Open Recall: Amarok 2.7.1, GNOME 3.8.2, openSUSE 13.1 Milestone 1

Open Recall is a space on The H for those things that are too small to package as news but are worth covering. In this edition: Amarok fixes a crashing bug on Linux, the last GNOME 3.8 release, the first development milestone for openSUSE 13.1, the first alpha of Canaima GNU/Linux 4.0, a Calligra bug fix release, and a new version of Fail2Ban.

• Amarok fixes crashing bug – Amarok 2.7.1, code-named "Harbinger", fixes a number of problems with the open source media player including a serious crashing bug on Linux that was introduced with version 2.7.0 and made playback of music over a longer period of time almost impossible. The developers have also dropped functionality that used MusicBrainz IDs to uniquely identify tracks in the application as it proved buggy and gave users "duplicate tracks found" errors even when there were no duplicate tracks in the database. A list of all bug fixes in the release are available in the release announcement.
  

• The last GNOME 3.8 release – The GNOME developers have announced the last planned update to the 3.8.x series of their software. GNOME 3.8.2 includes bug fixes, translation improvements and enhanced documentation and the developers are now concentrating on developing GNOME 3.9 which will eventually be released as GNOME 3.10 when it is ready for general consumption.
  

• Milestone 1 for openSUSE 13.1 – The openSUSE developers have released the first development milestone for the upcoming release of openSUSE 13.1, which is planned for November. The developers say the milestone is not expected to be "fully functional or very stable" and that testers should file reports for bugs they encounter. The team has compiled a list of "most annoying" bugs to watch out for. Major new software updates in the release include GNOME 3.8.1, version 3.9 of the Linux kernel and version 1.14.1 of the X.org server.
  

• First alpha of Canaima 4.0 – The Debian-based Canaima GNU/Linux project, which is sponsored by the government of Venezuela, has released a first alpha of version 4.0 of their distribution, which is based on the recently released Debian 7 ("Wheezy"). According to the developers, the distribution is targeted at desktop computers as well as mobile devices. This release uses GNOME 3.4.2 by default. Spanish speakers can get more information on the release from the project's release announcement.

• Calligra bug fix release – The Calligra developers have released a bug fix update for their open source productivity suite. Calligra 2.6.3 fixes a crashing problem and a few minor bugs and is now available for download. Details are available in the project's release announcement.

• Fail2Ban 0.8.9 – The latest version of the open source security tool Fail2Ban is the result of over 200 commits by 16 contributors. The new version brings a number of new features and bug fixes and the developers say that their code now has 94% test coverage. Fail2Ban is used to monitor server log files for repeated access attempts and then modify the server's firewall rules to lock out the offenders.

(fab)