclevels) {
asciidoc.toc(toclevels);
}
}

function reinstallAndRemoveTimer() {
clearInterval(timerId);
reinstall();
}

timerId = setInterval(reinstall, 500);
if (document.addEventListener)
document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", reinstallAndRemoveTimer, false);
else
window.onload = reinstallAndRemoveTimer;
}

}
asciidoc.install();
/*]]>*/
</script>
</head>
<body class="article">
<div id="header">
<h1>openSUSE 12.3 – Free, Open and Awesome</h1>
</div>
<div id="content">
<div id="preamble">
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph"><p>Dear users, contributors, fans and friends. The latest openSUSE is ready
for you! After 6 months of hard work, we bring you the best that Free
Software has to offer with the unique Green Sauce - stable, friendly and
fun.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>File:OpenSUSE_12.3_welcome.jpg|Welcome to openSUSE 12.3!
File:Grub2-1.png|Grub 2 Bootmenu File:OpenSUSE_12.3_bootmenue.jpg|Legacy
Bootmenu File:Plymouth.png|Bootsplash</p></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="_more_details_on_opensuse_12_3">More details on openSUSE 12.3</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph"><p>The following pages go into much detail on what is new in this openSUSE
release. Too much information? Check out the
Portal:12.3/Features[Feature highlights] instead.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><em>TOC</em></p></div>
<div class="sect3">
<h4 id="_under_the_hood">Under the hood</h4>
<div class="paragraph"><p>We have upgraded our infrastructure, further integrating new
technologies while improving performance, hardware support and
configuration. The major changes are featured below.</p></div>
<div class="sect4">
<h5 id="_linux_3_7">Linux 3.7</h5>
<div class="paragraph"><p>This version brings us up to kernel 3.7, from Linux Kernel 3.4 in
openSUSE 12.2. New and improved features include:</p></div>
<div class="ulist"><ul>
<li>
<p>
All filesystems benefit from the improvements in the RAID area, giving
faster set-up of a raid system, RAID 10 support for the device mapper
and discard functionality for SSDs. As a powersaving measure, reworking
the kernel-filesystem interface allowed for the removal of a daemon
waking up this subsystem every 5 seconds. The major filesystem specific
improvements include:
</p>
<div class="ulist"><ul>
<li>
<p>
metadata can contain small files (speeding up reading and writing as
well as saving some space) and can be check summed to protect its
integrity in Ext4. There is also improved quota support and faster
overwriting of files and resizing of volumes (even those larger than
16TB in size).
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
btrfs gains I/O failure statistics, subvolume quotas, quota groups,
snapshot diffs, faster fsync, faster reading and writing for VM images
and the ability to disable copy-on-write on a per-file base.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
XFS brings better speed and lower latency, improved support for large
directory block sizes and a variety of smaller features and
improvements.
</p>
</li>
</ul></div>
</li>
<li>
<p>
userspace probes for performance profiling with tools like Systemtap
or perf and a new "perf trace" tool modeled after strace.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Many improvements to networking. The TCP protocol saw performance work
with support for TCP "Fast Open" mode for both clients and servers and
TCP Early Retransmit (RFC 5827) as well as inclusion of the a "TCP small
queues" feature and a new network queue management algorithm designed to
fight bufferbloat. Other low-level protocol enhancements include support
for checkpointing and restoring TCP connections and a new tunneling
protocol that allows to transfer Layer 2 Ethernet packets over UDP. New
is experimental SMBv2 protocol support as well as stable NFS 4.1 and
parallel NFS support and the ability to have safe swapping over NFS/NBD.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
The kernel now allows for Android-style opportunistic suspend
(‘wakelocks’) and has support for hybrid suspend to disk and memory at
the same time which removes the risk of data loss if you run out of
battery whilst suspended-to-ram.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
In the security area we see added support for signed kernel modules,
the Intel "supervisor mode access prevention" (SMAP) security feature,
VFIO, which allows safe access from guest drivers to bare-metal host
devices and a sandboxing mechanism that allows to filters syscalls. It
has also become possible to tell the kernel to not follow hard- and
softlinks in certain directories, when those links point somewhere
higher up the directory tree, blocking a common way for crackers to
increase their privileges on a system. Last but not least, the kernel
has gotten better at gathering entropy, collecting it from previously
unused sources like MAC addresses, DMI data and USB hardware
information.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Other improvements include the ability to do SCSI over Firewire and
USB, aggressive SATA device sleep for SSD and HD drive power saving and
support for the PCIe “d3cold” power state.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
As always there have been many improvements in hardware support,
performance and stability in the graphics drivers, storage, webcam,
audio, wifi, and other subsystems. Changes include code for handling the
upcoming Intel Haswell graphics core, major changes resulting in a
faster and more stable Nouveau NVidia driver with support for newer
video cards, improved NFC support, and specific drivers for a large
number of laptops.
</p>
</li>
</ul></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>(overview possible thanks to
<a href="http://kernelnewbies.org/">kernelnewbies.org</a> and
<a href="http://www.h-online.com/open/">The awesome H online kernel logs</a>)</p></div>
</div>
<div class="sect4">
<h5 id="_arm_uefi_and_secure_boot">ARM, UEFI and Secure Boot</h5>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Image:OpenSUSE_12.3_booting_on_ARM_64_bit.png[thumb|right|300px|openSUSE
booting on ARM 64bit!]</p></div>
<div class="ulist"><ul>
<li>
<p>
This release delivers <strong>proper UEFI support</strong> for x86_64 hardware and
experimental support for Secure Boot enabled hardware. See
openSUSE:UEFI[this wiki page] for more information and
<a href="http://jaegerandi.blogspot.fr/2012/08/uefi-secure-boot-and-opensuse.html">this
blog</a> for background on what solutions we have chosen.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
The Portal:ARM[openSUSE ARM team] has released official openSUSE 12.3
ARMv7 images and experimental ARM 64bit images are already available on
Portal:ARM/AArch64[the AArch64 page].
</p>
</li>
</ul></div>
</div>
<div class="sect4">
<h5 id="_systemd">systemd</h5>
<div class="paragraph"><p>openSUSE 12.3 completes the move to systemd (updated to version 195),
and has dropped SysV init. Many packages in the core system have gotten
patches and improvements to work better with this next generation init
system. Other changes:</p></div>
<div class="ulist"><ul>
<li>
<p>
systemd now controls system hibernate and suspend, and power, sleep
and lid switch buttons. This means that even when not logged in, closing
the lid will put your system to sleep, preventing your laptop from
overheating when you failed to notice you were not logged in. <strong>this
needs to be tested to see if it works. If so, please remove this
sentence.</strong>
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
systemd-delta lets you see how configuration files have changed since
installation.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
The “.service” filename suffix may be omitted by referring to systemd
services in tools such as systemctl, journalctl..
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
The systemd GTK configuration tool has been split off into the
systemd-ui package.
</p>
</li>
</ul></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>journal</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Systemd now aggregates all services’ output (including syslog entries)
to a journal. This output will by default be forwarded to your standard
system logger implementation (rsyslog, syslog-ng).</p></div>
<div class="ulist"><ul>
<li>
<p>
The journal can be accessed in a human-readable format using
journalctl. Try <em><code>journalctl -f</code></em>!
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
By installing the systemd-logger package, replacing rsyslog, journal
entries will be written to disk natively in a cryptographically
protected binary format.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
There is a journal gateway daemon to access the journal via HTTP and
JSON. Info <a href="http://0pointer.de/public/journal-gatewayd">here</a>. This
gateway is not enabled by default.
</p>
</li>
</ul></div>
</div>
<div class="sect4">
<h5 id="_other_features_and_changes">Other features and changes</h5>
<div class="ulist"><ul>
<li>
<p>
PulseAudio was upgraded from 1.1 to version 3, which adds support for
Bluetooth audio sources, provides better AD2P audio quality, virtual
surround sound mode, and support for more noise cancellation modes.
There is also UCM support, runtime editable LADSPA filter parameters,
configurable device latency offset and lots of infrastructure
improvements.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
The btrfs filesystem snapshot tool ‘Snapper’ leaps from 0.0.11 to
version 0.1.1, now allows non-root users to make snapshots
<a href="https://lizards.opensuse.org/2012/10/16/snapper-for-everyone/">1</a> and
experimental support for LVM thin-provisioned snapshots
<a href="https://lizards.opensuse.org/2012/07/25/snapper-lvm/">2</a>.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
The latest Mesa 9.0 brings OpenGL 3.1 as well as many other
performance improvements and bugfixes.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
In the package management area, version 1.8.9 of zypper now shows
package installation progress. The PackageKit backend for zypper was
rewritten, giving a much improved package management experience with the
cross-distribution GUI tools.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
sshd now has stronger sandboxing to protect against hacking attempts
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
shadow replaces our old pwdutils fork of shadow. Its changes were
merged back upstream
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Standard Linux PAM modules like pam_unix.so and pam_cracklib.so are
now used by default on new installations, as they now offer the features
of the SUSE-developed pam_unix2.so and pam_pwcheck.so.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
selinux-policy was updated to 2.20120725
</p>
</li>
</ul></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect3">
<h4 id="_free_desktops">Free Desktops</h4>
<div class="paragraph"><p>openSUSE is unique among the major Linux distributions in delivering all
major Free Desktops on an equal footing: officially developed and
supported. These include GNOME, KDE’s Plasma Desktop (the default
desktop) and Plasma Netbook, Xfce, LXDE, KDE 3 and the brand new
Portal:Enlightenment[E17]. As usual, this release introduces nice new
artwork from boot up to application splashes. KDE in particular got a
nice, dark new theme for the Plasma Workspace.</p></div>
<div class="sect4">
<h5 id="_plasma_desktop">Plasma Desktop</h5>
<div class="paragraph"><p>The update to KDE’s workspace brings many refinements to openSUSE. For
this release the openSUSE KDE team worked to bring a nice, dark theme to
the desktop. If you like a dark theme for your applications as well, you
can select the openSUSE dark theme from the colors section in the
Application Appearance settings. The included standard <em>Obsidian Coast</em>
is another good color scheme worth trying. For people who prefer the
default Plasma look and feel, an improved Air theme is available as
well. Below an overview of the major feature changes.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>File:12.3_Desktop-kde.png|Desktop KDE
File:12.3_Activities.png|Activities File:12.3_Widgets.png|Widgets
File:12.3_Configure_desktop.png|Configure Desktop
File:12.3_Filemanager.png|Filemanager File:12.3_Shutdown.png|Shutdown</p></div>
<div class="ulist"><ul>
<li>
<p>
Version 4.10 of the Plasma Desktop includes many widgets ported to the
new QML technology. While not bringing new features, this improves the
behavior, performance and stability of the desktop components.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
In the <strong>window management</strong> area, it is now possible to easily download
scripts with additional functionality and effects for KWin. By default,
a new script for animating the maximizing of windows is included. Other
improvements in KWin include openGL support in most virtual machines and
the window manager now has per-monitor support for color management.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
A major new feature is support for a top-screen- or title bar button
for the <strong>menu</strong>. By enabling one of these options under Application
Appearance-Style-Finetuning in Systemsettings, the menu will disappear
from the application. It will now be available as a new button on the
window decoration (location of which is of course configurable) or in a
automatically hiding menu on top of the screen (or just below the top
screen panel), popping up when you move your mouse there.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
The <strong>file manager</strong> part of Plasma Desktop, Dolphin, received vast
improvements in performance on large folders and meta-data based
grouping capabilities and smarter search options have been added.
</p>
</li>
</ul></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>UqHppnzlXN4<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/embed/UqHppnzlXN4">Introduction video to the
openSUSE 12.3 Plasma Desktop</a>.</p></div>
<div class="ulist"><ul>
<li>
<p>
<strong>Metadata handling</strong> has been improved in other area’s too, with faster
indexing that interferes less with daily work. The introduction of
Nepomuk Cleaner offers a simple tool for cleaning up the semantic
metadata storage. It cleans up legacy and invalid data and merge
duplicate entries, speeding up handling of email and searching of files
significantly. Running it can take considerable time (up to a day) but
is highly recommended.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
<strong>Printer management</strong> has been improved with the inclusion of the new
Print Manager. A Plasma applet shows printers and lets you control
queued jobs while the System Settings screen lets you add, remove and
configure printers. The new Printer Wizard is much smarter than the
previous one and the new Print Manager works much better with the latest
CUPS.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
The <strong>Apper update manager</strong> v 0.8 should no longer create blocking
issues with the zypper commandline and GUI package managers. New is a
plasmoid for handling updates. It is not included by default but you can
download it from the repositories. Apper will also show and describe
untrusted packages and can automatically download packages in
preparation for review. Notifications are properly integrated,
performance and GUI have been improved and many bugs were squashed.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
<strong>Bluetooth</strong> integration in the workspace received several improvements
in the behavior and the user interface, making more reliable connections
and less interruptions possible.
</p>
</li>
</ul></div>
</div>
<div class="sect4">
<h5 id="_gnome_shell">GNOME Shell</h5>
<div class="paragraph"><p>File:Login_screen.png|Lock Screen 2 File:Applications.png|Applications
File:File_Manager.png|File Manager File:Right_click.png|Improved Right
Click Workflows File:GNOME_disk_usage.png|Disk Usage Analyser
File:Log_out_menu.png|User Menu</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>This is the third openSUSE release featuring
<a href="http://help.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/3.6/">GNOME 3</a>. Highlights for
this release include:</p></div>
<div class="ulist"><ul>
<li>
<p>
Big improvements to notifications, including a redesigned <strong>Message
Tray</strong>, smarter notifications, and other tweaks and refinements. The
items in the tray are also bigger, clearer, and don&#8217;t move around,
making them easier to use.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
An enhanced <strong>Activities Overview</strong> with an improved layout. One change
is the way that application launchers are reached. In previous versions,
you used the application tab in the top-left to access your
applications. This has been replaced with a new grid button that is
located in the dash.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
A greatly enhanced <strong>Files application</strong> (also known as Nautilus), with
functional file search, a new Recent location, redesigned interface and
lots of bug fixes and handy new features.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Integrated Input Sources, which makes inputting different character
sets (eg. Japanese or Chinese) fast and easy.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
<strong>Accessibility on demand</strong>, meaning that universal access features like
the Orca screen reader can be enabled with the push of a button.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
A <strong>new Lock Screen</strong>. This provides an attractive view when the device
is locked, plus handy functionality like media controls. The lock screen
means that you can see what is happening while your computer is locked,
and it allows you to get a summary of what has been happening while you
have been away. It also means that you can easily change the volume,
skip a track or pause your music without having to enter a password.
</p>
</li>
</ul></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>There are many other enhancements in GNOME 3.6, including Online
Accounts support for Microsoft Exchange and Windows Live (SkyDrive
access via Documents application) and much improved System Settings (it
includes larger icons and a better layout, all the icons are now
displayed whenever possible). <strong>Airplane Mode</strong> now switches off all
radios, including Bluetooth. Many of the basic GNOME tools have also
received improvements, including Disk Usage Analyzer, Disks and the Font
Viewer. Find more details
<a href="http://help.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/3.6/">in the release notes</a></p></div>
</div>
<div class="sect4">
<h5 id="_xfce">Xfce</h5>
<div class="paragraph"><p>File:OpenSUSE_12.3_xfce_login.jpg|XFCE Login
File:OpenSUSE_12.3_xfce_spalsh.jpg|XFCE Splash
File:OpenSUSE_12.3_xfce_desktop.jpg|XFCE Desktop
File:OpenSUSE_12.3_xfce_launcher.jpg|XFCE Launcher
File:OpenSUSE_12.3_xfce_menu.jpg|XFCE Menu
File:OpenSUSE_12.3_xfce_settings.jpg|XFCE Settings</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>The <strong>Xfce</strong> desktop has been updated to the latest bugfix releases and
there have been major updates of the Thunar file manager and Terminal
which has been renamed to xfce4-terminal. Thunar 1.6.0 introduces tab
support, improved bookmark handling (including easily adding remote
bookmarks) and features several UI improvements, a check for free space
before copying starts, and extensive performance improvements.
xfce4-terminal 0.6.0 has been modernized and received a number of
bugfixes and, most importantly, now supports a
<a href="https://plus.google.com/115410781201569373644/posts/gsPW5Bts8dP">Quake-style
drop-down mode</a> which keeps a running terminal around that can be
quickly accessed through a keyboard shortcut.</p></div>
</div>
<div class="sect4">
<h5 id="_other_free_desktop_and_window_managers">Other Free Desktop and window managers</h5>
<div class="paragraph"><p>With E17 as new Desktop Environment and two new window managers (awesome
and Sawfish) this openSUSE release has lots to offer for those not big
fans of the traditional desktops.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>awesome Window Manager</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>New in openSUSE 12.3 is awesome, a highly configurable, next generation
framework window manager for X. It is very fast and extensible. It is
primarily targeted at power users, developers and any people dealing
with every day computing tasks and who want to have fine-grained control
over their graphical environment <em>and</em> have the skills to make that
happen.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>A window manager is probably one of the most used software in your
day-to-day tasks, with your Web browser, mail reader and text editor.
Power users and programmers have a big range of choice between several
tools for these day-to-day tasks. Some are heavily extensible and
configurable.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>awesome tries to complete these tools with what we miss: an extensible,
highly configurable window manager. To achieve this goal, awesome has
been designed as a framework window manager. It&#8217;s extremely fast, small,
dynamic and heavily extensible using the Lua programming language.
Essentially, the idea is that you build your own window manager,
offering exactly the functionality you desire.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>awesome provides an easily usable and very-well documented API to
configure and define the behavior of your window manager.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Sawfish Window Manager</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Sawfish is an extensible window manager using a Lisp-based scripting
language. Its policy is very minimal compared to most window managers.
Its aim is simply to manage windows in the most flexible and attractive
manner possible. All high-level WM functions are implemented in Lisp for
future extensibility or redefinition. These are some of the features
that set Sawfish apart from other window managers:</p></div>
<div class="ulist"><ul>
<li>
<p>
Powerful key-binding: Virtually every function provided by Sawfish can
be bound to keys (or mouse buttons).
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Event hooking: For many events (moving windows etc.) you can customize
the way Sawfish will respond.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Window matching: When windows are created you can match them to a set
of rules and automatically perform actions on them.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Flexible theming: Sawfish allows for very different themes to be
created and a variety of third-party themes are readily available.
</p>
</li>
</ul></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Sawfish detects your desktop environment and integrates to your
environment whether you are using KDE or Gnome or LXDE or XFCE or Mate.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Enlightenment 17</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>File:OpenSUSE_12.3_E17_desktop.jpg|E17 Desktop
File:OpenSUSE_12.3_E17_menu.jpg|E17 Menu
File:OpenSUSE_12.3_E17_about.jpg|E17 About</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>As <strong>Enlightenment 0.17</strong> or (E17) was finally released, we are happy to
make it available. It is a complete rewrite on DR16 and was designed to
be a full-fledged desktop shell, based on the new Enlightenment
Foundation Libraries (EFL). Check the Portal:Enlightenment[Enlightenment
Portal page] for more information.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Others</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>File:12.3_LXDE_desktop.png|LXDE Desktop File:12.3_LXDE_launcher.png|LXDE
Launcher File:12.3_LXDE_menu.png|LXDE Menu
File:12.3_LXDE_settings.png|LXDE Settings
File:12.3_LXDE_taskmanager.png|LXDE Task Manager
File:12.3_LXDE_filemanager.png|LXDE File Manager</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>PCMan, the filemanager of the <strong>LXDE</strong> lightweight desktop, is included
with a new version. The 1.1 release brings some UI improvements like
disabling items which cannot act (like <em>copy</em> on selected items) in the
menu and toolbar, the option to <em>treat backup files as hidden</em>, the
ability to change the columns in the Detailed List View and search
engine support. Underlying improvements were made to stability and
performance, as well as bringing new support for unmounting removable
media without ejecting them and some other small changes.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Another part of this release is <strong>WindowMaker 0.95</strong> which introduces some
changes in the preferences and the addition of a new "Center" placement
strategy, support for _NET_FRAME_EXTENTS and the removal of CPP
dependency to process menu files.</p></div>
</div>
<div class="sect4">
<h5 id="_new_input_method">New Input method</h5>
<div class="paragraph"><p>All desktops now have access to Mozc, a Japanese input method engine
developed by Google. It is becoming a de facto standard in Linux
community because it provides more precise conversion and it seems that
the previous standard engine, Anthy, is not maintained anymore. Zinnia
and zinnia-tomoe provide hand-writing recognition for mozc.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>The package of Mozc has been incubated for more than a year in the
<a href="https://build.opensuse.org/project/show?project=M17N">M17N project</a> on
the Open Build Service. It has received a lot of testing and many
Japanese users have been installing it by hand, so it was time to move
this to openSUSE proper!</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>NkTnbrLfrI4<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/embed/NkTnbrLfrI4">Marguerite Su demoes the fcitx
Input Method Engine using various IM Editors</a>. mozc at 14:40.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Link to video for Chinese users:
<a href="http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNTIyNTc4MTUy.html">here</a></p></div>
</div>
<div class="sect4">
<h5 id="_texlive">TeXLive</h5>
<div class="paragraph"><p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX">LaTeX</a> lovers will appreciate that
TeXLive 2012 had been splitted into several packages to have a highly
modularized TeX typesetting system. The split was done accordingly to
<a href="http://www.tug.org/texlive/">the upstream known packages of TeXLive</a>.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>These package are grouped into</p></div>
<div class="ulist"><ul>
<li>
<p>
Filesystem (FHS/TDS), infra structure, collection and scheme packages
all noarch. The collection and scheme packages are only place holders
for dependencies, that they require the
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
noarch packages providing specifiy formats like latex, fonts, styles,
and documentation. Those packages do require the
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
binary packages providing the programs like the engines pdftex, dvips,
xdvi, xetex, and much more
</p>
</li>
</ul></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>the noarch packages for formats, styles, and engines do provide the
files as virtual dependencies. That is the e.g. texlive-latex does
provide &#8216;tex(alltt.sty)&#8217; upto &#8216;tex(tracefnt.sty)&#8217; and &#8216;tex(article.cls)&#8217;
upto &#8216;tex(slides.cls)&#8217; and &#8216;tex(omlcmm.fd)&#8217; upto &#8216;tex(ullasy.fd)&#8217; and
much more</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>if something is missed by LaTeX with e.g. ! LaTeX Error: File
&#8216;multirow.sty&#8217; not found. or ! Font U/pzd/m/n/10=pzdr at 10.0pt not
loadable: Metric (TFM) file not found. then this can be resolved by the
commands: The project URL for this is
<a href="https://build.opensuse.org/project/show?project=Publishing%3ATeXLive">here</a>
with the download repositories
<a href="http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Publishing:/TeXLive/openSUSE_12.3/">here</a>.</p></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect3">
<h4 id="_new_and_updated_applications">New and updated applications</h4>
<div class="sect4">
<h5 id="_audio_video_and_photo_handling">Audio, Video and Photo handling</h5>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Image:amarok_12.3.png[thumb|right|300px|Amarok in action] The latest
version of Linux’ most popular music player <strong>Amarok</strong> 2.7 brings a wide
variety of fixes and improvements. A list of major changes:</p></div>
<div class="ulist"><ul>
<li>
<p>
Track dragging support in Unique Tracks tab of the Synchronize
Statistics action; allows you to do a "diff" between collections and
transfer missing tracks.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Amarok now scrobbles tracks in streams if the stream correctly updates
meta-data.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
When scrobbling to Last.fm, Amarok announces suggested tag corrections
(configurable).
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Ability to scrobble recently played tracks from iPod to Last.fm.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Synchronization of labels and rating between Last.fm and Amarok
collections; play count can be synchronized one-way from Last.fm to
Amarok.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Statistics synchronization between collections, supports rating, first
/ last played time, play count and labels.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Mark downloaded podcast episodes to keep, even when purge is enabled.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Nepomuk plugin: Play and manage tracks using the Nepomuk database.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Amazon store: It is now possible to add items to your shopping cart
using Amarok:
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Amazon store: Use the context info applet to show further infos about
a selected item.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Amazon store: We now ship a utility to handle downloads from Amazon.
</p>
</li>
</ul></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>rhythmbox</strong> 2.98 brings a host of smaller and larger improvements:</p></div>
<div class="ulist"><ul>
<li>
<p>
New dialog for importing music into the library
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
New audio CD metadata lookup library, replacing libmusicbrainz
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Improved transitions between album art images
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Nautilus cluebar buttons now result in the right source being selected
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Update notification buttons when playback state changes
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Search musicbrainz for album art by album and artist name
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Love/ban buttons visible in last.fm/libre.fm sources
</p>
</li>
</ul></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Audioplayer <strong>Banshee 2.6</strong> is the culmination of six months' work by 15
developers, 30 translators and dozens of bug reporters and testers. It
adds device scrobbling support for LastFM, file management options are
now specific to each source and the "Copy files when importing" and
"Update file and folder names" settings can now be set independently for
Music and Videos.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Totem Movieplayer</strong> got renamed to ‘Videos’ and hides its titlebar when
maximized. The menus have been cleaned up, drag and drop in the playlist
was improved, DVDs and other optical media are listed with
<a href="https://live.gnome.org/Grilo">Grilo</a> and connection speed preferences got
removed. There is a number of new nice animations and variable rate
playback. Visualisations are now off by default and the plugins got
improvements with a better search sidebar and a new recent-files
handling plugin.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>This release of <strong>audio editor Audacity</strong> 2.0.2 is mostly a bugfix
release, with a significant bug that caused clicks on split lines having
been fixed. But there are also improvements to several toolbars and to
some Nyquist effects, keyboard shortcuts can now be allocated to effects
and Nyquist plug-ins can be added to Chains.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>The Blender 2.64</strong> 3D/video editor release was focused on integrating
and stabilizing the long awaited BMesh modelling system, which has full
support for N-sided polygons and many new modelling tools. New tools
include Dissolve, Inset, Bridge, Vertex Slide, Vertex Connect, Bevel,
and improved versions of Knife, Subdivide and Rip.
<a href="http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-263">see more
here</a> Image:shotwell_12.3.png[thumb|right|300px|Shotwell picture
manager] <strong>Digikam 3.0</strong> brings a large number of improvements to Linux’
most powerful Photo Management application. A list of some of these
features:</p></div>
<div class="ulist"><ul>
<li>
<p>
Improvements to batch processing
</p>
<div class="ulist"><ul>
<li>
<p>
new actions supported: change image sizes, crop, Gamma factor
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
can now handle several folders at once
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
multi-threading in batch manager
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
improved tool handling, including saving, importing and loading of
chains of tools
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
more flexible placement of files in folder hierarchy
</p>
</li>
</ul></div>
</li>
<li>
<p>
new video slideshow generator
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Much improved Camera user interface
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Video metadata support
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Automatic noise reduction settings
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
better Presentation View
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
integrated UPnP/DLNA via plugin
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Geolocation enhancements
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
include exif and IPTC data in html gallery export
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
import pipelines EXIF autorotation
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
new subtag search
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
much, much more
</p>
</li>
</ul></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>The <strong>updated libraw library</strong> supports a number of new cameras including
the Canon 5D Mark III, G1 X, 1D X and Powershot SX200; Nikon
D4,D800/D800E and D3200; Fuji X-S1 and HS30EXR; Casio EX-Z8; Olympus
E-M5; Panasonic GF5; Sony NEX-F3, SLT-A37 and SLT-A57 and the Samsung
NX20 and NX210.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Gwenview</strong>, KDE&#8217;s image viewer, features improved thumbnail handling and
generation as well as Activity support. It supports color correction of
JPG and PNG files, working with KWin to adjust to the color profiles of
different monitors, allowing for consistent color representation of
photos and graphics. The Gwenview image importer now works recursively,
showing all images available for display below, as well as within, a
specified folder.</p></div>
</div>
<div class="sect4">
<h5 id="_personal_information_management_and_chat">Personal Information Management and Chat</h5>
<div class="paragraph"><p>In the PIM area are applications handling email, chat and other
communication duties. Many of these received significant improvements in
this release.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Claws Mail</strong> has been updated to 3.9. This little GTK email client and
news reader is known for being fast, extensible and easy to configure.
It adds IMAP server side search and several speed-ups and optimizations.
Image:Kontact_12.3.png[thumb|right|300px|KDE Kontact] <strong>Evolution 3.6</strong>
modifies the preferences and contact editor for small screens, allows
you to save events, memos and tasks from the File menu and lets you
re-configure already configured systems with the Assistant. Evolution no
longer uses GConf but stores its account data in plain text files. The
mail formatter received a rewrite and a better highlighter. The search
folder can now update automatically and local contact photos are
displayed in the image chooser for the contact editor. Also new is spell
checking for the ‘Summary’ in Events, Tasks and the Memo editors.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>KDE&#8217;s PIM application suite <strong>Kontact</strong> has gotten many bugfixes and
improvements. Substantial work with the search backend has vastly
improved email indexing and retrieval, delivering more responsive
applications with lower resource usage. Feature additions and
improvements include:</p></div>
<div class="ulist"><ul>
<li>
<p>
KMail has a new ability to automatically resize images attached to
emails, configurable in KMail&#8217;s settings.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
The quick search bar above the mail list now searches also in the full
bodies of emails.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
KMail introduces Text Autocorrection, including word replacement and
capitalize the first letter of a sentence. The settings and word lists
are shared with Calligra Words and are configurable.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
HTML composer support has been expanded: tables can be inserted, with
control over rows and columns as well as the ability to merge cells.
Defined sizes for images are now also supported, as is the ability to
insert html code directly .
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
The <em>plain text</em> companion to HTML emails was also improved, with HTML
tags convertible to plain text equivalents.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
The import wizard gained support for importing settings from Opera,
settings and data from Claws Mail and Balsa, and tags from Thunderbird
and Claws Mail.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Other improvements to KMail include: opening recent files in the
composer, adding new Contacts directly from KMail and attaching vcards
to emails.
</p>
</li>
</ul></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Image:Empathy 12.3.png[thumb|right|300px|Empathy] The SoftPhone, Video
Conferencing and Instant Messenger application <strong>Ekiga 4.0</strong> introduces a
major ovarhaul of the main window, a new pulse audio plugin (in ptlib),
New audio codecs: SILK (used by skype), G.722.1 (aka Siren 7), G.722.2
(aka GSM-AMR Wide band) , H.323 gatekeeper support, call auto-answer and
support for handling multipe video streams (H.239).</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>The release of the chat application <strong>Empathy 3.6</strong> Improves GNOME Online
Account integration. This chat application is deeply embedded in the
GNOME Shell and received several other minor improvements.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Text editor <strong>Gedit 3.6</strong> has updated GtkAssistant support, an extensive
new snippet collection for docbook and File Browser side panel
improvements.</p></div>
</div>
<div class="sect4">
<h5 id="_in_the_office">In the office</h5>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Image:LibreOffice_12.3.png[thumb|right|300px|LibreOffice 12.3] The
latest stable <strong><a href="http://www.libreoffice.org">LibreOffice 3.6</a></strong> release
brings again a large number of additions and
<a href="http://www.libreoffice.org/download/3-6-new-features-and-fixes/">improvements</a>
such as:</p></div>
<div class="ulist"><ul>
<li>
<p>
<strong>General:</strong> PDF export with Watermark option; allow editing of
read-only documents; performance improvements for Calc and Writer
(document import, spreadsheet operations)
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
<strong>Writer:</strong> word count in status bar; improved auto format options;
improved label and business card support
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
<strong>Calc:</strong> color scales and data bars; sort option in autofilter menu;
merge cells using the cell context menu; CSV file import and export
improvements; new formula options page with calculation settings
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
<strong>Draw:</strong> Corel Draw import
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
<strong>Impress:</strong> wide-screen format for slides, improved detection of
external display
</p>
</li>
</ul></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Version 4.0 of LibreOffice did not make it in time for openSUSE 12.3 but
is available on <a href="http://software.opensuse.org">software.opensuse.org</a>.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>openSUSE 12.3 comes with Calligra 2.5, a very complete productivity and
creativity suite of applications.</p></div>
<div class="ulist"><ul>
<li>
<p>
In the productivity area, the word processor Words continues to focus
on students or academic users. There is improved editing of tables and
dragging of text as well as enhancements in the bibliography tools.
Spreadsheet application Sheets has a new stand-alone docker for the cell
editor and a new cell tool window with formatting controls.
<a href="http://community.kde.org/Kexi/Releases/Kexi_2.5#List_of_changes">Kexi</a>,
the database application has a full-screen mode, new form elements and
widgets.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
In the artistic department, Free Software’s premiere drawing suite
<a href="http://krita.org/">Krita</a> introduces a new compositions docker for movie
storyboard generations, textured painting, improved canvas handling and
a large number of performance improvements.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
All Calligra applications benefit from an improved autosave system,
user profiles, improved charts component, better shape connection and
various new effects for images.
</p>
</li>
</ul></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Version 2.6 of Calligra was released just too recent to be included in
openSUSE 12.3 but it will be available on short notice on
<a href="http://software.opensuse.org">software.opensuse.org</a>.
Image:Stage_Words_12.3.png[thumb|right|300px|Calligra Stage and Words]
PDF viewer <strong>Evince 3.6</strong> introduces offline help courtesy of Yelp, the
ability to inhibit the screensaver, find options to the search bar and
preserves file metadata upon saving a copy.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Okular</strong> Document viewer introduces new features including a technique
called tiled rendering which allows the viewer to zoom in further and
faster while reducing memory consumption compared to previous versions.
The embedded video feature has been improved. Editing and creating
annotations in Okular has become more user-friendly with the
introduction of high precision QTabletEvents. Now a tablet behaves
exactly like a mouse except when creating an annotation. With this task,
the high precision position of the QTabletEvent is used, so free-hand
annotations are smoother. A new feature allows easy history navigation,
which can now be accessed by forward and back mouse buttons.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Calibre 0.9</strong> brings a complete rewrite of the PDF Output engine, to
support links and fix various bugs. It can show disabled device plugins
in Preferences&#8594;Ignored Devices, the Get Books tool works better with
Smashwords, Google books and B&amp;N stores and adds the Nook UK store.
There is a ‘clear ratings’ button for the edit metadata dialog and a new
mass storage driver for rockhip based android smart phones.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Scribus 1.4.2</strong> is mostly a bugfix release, it also adds an often
requested feature, namely true cross-platform spellchecking. Until
Scribus 1.4.1, the spellchecker worked only on Linux and UNIX systems,
including manually built versions on Mac OS X. As of version 1.4.2,
Scribus provides a modern spellchecker, similar to LibreOffice and based
on Hunspell, which should be easily portable across all supported
platforms. Scribus 1.4.2 will detect existing dictionaries already
installed by hunspell packages or LibreOffice, on the system it has been
installed onto. Additional dictionaries are downloadable directly from
within the Scribus Preferences via freedesktop.org. The spellchecker now
also works within the Story Editor.</p></div>
</div>
<div class="sect4">
<h5 id="_opensuse_12_3_and_the_web">openSUSE 12.3 and the web</h5>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Image:Firefox_Chromium_12.3.png[thumb|right|300px|Firefox and Chromium
under GNOME Shell] openSUSE always comes with the latest latest <strong>Mozilla
Firefox</strong> version (19 at the time of release), part of our updates.
Likewise, openSUSE always offers the latest <strong>Chromium</strong> from Google.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>The <strong>GNOME webbrowser Epiphany</strong> 3.6 now integrates the app menu into the
gear menu if the system has no global application menus and offers F10
as shortcut to the gear menu. Restoring the last session on startup is
now default, the URL entry layout has been improved and a long click or
right click on the back and forward buttons gives you a list of earlier
visited sites.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong><a href="http://userbase.kde.org/Rekonq">Rekonq</a></strong> got updated to version 2.0.
Features in this release include a "web-app" mode, inline spell
checking, a new incognito mode similar to Google&#8217;s Chrome, support for
pinning tabs, an improved error page, and various other enhancements.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Image:Rekonq_KTorrent_12.3.png[thumb|right|300px|Rekonq and KTorrent
under Plasma Desktop] <strong>KTorrent</strong> is updated to version 4.3.1. Major
changes:</p></div>
<div class="ulist"><ul>
<li>
<p>
Sort by total leechers and seeders, if connected seeders and leechers
is equal
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Add support for magnet links in the syndication plugin
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Add search line to download order dialog
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Add move top and bottom option to download order dialog
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Add support for removable storage
</p>
</li>
</ul></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Feed Reader <strong>Liferea</strong> 1.8.12 adds Google Plus and Instapaper.com to the
Social Bookmarking Sites.</p></div>
</div>
<div class="sect4">
<h5 id="_games_and_educational_applications">Games and Educational Applications</h5>
<div class="paragraph"><p>The <strong><a href="http://aranym.org/news.html">ARAnyM</a></strong> Atari emulator got a new
precise FPU emulation core and a fully working NF USB. It also brings
GEM &lt;&#8594; Host clipboard interconnection and middle mouse click for input
un-grab.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>A new game part of the <a href="http://games.kde.org/">KDE Games suite</a> is
included with this release.
<strong><a href="http://games.kde.org/game.php?game=picmi">Picmi</a></strong> is a single player
logic-based puzzle game. The object of the game is to color cells
according to numbers given at the side of the board in order to complete
a hidden pattern or picture. Picmi includes two game modes—random
puzzles are generated according to the selected difficulty settings or
the included preset puzzles.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Other <strong><a href="http://games.kde.org/">KDE Games</a></strong> have been improved, including
the ability to print puzzles from KSudoku so they can be used away from
the computer. KGoldrunner was rewritten based on the new KDEGames
libraries; gameplay and UI are the same, but the game is prettier and
smoother. KJumpingCube now allows adjusting the speed of moves and
animates multi-stage moves to make them easier to understand. The UI has
been improved and you can now choose which one you&#8217;d like to play
against: Kepler or Newton. Smaller boards offer simplified playing
styles. Pairs gained a theme editor.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>The <strong><a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/mathematics/rocs/">Rocs Graph Theory
IDE</a></strong>, a educational application part of the <a href="http://edu.kde.org/">KDE
Education suite</a>, has a much improved user interface and configuration
dialog to make it easier to use. There is also new support for TGF,
DOT/Graphvis (import/export) and TikZ/PGF (export only) files.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Also part of the EDU suite is <strong>Marble</strong>, the virtual globe for Linux. For
this release, Marble moves forward into the area of Space Science. The
<a href="http://www.esa.int/ESA">European Space Agency</a> supported work on a
visualization of space orbiters around other planets inside the Marble
Virtual Globe. As a result, Marble can display the positions and orbit
tracks of space missions such as
<a href="http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Mars_Express">Mars
Express</a>,
<a href="http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Venus_Express">Venus
Express</a> and
<a href="http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/SMART-1">SMART-1</a>. The
visualization also includes the positions of the two Mars moons Phobos
and Deimos. He also enhanced Marble&#8217;s display of Earth satellite tracks.
A <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_VA0XtvjYk">video</a> presents some of the
features that have been added.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Another major feature new in Marble is support for the OpenStreetMap
Vector format. A
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;v=lHeA-3G0jKE">video</a>
of this feature is available as well. Currently, the default maps in
Marble are not vector-enabled yet but other maps can be downloaded
easily.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Ktouch</strong>, KDE&#8217;s touch typing tutor has been rewritten. It now features a
clean, elegant and vibrant user interface to make learning and
practicing touch typing as enjoyable as it can be. The new user
interface reduces complexity, and guides the user with color cues and
inobtrusive animations. Many new features help improve the overall
training experience—a new course editor has built-in quality checks, the
user can review progress and identify weaknesses, the overall appearance
is attractive and scaled to screen size, hinting and obvious problem
solving tips are displayed prominently. See for some screenshots and
further information
<a href="http://blog.sebasgo.net/blog/2012/11/28/november-update-for-ktouch/">this
blog</a>.</p></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect3">
<h4 id="_for_developers">For developers</h4>
<div class="paragraph"><p>As always, we’ve updated our tool chain with the latest CMake, GCC, git,
gtk2 and 3, Java and more. Below you can find an overview of the major
changes in this release.</p></div>
<div class="sect4">
<h5 id="_ides_and_tooling">IDEs and tooling</h5>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Image:Anjuta_12.3.png[thumb|right|300px|Anjuta] Development tool
<strong>Anjuta</strong> has been upgraded to version 3.6.2, adding ‘make check’ and
subdirectories support to the project manager. It also has some
improvements to the git integration, showing the Git Tasks dock when the
Git dock is active and the Status view as default. There are also new
plugins for indentation and language support.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>QtCreator</strong> 2.6 introduces Kits as a replacements for ‘Targets’ in the
2.5 and earlier releases. Kits generalize the magic which Targets
applied on top of the builds, offering settings for which device type to
develop for, the sysroot, compiler, debugger, Qt version to use and a
few more. This way, code sharing between projects is much easier.
Another inclusion in QtCreator 2.6 is experimental Android support from
Necessitas and support for QNX/Blackberry devices. Unfortunately, due to
a lack of maintenance, Symbian support had to be dropped.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Other improvements include the ability to type e.g. ‘’’fii,txt:123’’’ in
Locator to jump directly to that line in that file, fixes to the qrc
file editor, highlighting of missing files in the resource editor, C++11
fixes and more. Image:Qt-creator_12.3.png[thumb|right|300px|Qt Creator]
<strong>Glade</strong> 3.14, the GNOME/GTK tool to develop user interfaces, brings back
to life GtkAssistant support and let you define styles classes. Thanks
to a rework of the UI with Glade itself, many small UI improvements are
present as well as some larger ones like the new font dialog, the new
color chooser and a new GladePreferences dialog.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Kate</strong>, the KDE Advanced Text editor got an improved notification
system, an optional <em>minimap</em> as scrollbar, a new Project Management
plugin, predefined color schemes, improvements to the scripting
interface, support for python plugins and much more. A great bugfixing
effort reduced the number of open bug reports from 850 to 60. Work was
also done to create a new Quick Open functionality and other
enhancements. Most of these improvements also benefit applications using
Kate Part for text editing, including the lightweight KWrite text editor
and KDevelop.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Aside from benefiting from the improvements in its core text editing
component provided by Kate, <strong>KDevelop</strong> 4.4 introduces a new QML based
<a href="http://www.proli.net/2012/04/27/youre-welcome-to-kdevelop/">welcome
screen</a>. It is shown when no files are open and helps you to get started
in an intuitive way. Its code screen offers a list of projects and
coding sessions, the debug screen gives you the tools for debugging and
optimizing applications and the review area helps you reviewing patches.
Image:Kdevelop_12.3.png[thumb|right|300px|KDevelop] There has also been
a host of smaller improvements, from cleaning up the templates to CMAKE
integration improvements and much more.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>The latest <strong>monodevelop</strong> 3 provides preliminary Android API17 (Jellybean
4.2) support and database extensions.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>The powerful <strong>Valgrind</strong> 3.8 suite of tools for debugging and profiling
offers a large number of enhancements. A quick list:</p></div>
<div class="ulist"><ul>
<li>
<p>
preliminary support for Android on x86
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
support for Intel AVX and AES instructions (only for 64bit code)
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
POWER Decimal Floating Point instruction support
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
significant changes to malloc support including the option to work
with non-libc malloc implementations
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
memory leak check performance improvements
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
new GDB server monitor commands ‘block_list’ ad ‘who_points_at’
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
C<code> demangler can work with at least G</code> 4.6 binaries
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
more scheduling options for threaded code
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
and much, much more. See <a href="http://valgrind.org/">the valgrind website</a>
for more information.
</p>
</li>
</ul></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>New in openSUSE 12.3 is the <strong><a href="http://www.fossil-scm.org/">Fossil
Distributed Version Control System</a></strong>, which offers a number of unique
features in the DVCS area: distributed wiki, bugzilla and blog
functionality; autosync mode to reduce pointless forking and merging;
and a build-in web interface. See <a href="http://lwn.net/Articles/433843/">LWN
for more</a>.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>GCC has been updated to
<em><a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.7/changes.html#4.7.2">4.7.2</a></em>, bringing in
several bugfixes.</p></div>
</div>
<div class="sect4">
<h5 id="_opensuse_specific_tools">openSUSE specific tools</h5>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>KIWI</strong> is the openSUSE operating system image creator, used for
generating hard disk images, Live CD’s and USBs, VMware appliances and a
large number of other images including the official openSUSE release and
the tens of thousands of images on <a href="http://susestudio.com/">SUSE Studio</a>.
This new version brings UEFI support and a load of other improvements. A
list of the major changes in KIWI 5.04.37:</p></div>
<div class="ulist"><ul>
<li>
<p>
add error condition for architectures that do not support the creation
of iso hybrids
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
added support for firmware="uefi" attribute. In contrast to the
standard firmware="efi" support, kiwi will not create its own efi boot
images but uses the shim and the signed bootloader modules as they are
provided by the packages.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
added the firmware type <em>vboot</em> to support creation of images for arm
based boards using google&#8217;s chrome OS boot style
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
added support for EFI in live ISO images
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
added support for software raid into disk based appliances
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
added support for the apt-get/dpkg package manager to kiwi
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
added support for optional type attribute <em>bootfilesystem</em> which can
be one of ext2,ext3,fat16 or fat32 (bnc #788374)
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Added armv5 support
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
added support for btrfs seed live ISO images.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
added support for filesystem mount options during image build and
later to become stored in the fstab file
</p>
</li>
</ul></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>openSUSE 12.3 includes the <strong><a href="http://paste.opensuse.org/">SUSEpaste
script</a></strong> - the essential collaborative debugging utility to paste
outputs/logs easily to the openSUSE Paste site from the command line.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>A new security tool (gpg-offline) has landed in Factory. It is used to
check for GPG signatures of upstream tarballs.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>The <strong>Open Build Service command line client</strong> <a href="Build_Service/CLI">OSC</a>
now supports creating and releasing maintenance updates for openSUSE.</p></div>
</div>
<div class="sect4">
<h5 id="_languages_and_development_libraries">Languages and Development Libraries</h5>
<div class="paragraph"><p>openSUSE comes with a wide variety of languages. We ship not only
python, PHP, Ruby, Go and many more but updated versions and interesting
enhancements or modules can always be found on
<a href="http://software.opensuse.org">software.opensuse.org</a>, courtesy of the
<a href="http://build.opensuse.org">Open Build Service</a>. The major development
Platforms like the KDE Platform, the GNOME libraries and the
Enlightenment Foundation Libraries are of course also available on
openSUSE, and them too, in various versions on OBS.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Languages</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Mono</strong> 3 supports the new async C# 5.0 as well as some new assemblies:
System.Net.Http, System.Threading.Task.Dataflow. Microsoft&#8217;s open source
ASP.NET WebStack is included as well as the Entity Framework and Partial
support for Portable Class Libraries. Aside from performance and
stability improvements there is also better GDB support for SGenGC
internals.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Though Python 2.7.3 remains the default, <strong>Python 3.3.0</strong> is now
available,
<a href="http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.python.devel/135004">bringing a wide
range of changes</a>:</p></div>
<div class="ulist"><ul>
<li>
<p>
PEP 380, syntax for delegating to a subgenerator ("yield from")
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
PEP 393, flexible string representation (doing away with the
distinction between "wide" and "narrow" Unicode builds)
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
A C implementation of the "decimal" module, with up to 120x speedup
for decimal-heavy applications
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
The import system (<em>import</em>) now based on importlib by default
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
The new "lzma" module with LZMA/XZ support
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
PEP 397, a Python launcher for Windows
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
PEP 405, virtual environment support in core
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
PEP 420, namespace package support
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
PEP 3151, reworking the OS and IO exception hierarchy
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
PEP 3155, qualified name for classes and functions
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
PEP 409, suppressing exception context
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
PEP 414, explicit Unicode literals to help with porting
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
PEP 418, extended platform-independent clocks in the "time" module
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
PEP 412, a new key-sharing dictionary implementation that
significantly saves memory for object-oriented code
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
PEP 362, the function-signature object
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
The new "faulthandler" module that helps diagnosing crashes
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
The new "unittest.mock" module
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
The new "ipaddress" module
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
The "sys.implementation" attribute
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
A policy framework for the email package, with a provisional (see PEP
411) policy that adds much improved unicode support for email header
parsing
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
A "collections.ChainMap" class for linking mappings to a single unit
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Wrappers for many more POSIX functions in the "os" and "signal"
modules, as well as other useful functions such as "sendfile()"
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Hash randomization, introduced in earlier bugfix releases, is now
switched on by default
</p>
</li>
</ul></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>In total, almost 500 API items are new or improved in Python 3.3. For an
even more extensive list of changes in 3.3.0, see
<a href="http://docs.python.org/3.3/whatsnew/3.3.html">this page</a>.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Further in the Python world, <strong>Python-qt4</strong> supports Qt 5 now and
<strong>python-twisted</strong> 12.3 brings a number of bugfixes as well as some new
features:</p></div>
<div class="ulist"><ul>
<li>
<p>
The new -j flag to trial provides a trial runner supporting multiple
worker processes on the local machine, for parallel testing.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
twisted.internet.task.react, a new function, provides a simple API for
running the reactor until a single asynchronous function completes.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
twisted.protocols.ftp.FTP now handles FEAT and OPTS commands.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
trial now supports specifying a debugger other than pdb with the
--debugger command line flag.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
twisted.python.util.runWithWarningsSuppressed has been added; it runs
a function with specified warning filters.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
trial&#8217;s skipping feature is now implemented in a way compatible with
the standard library unittest&#8217;s runner.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
The setup3.py script is now provided to provisionally support building
and installing an experimental, incomplete version of Twisted in a
Python 3 environment.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
twisted.python.util.FancyStrMixin now supports arbitrary callables to
format attribute values.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Several new methods of twisted.trial.unittest.SynchronousTestCase -
<code>successResultOf</code>, <code>failureResultOf</code>, and <code>assertNoResult</code> - have been
added to make testing <code>Deferred</code>-using code easier.
</p>
</li>
</ul></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Ruby</strong> and the ruby gems included in openSUSE have mostly seen minor
updates to fix security and stability issues or support newer versions
of their dependencies.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Haskell</strong> is a pure functional programming language and Haskell Platform
is a carefully selected set of Haskell libraries. Haskell Platform
<a href="http://www.haskell.org/platform/">3</a> 2012.4.0.0. ships with ghc
<a href="http://www.haskell.org/ghc/">4</a> 7.4.2.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Steel Bank Common Lisp (SBCL)</strong> is an actively developed a high
performance Common Lisp compiler. In addition to the compiler and
runtime system for ANSI Common Lisp, it provides an interactive
environment including a debugger, a statistical profiler, a code
coverage tool, and many other extensions. Lisp is a general-purpose,
multi-paradigm programming language. It supports a combination of
procedural, functional, and object-oriented programming paradigms. As a
dynamic programming language, it facilitates evolutionary and
incremental software development, with iterative compilation into
efficient run-time programs. Previously only clisp was available as the
platform in openSUSE</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Development platforms and libraries</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>GTK 3.6</strong> is part of this release. Major new features include:</p></div>
<div class="ulist"><ul>
<li>
<p>
GtkSearchEntry: a GtkEntry subclass that is set up to be a search
entry
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
GtkMenuButton: a button that pops up a menu. The menu can be generated
from a GMenu or provided manually
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
GtkLevelBar: a new widget for displaying the strength or level of some
quantity
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Spin buttons can be oriented vertically
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Text views and entries can display <em>selection handles</em> when used with
touch devices
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Theming
</p>
<div class="ulist"><ul>
<li>
<p>
Support for cross-fading and transitions
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Support for CSS animations
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Support for blur shadows
</p>
</li>
</ul></div>
</li>
</ul></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>The <strong>KDE Development Platform</strong> introduces a more comprehensive SDK for
Plasma.</p></div>
<div class="ulist"><ul>
<li>
<p>
Development tools are brought together into
<a href="http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Plasma/PlasMate">PlasMate</a> and the use
of <a href="http://doc.qt.digia.com/qt/qtquick.html">Qt Quick</a> within Plasma
continues to expand, making it easier to extend and customize Plasma
Workspaces.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Containments (the area where widgets on desktops and panels are
situated) can now be written in QML, making them easy to customize for
experiments or special use cases.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
The KWin window manager introduces new scripting interfaces for window
effects, behavior and management. A number of example scripts helps
potential script writers get started. Find some tutorials
<a href="http://techbase.kde.org/Development/Tutorials/KWin/Scripting">here</a>.
</p>
</li>
</ul></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>opencv 2.4 brings significantly improved and optimized Android and iOS
ports and a greatly extended GPU (i.e. CUDA-based) module.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>The latest <strong>Poppler</strong> 0.22 library brings improved PDF rendering,
annotation and form improvements, more xhtml-compliant html output and a
number of stability fixes.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>The Soprano modular RDF storage framework brings a series of code
optimizations as well as support for plain SQL queries in the Virtuoso
backend, a custom socket implementation which makes it possible to use a
single socket accross threads and some more minor fixes and
improvements. The zeromq socket library version 3.2 brings many new
features and API improvements. A list can be found
<a href="https://raw.github.com/zeromq/zeromq3-x/master/NEWS">here</a></p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>In Cairo 1.12.8, the MSAA compositor was refined in the gl area. In
cairo-xlib, SHM transport for image transfers to and from the X server
was enabled, offering a notable reduction in rendering latency. Many
corner cases in cairo-pdf were fixed, improving opacity groups and font
subsetting. In cairo-image, support was added for rendering glyphs to
pixman and using that from within cairo, improving glyph throughput for
the image backend by a factor of about 4. A few bugs in the glyph
rendering code were fixed, along with many other bugs.</p></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect3">
<h4 id="_servers_and_virtualization_tools">Servers and virtualization tools</h4>
<div class="paragraph"><p>In the virtualization area, we’ve got updates to the main technologies
letting you run other operating systems on openSUSE as guests or use
openSUSE as a guest on other systems. For servers, openSUSE updates to
the 9.2 release of PostgreSQL and moves to MariaDB, replacing mySQL as
default.</p></div>
<div class="sect4">
<h5 id="_virtualization_tools">Virtualization tools</h5>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Image:GNOME_boxes2.png[thumb|right|300px|VM&#8217;s in GNOME Boxes] Virtualbox
4.2 brings support for limiting network IO bandwidth and improved 3D
performance to your system as well as better network device support (up
to 36 network cards, in combination with an ICH9 chipset configuration).
It also introduce new features in GUI like grouping VM and possibility
to alter some settings during runtime.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>We also ship the 4.2.1 release of Xen</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>The KVM and Qemu updates to 1.3.0 vastly improved the USB stack with
mass storage device and USB3 support as well as MSI/MSI-X support for
the XHCI controller. Other goodies:</p></div>
<div class="ulist"><ul>
<li>
<p>
QEMU can now use the Linux VFIO driver for guest PCI devices
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
New paravirtualized hardware random number generator device
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
New block jobs: live block commit (a.k.a. snapshot deletion) and live
disk mirroring (a.k.a "storage migration")
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
New CPU models: "Haswell" and "Opteron_G5"
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
USB redirection now supports live migration
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
NBD block devices can now be specified using URI syntax
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
QEMU embeds an NBD server, accessible via the monitor
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Improved support for sandboxing using seccomp mode 2
</p>
</li>
</ul></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>This release includes the first major release of Boxes, an application
for using remote systems and virtual machines. It offers a pretty and
simple interface for handling any number of connections using Spice as
protocol, featuring auto-detection of Virtual Machine format and a
variety of other conveniences in a pretty interface.</p></div>
</div>
<div class="sect4">
<h5 id="_server_technology_and_databases">Server technology and databases</h5>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Image:Postgres_12.3.png[thumb|right|300px|Postgres&#8217;s got you covered]
Image:Mariadb_12.3.png[thumb|right|300px|MariaDB replaced MySQL as
default]</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>PostgreSQL 9.2 ships with openSUSE 12.3 and delivers native JSON
support, covering indexes, replication and performance improvements, and
many more new features. Native JSON support in PostgresSQL provides an
efficient mechanism for creating and storing documents for web APIs.
Range Types allow developers to create better calendaring, scientific,
and financial applications. No other major SQL database supports this
feature, which enables intelligent handling of blocks of time and
numbers. See <a href="http://www.postgresql.org/about/news/1415/">here for more
information</a> on this enterprise-class database.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>openSUSE has moved from MySQL to MariaDB as default. MariaDB was first
shipped with openSUSE 11.3 back in 2010. Over the years it proved itself
and starting with 12.3 openSUSE is replacing default MySQL
implementation with MariaDB. This means that whole distribution is
compiled against MariaDB and in ‘M’ in LAMP means MariaDB from now. As
MariaDB is a drop-in replacement, you don’t have to worry about
<a href="https://kb.askmonty.org/en/mariadb-versus-mysql-compatibility/">compatibility</a>.
Apart from that, MySQL Community Server is not going away and you can
still SDB:Switching_between_MySQL_variants[replace] MariaDB with MySQL
if you want.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>If you&#8217;ve never heard about MariaDB, you can read more about all the
cookies they have
<a href="https://kb.askmonty.org/en/mariadb-vs-mysql-features/">on their website</a>.
Especially more storage engines, speed optimizations and some other
added features.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Infrastructure monitoring tool Nagios 3.4.4 adds bugfixes as well as a
plain html page option to allow users to disable PHP and the loading of
external references.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>The latest Nmap supports 12 new protocols and the
<a href="http://www.squid-cache.org/">Squid web cache</a> was updated to version
3.2.6, bringing the following main features:</p></div>
<div class="ulist"><ul>
<li>
<p>
SMP scalability
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Surrogate/1.0 protocol extensions to HTTP
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Client Bandwidth Limits
*
<a href="http://squidcache.cybermirror.org/squid/squid-3.1.23-RELEASENOTES.html#ss2.3">Internet
Protocol version 6 (IPv6)</a>
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Squid-3.1 adds native support for streaming protocol ICY. Also
commonly known as SHOUTcast multimedia streams.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
ICAP implementation (RFC 3507 and www.icap-forum.org)
</p>
</li>
</ul></div>
</div>
<div class="sect4">
<h5 id="_cloud">Cloud</h5>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Image:Openstack_overview.png[thumb|right|300px|OpenStack in action]</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>12.3 is the first release of openSUSE to feature complete packages for
<strong>OpenStack</strong>, the leading open source cloud computing platform (12.2 had
some packages from the Diablo release, but not the full set of packages
required to run OpenStack). As OpenStack is made of many different
components and servers, it is highly recommended to read the
<a href="http://docs.openstack.org/">upstream documentation</a>. On top of that,
packages for Grizzly (next release of OpenStack due in April) are
already being worked on and will be available for 12.3.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Highlights of the Folsom release (see the
<a href="http://wiki.openstack.org/ReleaseNotes/Folsom">Folsom release notes</a>):</p></div>
<div class="ulist"><ul>
<li>
<p>
PKI support for authentication (in keystone)
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
return of Hyper-V support (in nova)
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
support for versioned objects in object storage (in swift)
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
new API and client tool for image service (in glance)
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
image replication (in glance)
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
new service for network (quantum)
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
new service for block storage (cinder) (used to be nova-volume)
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
improved web dashboard
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
several other features, tons of stability and performance
improvements, as well as bug fixes
</p>
</li>
</ul></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Image:Screenshot-studio-12.3-kde.png[thumb|right|300px|Studio
live-previewing a KDE build]</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Finally, the DevStack tool which is used by developers to work on
openSUSE has been SDB:DevStack[ported to openSUSE]. It makes it much
easier to contribute to OpenStack from openSUSE, or to simply test
OpenStack.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>SUSE Studio</strong> is a project from openSUSE sponsor SUSE™ which builds upon
the Free and Open Source openSUSE tools like <strong>Portal:KIWI[KIWI]</strong> and
offers a convenient web interface for easy building of openSUSE and SLE
based custom operating systems (appliances).</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><a href="http://susestudio.com">SUSE Studio</a> users can expect availability of
openSUSE 12.3 right from the release date, and support for upgrading
existing appliances shortly after. This means it will be possible to
easily create your own operating system for the cloud, desktop or
portable devices based on openSUSE 12.3 with a <strong>custom package
selections</strong>, <strong>artwork</strong>, <strong>scripts</strong> and any other properties. You can
share your appliance or also browse other’s shared appliances on
<a href="http://susestudio.com/browse">SUSE Gallery</a>.</p></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect3">
<h4 id="_live_images">Live Images</h4>
<div class="sect4">
<h5 id="_recovery_live_image">Recovery Live Image</h5>
<div class="paragraph"><p>With the release of openSUSE 12.3 an additional, non-installable live
image is provided for rescue and recovery purposes. It currently weighs
in at 570MB and is thus considerably lighter than the GNOME/KDE live
images and still fits on a CD-R. The new rescue live image is based on
Xfce and thus provides an intuitive desktop environment with a number of
applications allowing users to seek support, diagnose and recover from
issues on their systems.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Image:Gparted_12.3_on_rescue.jpg[thumb|right|300px|Gparted on the Rescue
CD]</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Apart from the core Xfce applications like the Thunar file manager, we
have tried to ensure the rescue image keeps all the support channels to
openSUSE accessible. So we have</p></div>
<div class="ulist"><ul>
<li>
<p>
Midori, a lightweight browser which enables one to report bugs, access
to search engines and forums, and allows one to send receive emails from
a web based client
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
ePDFreader, a PDF viewer for reading pdf manuals, and
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
XChat, an IRC client enabling access to the the openSUSE community
support channel at <a href="irc://freenode%23opensuse">irc://freenode%23opensuse</a>
</p>
</li>
</ul></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>For rescue and recovery purposes the rescue image contains</p></div>
<div class="ulist"><ul>
<li>
<p>
gparted (and YaST&#8217;s disk manager) for editing partitions on the hard
disk,
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
a small subset of relevant modules from YaST including bootloader
manager, network device manager, remote administration (VNC),
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
command line tools for data recovery like dd_rescue which is useful to
rescue data in case of I/O errors because it does not necessarily abort
or truncate the output and photorec, a data recovery utility,
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
tools for data backup such as grsync, a graphical interface to rsync,
and lftp, a feature rich command line ftp client.
</p>
</li>
</ul></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div id="footnotes"><hr /></div>
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<div id="footer-text">
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