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Reveman on Beryl
Our latest Novell Open Audio, features an interview with David Reveman about the recently announced project called Beryl, which forks from Reveman’s Compiz project.

You may recall that David is the hacker behind Xgl and Compiz, which are collectively known as Desktop Effects. David has been on Novell Open Audio twice before, once to explain Xgl/Compiz and once from GUADEC to give us an update on the features he would focus on next.

We pursued the interview after a couple of Novell’s field technical specialists contacted us regarding Quinn Storm’s announcement. We recorded the interview last Thursday, but sometimes it’s hard to get stuff done relative to other commitments. Sorry for the delay on this one.

So why cover a fork? Don’t these things happen all the time? Well, when I first read Quinn’s post, I thought to myself, “Oh, no…this is one thing Novell doesn’t need right now.” Just when it seems that the community is starting to see that maybe Novell is a decent open source citizen, having a fork cite its impetus as, essentially, frustration in working with Novell goes against the culture that I think Novell has been working to live. It upsets me, since I have to be able to represent Novell with integrity. (more̷

This post co-written with Erin Quill, and follows my presentation at Ohio Linux Fest. Thanks go out to everyone who came to my session.

A few weeks before releasing iTunes 7, Apple rolled out a firmware update for iPod devices. The update rendered obsolete a key library for using Banshee with your iPod. (This is normally the point at which I would open up into a small-time rant about Apple, but I understand that the Mighty Aaron Bockover has one queued up for a near-term release.) So here is where we will step in and try to make ourselves useful by explaining how to update a SLED10 system (and probably an openSUSE system, as well) to the latest version of Banshee.

Updating to the latest Banshee does more than simply fix connectivity with any iPod devices that you might have mistakenly updated. It will also get you new plugins, including the aforementioned podcast plugin. (This is where the Amarok/KDE users chuckle about my foolish fascination with Banshee/Mono/GNOME. Fairly, I suppose. Amarok has had a podcatcher for quite some time.) (more̷

I have previously mentioned that we have an upcoming episode of Novell Open Audio featuring Holger Macht and Timo Hoenig from SUSE’s “Team Mobile Devices.” Well, it’s finally online.

In a tip of the hat to the guys over at The Linux Link Tech Show, this edition involves beer. We recorded from Anderland, a fine beergarden in beautiful Nuremberg. Please consider the background noise on this one simply part of the ambience. Oh, and for our Provo-based listeners: yes, that is a baby crying in the background, and, yes, people commonly bring their infants to beergardens.

We remind you that the online listener survey closes on Saturday, so if you haven’t taken the survey yet, please do! We will award two limited edition green Novell backpacks–possibly stuffed with some other cool schwag–to two of the respondents. We’ll announce who wins them after September 30th.

If you manage GroupWise, check out BrainStorm’s new free (as in gratis) GroupWise Administrators Reference. ‘Nuff said.

While a 7-day stat may not sustain, this is nice to see!

Please give it a digg!

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Recently, there have been a couple interesting commentaries about Novell Open Audio from some of our listeners.

• The first I want to share is from David Harrison in New Zealand. It aligns well with where I think we are with the show, and the Novell community program in general. I serendipitously discovered this review as I started preparing materials for an upcoming review of Novell’s community efforts with Novell’s Chief Marketing Officer, John Dragoon–a really solid guy to whom I feel I can speak very franky.
• The second is from Tony Whitmore. While I don’t feel it’s as dead-on as Harrison’s more thorough assay, some of Whitmore’s questions align with Harrison’s and a few others I have spoken with directly.

While I am outwardly a consummate advocate for Novell, and I am pleased with what we’re accomplishing through efforts like Novell Open Audio, critical assessment of myself and the show are a constant part of the back end process. How do we tune this thing to make it better for people? In what areas are we still underdelivering? How can we increase transparency and interaction? These are the kinds of questions I regularly mull over. While reviews like Harrision’s–and even Whitmore’s–may contain sharp critique, they provide a lot of insights and ideas on how we can continure improve Novell.

Even if you’re not a regular blogger, feedback sent to openaudio at novell dot com or through our current listener survey helps, too.

Finally, at the request of a couple readers (Liquidat, KoOlLiNuS), I have a series of posts in development about the Novell community program and how I think we are progressing. If you have specific areas you want me to cover, please leave a comment.