Without having the goal of turning openSUSE into a Ubuntu clone… but instead to explore a bit more of the potential of openSUSE Build Service and educate myself in the ways of the ‘weekend warrior’, I’ve decided to to do the unthinkable! Bring some very popular software from Ubuntu to openSUSE.
Why?
- Offer the possibility of openSUSE users to live an experience closer to the one offered by Ubuntu without swapping this preferred OS, openSUSE Linux.
- Offer a different Desktop experience for our users… and a wider base of choice for their desktop.
- Have a lot of fun…
As always, there is a couple of catches…
- This is a ‘one man inglorious rush’… as such, it depends on my free time…
- This is a part of a learning curve for me… as such, productivity might be low…
- I’m only mainting a repository for the forthcoming openSUSE 11.4 and I’m not engaging in backports. If anyone wants to pick it up… +1 (step forward and be a openSUSE ninja!).
- I believe in GNOME3, though I will hang around with GNOME2 for one or two more cycles. Guess it’s like people say, old habits die hard.
- Some functionality will not be available. I’m not bringing software like indicator-network which seems to be a downgrade from nm-applet to me. Thus it requires more daemons on the system or full system integration for the connection manager. Not gonna do it. Additionally, packages like battery-status from Ubuntu aren’t really an ‘improvement’ to GNOME’s battery applet. So don’t expect all the applets to be around (unless someone else goes for them, I support such moves).
- I never used Ubuntu, I’m a proud player for the home team since SuSE Linux 5.2 (somewhere in '98), so I don’t really know how some of those gadgets are supposed to work or even the software they support. I’ll will make some functionality available from a separate repository with things like:
- Patched Metacity to correctly display Canonical’s Ambiance and Radiance themes;
- Empathy to support NotifyOSD and the Messaging Indicator (yet more patched software);
- Evolution patched also for the same purpose;
- NotifyOSD (Canonical’s Notification bubbles), supporting theming/skinning;
- To keep the maximum compatibility with openSUSE standard gnome, some features might be disabled partially or not even present. I want to dodge as most patches as i can, and only deliver what really matters.
The following pic is from openSUSE Factory 11.4 RC4 already with some indicators, ubuntu’s-mono-dark icon theme (since it has the icons required for some indicators). I’m also on Ambiance theme to check out how the patched metacity looks and behaves. Just a preview…
http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/1984/screenshotcfj.png
Please don’t start with flame wars on Canonical or bring ‘distro wars’ into here… I have to thank Vincent Untz et al (on openSUSE GNOME Project) and Ken VanDine et all from Ubuntu which provided some cool information (@#ayatana) and help so that this could be smoother.
NM