Installing Software Pattern/Groups in SUSE/openSUSE

I often use the yum groupinstall feature when running Fedora/CentOS to get the bunch of software install without fuss, especially when it comes to development tools (gcc, bison, flex etc.)

In SUSE/openSUSE you can also do so:

To search for available software pattern (ala Group in RH-based distros):

zypper se -t pattern

To install a pattern

zypper in -t pattern xxx

Patent Absurdity

For those of us who are still struggling with the whole stupidity around Software Patents, please proceed to download (legally) a nice video from http://patentabsurdity.com/download.html

Enough of mega corps dictating on how we do our computing.

Fixing Packman Repository error for openSUSE 11.2

For a couple of days now, when ever I do a zypper operation (and the resulting repo refresh) I get the following error message:

Repository 'Packman Repository' is invalid.
Can't provide /repodata/repomd.xml : Can't hardlink/copy /var/adm/mount/AP_0x00000001/repodata/repomd.xml to /var/cache/zypp/raw/ftp.skynet.be-suseMUwvKg
Please check if the URIs defined for this repository are pointing to a valid repository.
Warning: Disabling repository 'Packman Repository' because of the above error.

Since I added the Packman repo via Yast (Yast -> Software -> Software Repositories -> Add -> Community Repositories) I was scratching my head trying to find out why. Then it hit me that Packman does not use a redirector URL like download.opensuse.org.

To resolve it I added another location for Packman (with autorefresh enabled):

zypper ar -f http://ftp.halifax.rwth-aachen.de/packman/suse/11.2/ Packman

Then refresh the repo

zypper refresh Packman

For a list of additional repos you can add to openSUSE 11.2, do refer to http://en.opensuse.org/Additional_package_repositories

OpenOffice.org 3.2.0 Build 9319 Available for openSUSE

OO.o 3.2 is now available via the OpenOffice.org Unstable repo for openSUSE. 

Just add the below repo using zypper:

zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/OpenOffice.org:/UNSTABLE/openSUSE_11.2/ openSUSE\ 11.2\ OpenOffice\ Unstable

Change 11.2 to 11.1 or 11.0 if you are not running 11.2.

One of the coolest things of running openSUSE is the availability of the latest OO.o from the devels themselves, since Novell sponsors the excellent Go-oo variant of OpenOffice.org. Go-oo has better support for OOXML and VBA macros,  GStreamer integration and 3D transition for Impress. Go-oo is the default OpenOffice.org bundled with other distros such as Ubuntu and Mandriva. Go-oo also has a version for MS Windows. 

Another example of Microsft's Evil

I was trawling through Planet SUSE and came across this interesting post on Microsoft's plagiarising some small startup's microblogging service.

Microsoft is innovative...yeah right...

Bash script...

Well was playing around with Inkscape and decided to copy all SVG opencliparts to another dir:

find /opt/openclipart-0.19/ -name *.svg -exec cp {} /home/eyeoh/svg \

Ahh...the simple elegance of the bash script.

Scientists Create Artifical Meat

It seems a bunch of Dutch scientists have managed to create pork meat from a petri dish.

This means that meat can one day be potentially "vegetarian" as it is not obtained from slaughter.

To me the easiest problem to solve are the scientific ones; it's the theological ones that are the deal breakers.