What is the Evergreen Project?

An interview with Wolfgang Rosenauer

by Kostas Koudaras

Having a distribution that gives you a two year support for ALL editions is another fascinating aspect of the openSUSE distribution. Being in a community that allows you to say that you think that this is not enough and that you want to do something with it is another one. Wolfgang Rosenauer believed that something like that would be useful to users and gave birth to Project Evergreen.

Hi Wolfgang, I have some questions about the Evergreen Project that I got from a few people I talked about it. Let us start...
1)Tell us some things about the Evergreen Project. What inspired your idea for the project?

-Basically since I began to use Linux (long ago) I installed and openSUSE (previously S.u.S.E. Linux) for friends as desktops and servers including people who do not know anything about Linux. Also I'm running several servers in hosted environments for some association and myself. As I would call myself an openSUSE poweruser (in the past employed by SUSE Linux/Novell) I didn't and still don't want to switch to another longer supported distribution like CentOS, Debian, or Ubuntu LTS. I tried some and wasn't satisfied with them. Also using SLES is no option as there is no money involved at all.
I don't want to care about all the machines every day (you know it's nothing I get money for) but after 18 months at the latest the systems run out of security maintenance which is a very bad thing for machines running in the internet as web-/mail/etc servers. Because of that I always followed discussions about initiatives like openSUSE LTS and a CentOS-like clone of SLES. Unfortunately there were endless discussions about details instead of something happening and so I decided to try another approach: "Start it first and figure out details along the way". All that with the risk of the project failing at some point.

2)What is the usefulness of the Evergreen Project in everyday use? What I mean is how a regular-everyday user could find Evergreen project useful?

-Currently the project started to support 11.1. So it's useful for everyone still running 11.1 somewhere. It allows them to get security (and in some cases) bugfixes for their system.
That being said project Evergreen should not prevent people fromupdating their systems but it gives those who cannot do it for different reasons the chance to have a secure platform for a longer time.

To be is to do,to do has to be fun...

 

These days the Greek openSUSE community took over most of my time since some of the hard working members are University students and it is examination season here in Greece and so I had to give them less or no work at all and someone should replace them so that no community work will fall back. For this week we made it and we still hold on as planned. We just released the Greek edition of Weekly news. Unfortunately I feel I left back a bit my work at the marketing team but I will catch up ;-) .
 ...But on the other hand this week I had the opportunity to start writing a Greek article about Project Evergreen that got my attention and I had some ideas about we can promote it. I got in touch with Wolfgang Rosenauer about it so that I can take his personal opinion and some directions about it and with Stratos Zolotas from the Greek Community that makes some bug-testing in 2 desktops and a server for the Evergreen project. It is a really interesting project and is another thing that shows the free will of the people in the openSUSE community to create and develop their own community projects. That last goes to those who believe that the openSUSE community is a corporate slave...

Power to the people

 

The ballots are open and now the power is in the hands of people of openSUSE to decide whom they want to have on the board for the next year. The openSUSE community is a true democratic community so the elections procedure for it, is a celebration of ideas. All the candidates have proved our love for what we do and we are all devoted to the openSUSE project and its community.  If I was not a candidate I would really had a huge problem deciding whom to vote. The only 'leverage' I can provide myself is to tell you that just in case you want to know more things about me and you can spare 5 minutes, please visit my profile and my election platform. As I said before in those elections, community is the absolute winner.

Kostas Koudaras

Ημέρες συνεργασίας openSUSE

Πριν λίγο καιρό συζητούσαμε στο κανάλι #opensuse-marketing να διοργανώσουμε ήμερες συνεργασίας της κοινότητας. Σκεφτήκαμε ότι θα ήταν καλή ιδέα έτσι ώστε να τελειώσουμε διάφορες δουλειές γύρω από την προώθηση και την οργάνωση της κοινότητας και να ακούσουμε από την κοινότητα τις προτάσεις και τις ιδέες τους.

Αποφασίσαμε λοιπόν ότι θα το κάναμε ως εξής:
Θα στηνόμασταν 2 άτομα την φορά μέσα στο κανάλι του IRC και με  μια ατζέντα που θα φτιάχναμε νωρίτερα σε ένα etherpad η οποία όμως δεν περιόριζε κάποιον να προτείνει πράγματα. Κάθε Ημέρα Συνεργασίας θα διαρκούσε 16 ώρες έτσι ώστε να μπορέσουν να συμμετάσχουν όλοι, άσχετα από ποιο μέρος του πλανήτη ήταν.
Χωρίσαμε λοιπόν τις θεματικές ενότητες σε 3 μέρη:

1. Ambassadors
2. Marketing
3. Social Media

και αρχίσαμε την δουλειά.
 Η πρώτη μέρα ανατέθηκε σε εμένα και τον Carlos Ribeiro  από την Βραζιλία. Μιας και ήταν η πρώτη φορά που γινόταν κάτι τέτοιο δεν είχαμε ακριβής οδηγίες για το πώς θα το οδηγούσαμε όλο αυτό και ουσιαστικά οι διοργανωτές για τις επόμενες μέρες περίμεναν να μάθουν από τα 'λάθη' μας ή μάλλον από τα πάθη μας.

First Joke of the year: If Operating Systems Ran The Airlines

A friend of mine just send me an old Linux that I would like to share...

If Operating Systems Ran The Airlines

UNIX Airways

Everyone brings one piece of the plane along when they come to the airport. They all go out on the runway and put the plane together piece by piece, arguing non-stop about what kind of plane they are supposed to be building.

Air DOS

Everybody pushes the airplane until it glides, then they jump on and let the plane coast until it hits the ground again. Then they push again, jump on again, and so on ...

Mac Airlines

All the stewards, captains, baggage handlers, and ticket agents look and act exactly the same. Every time you ask questions about details, you are gently but firmly told that you don't need to know, don't want to know, and everything will be done for you without your ever having to know, so just shut up.

Windows Air

The terminal is pretty and colorful, with friendly stewards, easy baggage check and boarding, and a smooth take-off. After about 10 minutes in the air, the plane explodes with no warning whatsoever.

Windows NT Air

Just like Windows Air, but costs more, uses much bigger planes, and takes out all the other aircraft within a 40-mile radius when it explodes.

Linux Air

Disgruntled employees of all the other OS airlines decide to start their own airline. They build the planes, ticket counters, and pave the runways themselves. They charge a small fee to cover the cost of printing the ticket, but you can also download and print the ticket yourself. When you board the plane, you are given a seat, four bolts, a wrench and a copy of the Seat-HOWTO.html. Once settled, the fully adjustable seat is very comfortable, the plane leaves and arrives on time without a single problem, the in-flight meal is wonderful. You try to tell customers of the other airlines about the great trip, but all they can say is, "You had to do what with the seat?"

...And a happy new year

 2011 Finally came, I wish you all a healthy overall year although this new years dawn found me ill with a cold and fever, as a result of recklessly insisting on riding a motorcycle at -2 C. From the start I sense that this year will be a hard working one. 3 days ago I opened my eyes from fever and I found last years jobs awaiting. I lost the deadline I gave to my self for releasing the openSUSE Weekly news. I didn't shared the articles for translation to the people and I had left my candidacy for the board without a candidate amongst other things that I had to do. I was in panic for about 2 seconds, I confess that no matter what I do I hate not completing the jobs I took over. Two seconds later I tried to concentrate,  I chilled out and let things role. Thank God I have good people around me helping me, so I finished all the works around the Greek community, I even found the time to organize some new things like a very interesting event that we will announce in the next few days.
 Other than that I made some work with my candidacy, I prepared my Board election platform and started make some planning for my campaign. I still have lots of hard work to do. The other candidates are really interesting people and all of them have contributed a lot to the project. It is going to be a hard race and this is good because it will be interesting to the end. I believe that no matter the results, openSUSE community will be the final winner.