Alien Pastures

My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

Month: May 2013

Last week’s harvest

May 18, 2013 / / 13 Comments

I was a bit too busy and tired to write something on my blog during the past week, but now that it is weekend again, there is room for some updates.

Flash Player Plugin

There was yet another security update for Adobe’s Flashplayer Plugin. I updated my package to the latest version. Note that if you are using my Steam Client package, you will probably have installed the flashplayer-plugin in order to see all the news in the Steam Store. If you are on a 64-bit Slackware platform with multilib, you should not just update the 64-bit flashplayer-plugin but also convert the 32-bit package into a “compat32” version and upgrade the 32-bit package you will already have installed for Steam:

# convertpkg-compat32 -i flashplayer-plugin-11.2.202.285-i386-1alien.txz
# upgradepkg --install-new /tmp/flashplayer-plugin-compat32-11.2.202.285-x86_64-1aliencompat32.txz

KDE

The kdelibs package in my ktown repository (KDE 4.10.3) has been patched to prevent application crashes. Coincidentally this patch has also been applied to the kdelibs package in slackware-current.

Slackware Dependencies

A nice and fast tool to discover and query dependencies between Slackware packages is sbbdep which stands for “Slack Build Binary Dependencies”. Its author, a4z, released version 0.2.0 last week. I use this tool to assist me when determining the build order of packages for my ARM port.

ARM Port

Speaking of which, there is an interesting thread going on on LinuxQuestions, regarding ARMedslack and the Raspberry Pi. Someone who goes by the nick “Ahau” and comments on my blog from time to time, is working on a hard-float port to the armv6 hardware platform – the heart of the Raspberry Pi. He is using my ARM source tree for this, has given me good feedback which resulted in bug fixes, and his ultimate goal is to create a new ARM version of Porteus. The most recent part of the LQ discussion centered around my decision to split the libtinfo library (terminfo) out of the libncurses(w) library. This is the ncurses developers’ intention for the future, however it causes issues when compiling software which is not querying the system properly and assuming that only libncurses(w) is required for linking.

I had nearly decided to revert my decision and integrate libtinfo again into libncurses(w) when ponce pointed out a patch which I had already seen in Fedora’s ncurses package source. Perhaps I will apply that patch to my ncurses package because it seems to resolve all the linking issues we have been running into lately.

LibreOffice ARM?

And more good news – it took two days of compiling because I forgot to enable distcc, but I managed to create LibreOffice packages for my ARM port, using the SlackBuild script with which I already compiled LibreOffice 4.0.3 for x86 and x86_64 platforms last week (I needed one additional patch to work around the newer boost-1.53 which I have in my ARM tree). I have not had the chance to install the packages and run the LO Writer to see if I created working binaries… but the build log did not show errors which is promising!

Desktop Environments other than KDE or XFCE

Long ago, I created a package for razor-qt which is a minimal (lightweight may be the better word) desktop environment based on Qt. In other words, it looks beautiful (by not using GTK) and does not have the sluggishness people complain about when they run that other Qt based desktop environment (KDE). I was thinking about what I would have to add to a filesystem image for the ARM ChromeBook which I should finally get ready and distribute… I do have KDE packages, but KDE felt like just a bit overweight for the ChromeBook. I do not really like XFCE (don’t get me wrong, technically and functionally it’s not bad at all, but GTK does not have any visual appeal to me) and therefore I felt compelled to re-visit razor-qt.

Razor-qt does not come with its own window manager, instead it allows you to pick one of the available window managers it finds on your computer when it starts for the first time. Razor-qt will work well with KDE’s window manager KWin, but it works best with OpenBox. And since that is not part of Slackware, I added an openbox package as well to my repository (which was the moment that I found out I had never released my original razor-qt package… no idea how I could have forgotten that).

I decided that I am going to build armv7hl packages for razor-qt and openbox so that the ChromeBook has a nice and fast, good-looking desktop environment next to XFCE. They will be uploaded to my separate “alien” subdirectory of the ARM package tree, where I will upload the LibreOffice packages as well.

KDE Display Manager

The KDE Desktop Environment is transitioning to Plasma Workspaces 2. Two changes are worth mentioning because they will have a big impact: Many “user-interface centric” applications will be re-written in QML (Qt Modeling Language). More importantly, the X.Org display server of old will be abandoned for the Wayland protocol server. Wayland gives you a 3D-enabled display server from the start, instead of the current practice of running a 3D compositor (KWin, compiz) as an extension under the 2D X.Org display server. Future support of Wayland requires a rewrite of KWin (KDE’s window manager) but also forced a decision to say goodbye to the KDE Display Manager (KDM) which is the graphical login program which greets you when you boot Slackware in Runlevel 4. A blog post by Aaron Seigo gives a lot of insight in the process that preceeded this decision.

It looks like SDDM (Simple Desktop Display Manager) is a contender for replacing KDM in a future release of KDE. Initially, SDDM had a hard dependency on PAM, but thankfully the developer is friendly towards Slackware. After a short discussion on Google+ he created a preliminary “pam-less” version which I tested. Those tests went OK and the changes were added to the main source. So it is with pleasure that I announce the package which I added to my repository. You can already try it out, if you just add a couple of lines to Slackware’s “/etc/rc.d/rc.4” script. Directly below the line that says:

echo "Starting up X11 session manager..."

you add:

# ----8<----------------------------------------------------------------
# Use Simple Display Desktop Manager
 if [ -x /usr/bin/sddm ]; then
 exec /usr/bin/sddm
 fi
# ----8<----------------------------------------------------------------

Enjoy!

Eric

LibreOffice 4.0.3 packages ready for download (and a rant)

May 10, 2013 / / 11 Comments

LibreOffice 4.0.3

Yesterdaty I noticed the LibreOffice 4.0.3 release.by chance, and built Slackware 14 packages for it right away (they work on -current just as well).Noteworthy statement in these release notes is “LibreOffice 4.0.3 is another important step in the process of improving the quality and stability of the bleeding edge version of the suite, and facilitating migrations to free software by governments and enterprises“.

Relating to that statement, a personal rant is about to burst.

Because there is another interesting tidbit in those release notes: “another large migration to LibreOffice has been announced, as the government of Spain’s autonomous region of Extremadura has just begun the switch to free software of desktop PCs and expects the majority of its 40,000 PCs to be migrated by the end of 2013. Extremadura estimates that the move to open source – including LibreOffice – will help save 30 million Euro per year.“. I remember that the decision by the Extremadura government (this is a county in Spain with low industrialisation and therefore not rich) to move completely to Open Source was made more than 6 years ago. Cool to read about this achievement. I wish the dutch government had more focus on adopting Open Source and Open Standards… so far it has been an eternal uphill battle against the minions of Microsoft. I know, because I have been involved in several pilots, proposals and projects over the past 10 years.

Anyway, I am open to discussion about this, you dutchies and others!

Back to the topic of using LibreOffice on our cool Slackware platform. Get the packages from my 14.0 package repository while they are hot! If you are still running Slackware 13.37 you should stick with LibreOffice 3.6.6 for which I also have packages.

They are also available from several mirrors. Remember, the mirror sites usually have a bigger bandwidth available than the master site! If you are a mirror administrator, and want to be added to the list, contact me.

Here is the shortlist:

You can subscribe to the repository’s RSS feed if you want to be the first to know when new packages are uploaded.

Cheers, Eric

KDE Software Compilation 4.10.3 for Slackware 14.

May 9, 2013 / / 3 Comments

I was on holiday, so I was unable to create the Slackware packages for KDE Software Compilation 4.10.3 any sooner than today. This installment of KDE SC was already added to slackware-current earlier this week, but my packages are specifically for users of the stable release, Slackware 14.

As with every incremental KDE release, this brings you “bugfixes and translation updates” and no new functionality. There are over 75 recorded bugfixes according to the KDE 4.10.3 fix set.

How to upgrade to KDE 4.10.3?

You will find all the installation/upgrade instructions that you need in the accompanying README file. That README also contains basic information for KDE recompilation using the provided SlackBuild script. Please note that if you are not yet running one of my KDE builds, you should upgrade from a (preferably) full installation of Slackware 14. I had some feedback from Slackware users who installed Slackware 14, excluded the whole “KDE” package series from that installation, and then installed my KDE packages on top. That way, you will be missing a lot of packages, several of them essential to the proper functioning of KDE! If you skipped the whole KDE series and install my KDE packages, you still need to get these from a Slackware 14 package tree (the essentials are highlighted in blue):

amarok
k3b
kaudiocreator
kdevelop-pg-qt
kplayer
polkit-kde-agent-1
polkit-kde-kcmodules-1
wicd-kde

You are strongly advised to read and follow these installation/upgrade instructions!

Download locations are listed below (you will find the sources in ./source/4.10.3/ and packages in ./14.0/4.10.3/ subdirectories). Using a mirror is preferred because you get more bandwidth from a mirror and it’s friendlier to the owners of the master server!

Have fun! Eric

A look on the sunny side

May 9, 2013 / / 23 Comments

2013-05-04 15.26.25

It will be obvious by now, that I work somewhat like a manic-depressive person. Bursts of frenzied activity are followed by periods of silence and withdrawal.

After I had worked like a maniac to release a usable version of my Slackware ARMv7 port (creating a git repository, cleaning up build scripts, uploading packages and setting up a local infrastructure to keep all of those easily updated) I was exhausted and my work output went down a lot. I have a day-time job and I do take that seriously… there was no energy left in the evenings to work as much on Slackware as I wanted.

Luckily, I had a short holiday scheduled and during the previous week, I have enjoyed life from the sunny side again. Spending a week in a holiday home with my family, sleeping long hours and walking through the hilly landscape of South-Limburg was something I needed to re-gain fresh energy.

And this week too has its pleasantries. Today is Ascension Day, which is a national holiday here in NL, and my employer gives us another day off tomorrow. Long weekend ahead! Time enough to enjoy my birthday (today), eating cake and warming up under the sun in my garden.

But last week I still managed to release some packages even though I did not write blog entries about it (you can always follow the RSS feed of my repository ChangeLog). New calibre, owncloud client and steamclient packages, and virtualenv which I needed in order to play a little with the Django web framework.

And I added a new version of the icedtea-web program, the webbrowser plugin for Java (works with my OpenJDK packages, either jdk or jre). This is a security update, here are the CVE entries it fixes and it is recommended that you upgrade:

  • CVE-2013-1926, RH916774: Class-loader incorrectly shared for applets with same relative-path.
  • CVE-2013-1927, RH884705: fixed gifar vulnerability
  • CVE-2012-3422, RH840592: Potential read from an uninitialized memory location
  • CVE-2012-3423, RH841345: Incorrect handling of not 0-terminated strings

Furthermore I am using my day off to build the recently released KDE 4.10.3 for Slackware 14.0. This version of KDE landed in slackware-current a few days ago but as a result of my holiday, I was not able to build packages for Slackware 14.0 sooner. Tonight I will write a separate blog post about this when the packages are ready and the repository updated.

Cheers, Eric

© 2024 Alien Pastures

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑