Alien Pastures » Software http://alien.slackbook.org/blog My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:27:43 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 KDE 4.8.0 arrives http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/kde-4-8-0-arrives/ http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/kde-4-8-0-arrives/#comments Wed, 25 Jan 2012 18:00:56 +0000 alienbob http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/?p=985 The release schedule could have told you in advance – here we have the first installment in the KDE 4.8 series!

The Slackware KDE 4.8.0 packages are ready for your enjoyment..

A good primer on the how and why of the modularization of KDE, resulting in an abundance of smaller packages compared to the big meta packages of Slackware 13.37, please read my earlier post about KDE 4.7.0.

My packages have been compiled on Slackware-current. There has been an incompatible update to slackware-current recently (the glibc package). If you consider using KDE 4.8.0 on one of Slackware’s earlier (stable) releases, then you have no other option than to compile packages yourself. I have written down the guidelines in another blog post..

Read the accompanying README file for installation and upgrade instructions!

Some of the highlights of these KDE packages:

  • Being the first release in the KDE 4.8 series means, there will probably be some bugs to iron out. But, I really can not find anything wrong with this point zero release. It sports a new default background “Ariya” to replace “Horos” of the 4.6 and 4.7 releases. It’s nothing but straight-line geometry, giving the desktop a professional look. The desktop feels fast and snappy, partly thanks to the upgraded Qt 4.8.0 which I added as well, but also thanks to the improvements made to kwin, KDE’s window manager. Enabling the “blur” effect should no longer slow down your desktop.
  • There are a lot of updated dependencies compared to Slackware’s own KDE 4.5.5: PyQt, QScintilla, akonadi, attica, clucene, ebook-tools, hunspell, libdbusmenu-qt, libvncserver, phonon, polkit-qt-1, qt, raptor2, rascal, redland, shared-desktop-ontologies, sip, soprano, strigi, system-config-printer and virtuoso-ose. I really hope Slackware will catch up some day, as it is no fun to maintain so many packages outside of the main Slackware tree.
  • In comparison with my previous KDE 4.7.4 the number of updated dependencies is still rather big because I wanted to offer the best experience: akonadi, attica, hunspell, libatasmart, libvncserver, phonon, phonon-xine, polkit-qt-1, qt, strigi, udisks, and upower have all been brought to their most recent versions. Note that libktorrent is now located in “deps” instead of “kde” directory because it has become a dependency for more than just ktorrent.
  • KDE dpendencies that are not part of Slackware 13.37 at all (yet): grantlee, herqq, libatasmart, libbluedevil, libssh, phonon-gstreamer, phonon-xine, sg3_utils, udisks and upower. Note that I added phonon-gstreamer and phonon-xine only after I had already released KDE 4.7.0 packages because people reported that they no longer had sound. These two packages solve that issue.

Also worth mentioning is some stuff which is not completely new, since I added these to previous releases of KDE 4.7 already (but if you are new to KDE 4.8 this will certainly interest you):

  • You will find some additional useful new applications, which are not part of the KDE core set. They are new, compared to Slackware’s own version of KDE. I already added bluedevil to my 4.6.5 package-set. Bluedevil is the new KDE bluetooth stack with a nice GUI, based on the BlueZ libraries already present in Slackware. And with KDE 4.7.0, I included kplayer, a KDE front-end to MPlayer. With KDE 4.7.2, I added Quanta Plus, which disappeared from KDE4 because that migrated from Qt3 to Qt4. It is now being worked on again, but no longer as a standalone application – instead it is available as a plugin to the Kdevelop Platform. And with KDE 4.7.3, I added a native WICD applet for KDE, called “wicd-kde“. It can replace the GTK based “wicd-client” which is part of the wicd package.
  • I also added oxygen-gtk2 (renamed from “oxygen-gtk” now that there is also a version supporting GTK3). It is not really an application, but a theme engine. It (optionally) makes GTK2 applications visually blend in with KDE’s own Oxygen theme. There is a README in its documentation directory which explains how to enable it.
  • Since KDE 4.7.2, I include a “test” directory. This directory contains NetworkManager, plus some other dependencies, that allows me to create a KDE package for “networkmanagement“. Networkmanagement is an applet plus a kcontrol (i.e. a plugin for KDE’s systemsettings). Use the packages in this “test” directory if you want to switch from WICD to NetworkManager as your basic network management service. The applet plus kcontrol make it quite easy to configure your network in KDE (wired, wireless, vpn, dsl and mobile broadband). No new Gnome libraries had to be added for this (NM itself plus its supporting tools have no dependency on the rest of Gnome). I have added NM installation/configuration instructions to the README. Note that I moved from NM 0.8 (which I had in KDE 4.7) to the newer NM 0.9 because that is what KDE currently supports best.

The KDE 4.8.0 packages for Slackware-current are available for download from my “ktown” repository and several mirrors (taper will probably be in sync when I post this, the other mirrors will have to catch up):

Have fun! Eric

]]> http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/kde-4-8-0-arrives/feed/ 79 LibreOffice 3.4.5 released, OpenJDK package update. http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/libreoffice-3-4-5-released-openjdk-package-update/ http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/libreoffice-3-4-5-released-openjdk-package-update/#comments Tue, 17 Jan 2012 23:20:06 +0000 alienbob http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/?p=982 There was a new maintenance release from the Document Foundation. We now have LibreOffice 3.4.5 and I spent the night (or rather, two virtual machines did the work while I slept) to produce packages for Slackware 13.37 and later.

You can find the packages in the usual locations (all of the mirrors below also offer  rsync access):

Also I rebuilt my OpenJDK packages (JDK as well as JRE and the browser plugin icedtea-web) to address the issues that had popped up in the comments section of my previous post:

  • The java web start (javaws, part of the “icedtea-web” package) would not work with just openjre installed – it worked fine with openjdk;
  • The openjre pakage missed two important configfiles which made it unusable,
  • The CA certificates file was empty in both JDK and JRE packages

Download locations for the updated packages: http://slackware.com/~alien/openjdk/ with a mirror here: http://alien.slackbook.org/slackware/openjdk/ . Please note that there is an updated (with regard to Slackware’s stock version) of ca-certificates. I needed that to generate a “cacerts” file for the openjdk and openjre package, but for you the upgrade is optional. You’ll see it appear in slackware-current soon enough anyway because the upgrade is well overdue.

Cheers, Eric

]]> http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/libreoffice-3-4-5-released-openjdk-package-update/feed/ 25 Fixing audio sync with ffmpeg http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/fixing-audio-sync-with-ffmpeg/ http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/fixing-audio-sync-with-ffmpeg/#comments Wed, 14 Dec 2011 00:32:18 +0000 alienbob http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/?p=965

The ffmpeg developers and their libav antipodes are engaged in a healthy battle. Ever since there was a fall-out and the ffmpeg developer community split in two (forking ffmpeg into “libav”), ffmpeg itself has seen many releases which tend to incorporate the good stuff from the other team as well as their own advancements.

Last in series is ffmpeg-0.9 for which I built Slackware packages (if you want to be able to create mp3 or aac sound, get the packages with MP3 and AAC encoding enabled instead.

The package will come in handy if you want to try what I am going to describe next.

Re-sync your movie’s audio.

You probably have seen the issue yourself too: for instance, I have a file “original.avi” which has an audio track (or “stream“) which is slightly out of sync with the video… just enough to annoy the hell out of me. I need to delay the audio by 0.2 seconds to make the movie playback in sync. Luckily, ffmpeg can fix this for you very easily.

Let’s analyze the available streams in the original video (remember, UNIX starts counting at zero):

$ ffmpeg -i original.avi

Input #0, avi, from ‘original.avi’:
…
Stream #0.0: Video: mpeg4, yuv420p, 672×272 [PAR 1:1 DAR 42:17], 23.98 fps, 23.98 tbr, 23.98 tbn, 23.98 tbc
Stream #0.1: Audio: mp3, 48000 Hz, stereo, s16, 128 kb/s

You see that ffmpeg reports a “stream #0.0” which is the first stream in the first input file (right now we have only one input file but that will change later on) – the video. The second stream, called “stream #0.1“, is the audio track.

What I need is to give ffmpeg the video and audio as separate inputs, instruct it to delay our audio and re-assemble the two streams into one resultant movie file. The parameters which define two inputs where the second input will be delayed for N seconds, goes like this:

$ ffmpeg -i inputfile1 -itsoffset N -i inputfile2

However, we do not have a separate audio and video tracks, we just have the single original AVI file. Luckily, the “inputfile1″ and “inputfile2″ can be the same file! We just need to find a way to tell ffmpeg what stream to use from which input. Look at how ffmpeg reports the content of input files if you list the same file twice:

$ ffmpeg -i original.avi -i original.avi

Input #0, avi, from ‘original.avi’:
…
Stream #0.0: Video: mpeg4, yuv420p, 672×272 [PAR 1:1 DAR 42:17], 23.98 fps, 23.98 tbr, 23.98 tbn, 23.98 tbc
Stream #0.1: Audio: mp3, 48000 Hz, stereo, s16, 128 kb/s
…
Input #1, avi, from ‘original.avi’:
…
Stream #1.0: Video: mpeg4, yuv420p, 672×272 [PAR 1:1 DAR 42:17], 23.98 fps, 23.98 tbr, 23.98 tbn, 23.98 tbc
Stream #1.1: Audio: mp3, 48000 Hz, stereo, s16, 128 kb/s

You see that the different streams in multiple input files are all numbered uniquely. We will need this defining quality. I colored the numbers with red & purple – these colors will show up in my example commands below.

Our remaining issue is that ffmpeg must be told that it has to use only the video stream of the first inputfile, and only the audio stream of the second inputfile. Ffmpeg will then have to do its magic and finally re-assemble the two streams into a resulting movie file. That resulting AVI file also expects video as the first stream, and audio as the second stream, just like our original AVI is laid out. Movie players will get confused otherwise.

Ffmpeg has the “map” parameter to specify this. I have looked long and hard at this parameter and its use… it is not easy for me to follow the logic. A bit like the git version control system, which does not fit into my brain conceptually, either. But perhaps I can finally explain it properly, to myself as well as to you, the reader.

Actually, we need two “map” parameters, one to map the input to the output video and another to map the input to the output audio. Map parameters are specified in the order the streams are going to be added to the output file. Remember, we want to delay the audio, so inherently the audio track must be taken from the second inputfile.

In the example below, the first “-map 0:0” parameter specifies how to create the first stream in the output. We need the first stream in the output to be video. The “0:0” value means “first_inputfile:first_stream“.

The second “-map 1:1” parameter specifies where ffmpeg should find the audio (which is going to be the second stream in the output). The value “1:1” specifies “second_inputfile:seccond_stream“.

$ ffmpeg -i original.avi -itsoffset 0.2 -i original.avi -map 0:0 -map 1:1

There is one more thing (even though it looks like ffmpeg is smart enough to do this without explicitly telling so). I do not want any re-encoding of the audio or video to happen, so I instruct ffmpeg to “copy” the audio and video stream without intermediate decoding and re-encoding. The “‘-acodec copy” and “-vcodec copy” parameters take care of this.

We now have the information to write a ffmpeg commandline which takes audio and video streams from the same file and re-assembles the movie with the audio stream delayed by 0.2 seconds. The resulting synchronized movie is called “synced.avi” and the conversion takes seconds, rather than minutes:

$ ffmpeg -i original.avi -itsoffset 0.2 -i original.avi -map 0:0 -map 1:1  -acodec copy -vcodec copy synced.avi

Cheers, Eric

]]> http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/fixing-audio-sync-with-ffmpeg/feed/ 4 KDE 4.7.4 – last of the 4.7 series http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/kde-4-7-4-last-of-the-4-7-series/ http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/kde-4-7-4-last-of-the-4-7-series/#comments Thu, 08 Dec 2011 12:40:57 +0000 alienbob http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/?p=964 The KDE team has already released two betas of the upcoming KDE 4.8, but I am not so much in a hurry. First things first! There is the last update in the 4.7 series, which was released earlier today. The Slackware KDE 4.7.4 packages are ready and you can grab them if you like.

For those who are trying my 4.7 packages for the first time and wonder why the hell am I offering so many packages, please read my earlier post about KDE 4.7.0 which explains more about splitting KDE for Slackware into many more (and smaller) packages.

My packages have been compiled on Slackware-current. Even though several people had reported that previous KDE 4.7 packages worked fine on Slackware 13.37, there has been an incompatible update to slackware-current recently (the glibc package). As a result, these new KDE 4.7.4 packages will only work on slackware-current (64-bit and 32-bit). If you are running Slackware 13.37, then stick to your currently installed version of KDE, or install my 4.6.5 packages (or upgrade your Slackware to -current).

Read the accompanying README file for installation and upgrade instructions!

Some of the highlights of these KDE packages:

  • Since this is the last edition of KDE 4.7, I decided to add updated versions of KDE related packages that I do not usually include: amarok, skanlite, ktorrent. I have no idea when Slackware-current will start moving again, but this set of packages allows you to have a complete, stable and up to date KDE environment for the time to come.
  • There are several updated dependencies compared to Slackware’s own KDE 4.5.5: PyQt, QScintilla, akonadi, attica, clucene, ebook-tools, hunspell, libdbusmenu-qt, phonon, polkit-qt-1, qt, raptor2, rascal, redland, shared-desktop-ontologies, sip, soprano, strigi, system-config-printer and virtuoso-ose.
  • In comparison with my previous KDE 4.7.3 the number of updated dependencies is a much smaller: attica, libktorrent, libmsn, and soprano. Note that libktorrent is now located in “deps” instead of “kde” directory because it has become a dependency for more than just ktorrent.
  • KDE dpendencies that are not part of Slackware 13.37 at all (yet): grantlee, herqq, libatasmart, libbluedevil, libssh, phonon-gstreamer, phonon-xine, sg3_utils and udisks. Note that I added phonon-gstreamer and phonon-xine only after I had already released KDE 4.7.0 packages because people reported that they no longer had sound. These two packages solve that issue.

Also worth mentioning is some stuff which is not completely new, since I added these to previous releases of KDE 4.7 already (but if you are new to KDE 4.7 this will certainly interest you):

  • You will find some additional useful new applications, which are not part of the KDE core set. They are new, compared to Slackware’s own version of KDE. I already added bluedevil to my 4.6.5 package-set. Bluedevil is the new KDE bluetooth stack with a nice GUI, based on the BlueZ libraries already present in Slackware. And with KDE 4.7.0, I included kplayer, a KDE front-end to MPlayer. With KDE 4.7.2, I added Quanta Plus, which disappeared from KDE4 because that migrated from Qt3 to Qt4. It is now being worked on again, but no longer as a standalone application – instead it is available as a plugin to the Kdevelop Platform. And with KDE 4.7.3, I added a native WICD applet for KDE, called “wicd-kde“. It can replace the GTK based “wicd-client” which is part of the wicd package.
  • I also added oxygen-gtk, which is not really an application, but a theme engine. It (optionally) makes GTK applications visually blend in with KDE’s own Oxygen theme. There is a README in its documentation directory which explains how to enable it.
  • Since KDE 4.7.2, I include a “test” directory. This directory contains Networkmanager, plus some other dependencies, that allow to create a KDE package for “networkmanagement” which is an applet plus a kcontrol (i.e. a plugin for KDE’s systemsettings). This test, which sofar has proved to be quite successful, allows you to switch from WICD to NetworkManager as your basic network management service. The applet plus kcontrol make it quite easy to configure your network in KDE (wired, wireless, vpn, dsl and mobile broadband). No new Gnome libraries had to be added for this (NM itself plus its supporting tools have no dependency on the rest of Gnome). I have added NM installation/configuration instructions to the README.

A small aside I want to mention:

There was one bug that has been plaguing me ever since KDE 4.7.0 (and I may have had this occasionally before 4.7 but I cannot remember for certain). The bug seems to be ALSA related, but unsure is whether the fault is with ALSA or with KDE. The “kde deamon (kded4)” crashes every time when I login to KDE. Surely, it will automatically restart but it is ugly. It was still there in KDE 4.7.3 and it is described in these two bug reports:

There is a workaround though. If you disable “KMixD Mixer Service (kmixd)” from being started at logon, the crash does not occur anymore and so far I have not found any lost functionality. My laptop’s hardware volume keys still work, and the KDE mixer applet is still functional. Go to System Settings > Startup and Shutdown > Service Manager, and remove the check in the checkbox for KMix Daemon.

The KDE 4.7.4 packages for Slackware-current are available for download from my “ktown” repository and several mirrors (taper will be in sync when I post this, the other mirrors will have to catch up):

Have fun! Eric

]]> http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/kde-4-7-4-last-of-the-4-7-series/feed/ 55 Raspberry Pi deserves Slackware http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/raspberry-pi-deserves-slackware/ http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/raspberry-pi-deserves-slackware/#comments Sun, 27 Nov 2011 22:46:40 +0000 alienbob http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/?p=953 Some time ago I ran into this website promoting a very cheap computer the size of a credit card. The Raspberry Pi is being created by a charitable foundation. It is designed to “plug into a TV or be combined with a touch screen for a low cost tablet“. Typically its target is “teaching computer programming to children“, but such a cheap computing device will certainly have “many other applications both in the developed and the developing world“.

You have to see the device to believe it, I guess. The videos and photos look very promising. It’s not in production yet but according to the developer team’s schedule first shipments should commence before the end of the year.

Its specifications are not stellar (256 MB of RAM will likely rule out the top-heavy desktop environments like KDE) but hey! it only costs 35 euros! And the ARM processor, a Broadcom BCM2835 SoC with a ARM1176JZF-S core seems to have good support in the Linux kernel (a patch that adds support to linux-3.0.4 is fairly trivial). Check out this video which shows the Raspberry Pi running Quake III in 1920×1080 resolution with 4x antialiasing.

There is a thread on LinuxQuestions which shows that it may in fact not be hard to boot Slackware – or rather, ARMedslack. Using the latest QEMU which supports the Broadcom’s ARM version, and a recent kernel compiled for ARM (see above), QEMU can successfully boot one of ARMedslack’s “mini rootfs” filesystem images.

So, I think that the Raspberry Pi deserves Slackware. If we are going to bring Slackware to the masses, this ARM device would be a nice vehicle. I am going to get myself one or two of them. Stuart Winter (ARMedslack developer) promised to help me with the nasty bits. We will see how this ends up – either incorporated into ARMedslack, or as a separate development tree hosted by me, or (nicest option but not a very realistic one perhaps) folded into the main Slackware tree. It would be cool to have the main tree expand to support a third architecture besides x86 and x86_64.

Cool, another project for my evergrowing TODO list! Oh my… I can’t even find the time to spend on another project that is itching at the back of my mind… I guess should at least make an effort to upload all of the OCR related packages I created a month ago.

Eric

]]> http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/raspberry-pi-deserves-slackware/feed/ 16 Fixes for LibreOffice in KDE http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/fixes-for-libreoffice-in-kde/ http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/fixes-for-libreoffice-in-kde/#comments Sat, 26 Nov 2011 13:58:25 +0000 alienbob http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/?p=949 Those of you who use KDE as their desktop environment and also use my LibreOffice packages, will know that there are two major annoyances, related to KDE’s theming engine but ultimately caused by bugs in LibreOffice.

Those annoyances are:

  • Tooltips in LO applications show up as black text on black background, effectively rendering them useless. You can fix that by changing the color of Tooltips in “System Settings > Application Appearance > Colors” and then in the tab called “colors” look for “Tooltip background” and change that to some lighter color. But that changes the behaviour of every tooltip in other applications as well, so this should really be fixed in LibreOffice.
  • When using KDE’s Oxygen window decorations, all LO applications will have a non-functional horizontal scrollbar – you can not grab hold of it or move it left-right with your mouse.

Two patches which I found in OpenSuse were needed to fix both these annoyances. I rebuilt my LibreOffice packages for Slackware after applying them. Get them if you were annoyed by these issues just like me.

Note that the mirror sites also offer rsync access as well as faster download speeds. Only taper.alienbase.nl and alien.slackbook.org are up to date at this moment (because I maintain those myself) but the other mirrors should pick up the updates automatically soon enough.

Eric

]]> http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/fixes-for-libreoffice-in-kde/feed/ 7 Multilib version of Slackware’s “11-11-11″ glibc http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/multilib-version-of-slackwares-11-11-11-glibc/ http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/multilib-version-of-slackwares-11-11-11-glibc/#comments Sun, 13 Nov 2011 01:59:38 +0000 alienbob http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/?p=942  The glibc packages in Slackware -current were updated to 2.14.1 a few days ago. Unfortunately, a couple of issues were reported, you will find them in this LinuxQuestions thread.

Since I had to compile my multilib version of glibc still, I decided to wait a bit with releasing them, and that allowed me to find and apply the patch reported in the above thread that seems to solve the issues. The patch comes from Linux From Scratch and appears to be upstream fixes that are going to be in the next release of glibc. I upgraded my laptop with this new multilib glibc package, and can confirm that applications like firefox, libreoffice, calibre, mplayer run without any issues here.

I know that several people have mentioned this patch to Pat Volkerding already, and if the patch gets applied to Slackware’s glibc package I will simply rename my own multilib versions from “1alien” to “2alien” in order to stay in sync with the versioning of the originals.

Along with the updated mulitilib glibc packages, I also uploaded a new version of the “compat32-tools” package to the “current” section, containing a bug-fixed convertpkg-compat32 script. I also refreshed the “slackware64-compat32” subdirectory which contains the packages converted by the “massconvert32.sh” script.

Eric

]]> http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/multilib-version-of-slackwares-11-11-11-glibc/feed/ 11 kmail terminates during startup with “Failed to fetch the resource collection” http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/kmail-terminates-during-startup-with-failed-to-fetch-the-resource-collection/ http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/kmail-terminates-during-startup-with-failed-to-fetch-the-resource-collection/#comments Sun, 13 Nov 2011 01:38:37 +0000 alienbob http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/?p=939 One thing that keeps boggling people’s minds when they use KDE is Akonadi, the framework used to access PIM-like data. PIM being “Personal Information Management”. Akonadi leaves me in the dark too, sometimes!

If you want to know a bit more about how Akonadi sits at the core of your personal data management in KDE, you might want to read these articles first, one being two  years old and the other a bit more recent… http://thomasmcguire.wordpress.com/2009/10/03/akonadi-nepomuk-and-strigi-explained/ and http://vizzzion.org/blog/2010/08/demystifying-akonadi/ . This is also a nice article “Akonadi misconception #1: where is my data?“: http://blogs.kde.org/node/4503 which is definitely worth checking out.

In the meantime, there is an issue I wanted to discuss with you, considering Akonadi. When you upgrade to KDE 4.7.x coming from Slackware’s KDE 4.5.5, the upgrade process is not always smooth. The PIM suite in KDE 4.7.x is now using Akonadi as its backend, meaning your PIM data (kmail, kontact etc) are migrated over to the Akonadi storage the very first time you start your new KDE. This migration is not always proceeding perfectly.

There’s a thread on LinuxQuestions.org about kmail crashing on startup with a very specific error message “Failed to fetch the resource collection“. I provided the solution in that thread but thought it would be good to document it here in the blog as well. The bug is fairly old, it is being discussed in https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=259355

What you have to do if you encounter this issue, is the following:

  1. Launch Akonadi Console (for instance by pressing “Alt-F2″ to open krunner and typing “akonadiconsole”).
  2. In the “Agents” tab, select the “Local Folders” resource.
  3. Select “Configure > Configure natively…”.
  4. If an error appears indicating that “the current folder does not exist” don’t worry. Select a new directory which does not yet exist, for instance: /home/<USERNAME>/.kde/share/apps/kmail/mail/

This should fix the issue with kmail.

You can fix it the hard way, by removing all of your “.kde” directory content but that is so rude, and you lose a lot of other configurations besides your mail.

A whole section of the KDE User Base is devoted to Akonadi troubleshooting, I recommend you check that out if you run into Akonadi related issues: http://userbase.kde.org/Akonadi_4.4/Troubleshooting

Cheers, Eric

]]> http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/kmail-terminates-during-startup-with-failed-to-fetch-the-resource-collection/feed/ 8 LibreOffice 3.4.4 http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/libreoffice-3-4-4/ http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/libreoffice-3-4-4/#comments Thu, 10 Nov 2011 23:09:20 +0000 alienbob http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/?p=935  Just released: Libreoffice 3.4.4. Please read the official announcement which tells us that “This is the fourth update to the stable version of LibreOffice. It contains only safe code fixes and translation updates, and is considered safe for production use“.

 

I have created some packages for you. Like the last time, there is the big “libreoffice” package containing all the modules and extensions, as well as US english language support (including a dictionary). Then there is the “libreoffice-mozplugin” package for those who want to be able to embed Office documents in their (Mozilla-compatible) browser window. And finally there are many language packs, containing the translated menus and help texts. Some of the language packs contain dictionaries too (german, british english, spanish, french, italian, dutch and  polish). You can of course download your own dictionary or other extensions at http://extensions.libreoffice.org/

I am contemplating another split-off. The KDE integration support is nice but has one glaring bug which has been around for ever and does not stand a big chance of getting fixed soon. Try moving the horizontal slider in a Calc spreadsheet when you are running KDE… your mouse will not be able to do it. It is trivial to split the four KDE support files into a separate package which allows you the choice of not installing it. I hesitate, because I want to keep the total amount of packages “small” (relative term, looking at all those language packs). I would only do this to alleviate the pain of KDE users. Do not think you can persuade me to split-off other things like extensions or the core components! Not going to happen.

Get the packages in the usual locations (all of the mirrors below also offer  rsync access):

Cheers, Eric

 

]]> http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/libreoffice-3-4-4/feed/ 14 KDE updated to 4.7.3 http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/kde-updated-to-4-7-3/ http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/kde-updated-to-4-7-3/#comments Wed, 02 Nov 2011 18:09:26 +0000 alienbob http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/?p=934 Another month passes, and another maintenance release of KDE.arrives, we are up to 4.7.3 now. As usual, here are my KDE 4.7.3 packages for Slackware hot on the heals of the KDE team.

For those who are trying my 4.7 packages for the first time and wonder why the hell am I offering so many packages, please read my earlier post about KDE 4.7.0 which explains more about splitting KDE for Slackware into many more (and smaller) packages.

My packages have been compiled on Slackware-current. My educated guess is that you can use them on Slackware 13.37 too (several people have reported in various places that they are running my KDE 4.7.2 on Slackware 13.37 successfully).

Still:

Read the accompanying README file for installation and upgrade instructions!

Some of the highlights of these KDE packages:

  • There are several updated dependencies compared to Slackware’s own KDE 4.5.5: PyQt, QScintilla, akonadi, attica, clucene, ebook-tools, hunspell, libdbusmenu-qt, phonon, polkit-qt-1, qt, raptor2, rascal, redland, shared-desktop-ontologies, sip, soprano, strigi, system-config-printer and virtuoso-ose.
  • In comparison with my previous KDE 4.7.2 the number of updated dependencies is a bit smaller: akonadi, grantlee, libbluedevil, libssh, phonon, shared-desktop-ontologies and upower.
  • KDE dpendencies that are not part of Slackware 13.37 at all (yet): grantlee, herqq, libatasmart, libbluedevil, libssh, phonon-gstreamer, phonon-xine, sg3_utils and udisks. Note that I added phonon-gstreamer and phonon-xine only after I had already released KDE 4.7.0 packages because people reported that they no longer had sound. These two packages solve that issue.

Not new since I added these to KDE 4.7.1 before (but if you are new to KDE 4.7 this will interest you):

  • You will find some additional useful new applications, which are not part of the KDE core set. They are new, compared to Slackware’s own version of KDE. I already added bluedevil to my 4.6.5 package-set. Bluedevil is the new KDE bluetooth stack with a nice GUI, based on the BlueZ libraries already present in Slackware. And with KDE 4.7.0, I included kplayer, a KDE front-end to MPlayer. With KDE 4.7.2, I added Quanta Plus, which disappeared from KDE4 because that migrated from Qt3 to Qt4. It is now being worked on again, but no longer as a standalone application – instead it is available as a plugin to the Kdevelop Platform. And this time, I added a native WICD applet for KDE, called “wicd-kde“. It can replace the GTK based “wicd-client” which is part of the wicd package.
  • I also added oxygen-gtk, which is not really an application, but a theme engine. It (optionally) makes GTK applications visually blend in with KDE’s own Oxygen theme. There is a README in its documentation directory which explains how to enable it.
  • And right after releasing my KDE 4.7.2 packages, I added a “test” directory. The same test directory is also present in the 4.7.3 package set. It contains Networkmanager, plus some other dependencies, that allow to create a package for “networkmanagement” which is an applet plus a kcontrol (i.e. a plugin for KDE’s systemsettings). This allows you to switch from WICD to NetworkManager as your basic network management service. The applet plus kcontrol make it dead easy to configure your network (wired, wireless, vpn, dsl and mobile broadband). No new Gnome libraries had to be added for this (NM itself plus its supporting tools have no dependency on the rest of Gnome). I have added NM installation/configuration instructions to the README.

A small aside I want to mention:

There was one bug that has been plaguing me ever since KDE 4.7.0 (and I may have had this occasionally before 4.7 but I cannot remember for certain). The bug seems to be ALSA related, but unsure is whether the fault is with ALSA or with KDE. The “kde deamon (kded4)” crashes every time when I login to KDE. Surely, it will automatically restart but it is ugly. It is still there in KDE 4.7.3 and it is described in these two bug reports:

There is a workaround though. If you disable “KMixD Mixer Service (kmixd)” from being started at logon, the crash does not occur anymore and so far I have not found any lost functionality. My laptop’s hardware volume keys still work, and the KDE mixer applet is still functional. Go to System Settings > Startup and Shutdown > Service Manager, and remove the check in the checkbox for KMix Daemon.

The KDE 4.7.3 packages for Slackware-current are available for download from my “ktown” repository and several mirrors (taper will be in sync when I post this, the other mirrors will have to catch up):

Have fun! Eric

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