A good reminder on Motivation

SUSE Linux Enterprise Wins Readers' Choice Award 2010

Apologies for this late report, we won this back in October 2010... better late than never! :)

On 15th October 2010, Novell was presented a Readers' Choice Award from ComputerWorld Singapore for winning in the Open Source Platforms/Operating Systems category. It was a very proud moment for us in Novell Singapore and I'm sure it will pleased all SUSE supporters everywhere.

Unfortunately for me, I was called away to be in Malaysia for a business trip and was unable to attend the ceremony. After hearing it from my friends, made me wish there was a way for me to return to Singapore for that evening's presentation.

Above is a photo of the trophy presented and its now sitting in a prominent place in the Novell Singapore office. :)

My last day with Novell; My Blog continues

Christmas Eve 2010 was my last day with Novell. I left the office with mixed feelings... Light-hearted because its Christmas and I look ahead to a new professional chapter in a different technology sector... Reluctance because I'm parting ways with a great bunch of friends & colleagues (both here in Singapore, the rest of Asia Pacific and around the world).

This is NOT an end to my involvement with SUSE, Linux and OSS. It is merely a transition. While I no longer sell Free (as in Freedom) software for a living, I am still an avid user and advocate of all things SUSE, OSS and Open Standards. Thus, this blog will continue as I journal and share my experiences.

Its important to say that my desire and plans to pursue a different path in my professional career was already in motion before the recent developments at Novell. As a matter of fact, my manager is interviewing candidates to backfill my position, its business as usual here. Given how a good part of the WWW seem to thrive on negativity and conspiracy theories to gain viewership, its my hope that this blog entry NOT be improperly quoted out of context and used as "ammunition" in all these negative media brouhaha.

Thank you Novell, and all my friends, for the 3 wonderful years selling SUSE for a living. Its been a good living. :)

Focus stealing settings in KDE and Gnome on SUSE

This is an update from my previous post "Focus! User is King". Thanks to comments posted by 13thSlayer and JosP pointing me in the right direction, I found what I was looking for and I'd like to share it in this entry.

Specifically, I've tried this with KDE/openSUSE 11.3 and Gnome/SLES 11 SP1. I'm fairly certain that this should apply to other variants like Gnome/openSUSE and KDE/SLED.

KDE

If you are using KDE, start Configure Desktop and select Window Behavior. Next, select Window Behavior in the panel on the left and find the Focus Stealing prevention level field. The default is Low. I changed it to Medium. You may choose to go more aggressive with High or Extreme.






Gnome

If you are using Gnome, you will need to bring up gconf-editor from the Terminal. With the Gnome Configuration Editor window opened, from the left-hand panel, navigate / -> apps -> metacity -> general. In the right-hand panel, scroll to look for the variable focus_new_window.

The default value for focus_new_window is smart. You only have the option to change this to strict.




To wrap up, in typical YMMV fashion, changing these settings may or may not suit you personally but at least you now have an option to experiment. I have found the Medium setting in KDE worked for me compared to the default Low setting. I have not fully tested this for Gnome just yet.

Enjoy!

PS: I'm going on vacation for a week and will not be monitoring/moderating the comments (if any).