My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

July 17 updates – Plasma 5, Live ISOS and more

Slackware turned 24 today, 17 July.

To celebrate I have created some goodies for you. Nothing you can eat or drink…

First, Plasma 5 updates.

I have uploaded the July ’17 set of Plasma 5 packages for Slackware 14.2 and -current to the ‘ktown’ repository. KDE 5_17.07 contains: KDE Frameworks 5.36.0, Plasma 5.10.3 and Applications 17.04.3. All based on Qt 5.9.0 for Slackware-current and Qt 5.7.1 for Slackware 14.2.
NOTE: I will no longer be releasing Plasma 5 packages for 32bit Slackware 14.2.

What’s new this time

Apart from the usual upgrades to the Frameworks, Plasma and Applications subsets, there is only one interesting piece of news: I added ‘kile’ to the applications-extra directory. Kile is a LaTex editor and the port to the KDE Frameworks 5 is well underway. I based the package on a git snapshot of its repository. One more KF5 application in “applications-extra”.
The goal of the KDE community is that the Applications 17.12 release (i.e. end of this year) will not have any application that is still kdelibs4 based. Everything in Plasma 5 Desktop should then finally be based on KF5.

Installing or upgrading Frameworks 5, Plasma 5 and Applications

As always, the accompanying README file contains full installation & upgrade instructions.

Recommended reading material

There have been several posts now about KDE 5 for Slackware-current. All of them contain useful information, tips and gotchas. If you want to read them, here they are: http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/tag/kde5/

Where to get the new packages for Plasma 5

Package download locations are listed below (you will find the sources in ./source/5/ and packages in /current/5/ and  /14.2/5/ subdirectories). If you are interested in the development of KDE 5 for Slackware, you can peek at my git repository too.

Live ISO of PLASMA5

A Plasma5 Live ISO image will follow shortly on http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/slackware-live/latest/ in case you want to try it out first (check the timestamp of the ISO on the web page). I am currently testing it, looks fine. Here is a screenshot showing the QtAv player (a proper QT5 and QML based video player so that you can forget about kplayer or gmplayer):

What else is in stock

The PLASMA5 Live ISO is crammed with all my relevant big packages (libreoffice, vlc and friends) and I refreshed a few of these packages:

  1. A package is available for the latest MKVToolnix 13.0.0 – Slackware 14.2 and -current.
  2.  I built the latest Calibre 3.4.0 for Slackware 14.2 and -current, adding several internal modules which I omitted in my first Calibre 3 release. As a consequence, Calibre now also depends on unrar for which I also compiled the latest release (5.5.6) into a Slackware package.
  3. Podofo is another dependency for Calibre that received a long overdue update, and my repository now contains version 0.9.5.

And I am also preparing Live ISO images for the variants SLACKWARE (64bit and 32bit), XFCE (64bit and 32bit) and MATE. They should go online at the same time as the PLASMA5 ISO.

Have fun! Eric

73 Comments

  1. cwizardone

    Well, I decided to take another look at KDE-5 and just installed all your latest related packages. That thing is huge. Any idea how many files and how many megs they take up (storage) as compared to KDE-4?.
    KDE-5 works, but it has somehow managed to completely screw up sound in Xfce.
    I’ve re-installed pulseaudio plugin for Xfce, but it didn’t make any difference. The multimedia keys no longer work. To adjust the volume I have to left click on one of two, now, only one before, icons in the panel and manually move the volume bar left or right. Any thoughts?
    Thanks.

  2. Eduardo

    Thank you Eric!! So far it’s working OK.
    P.S. Thanks for Kile. Just today I tried, with no success, to build it.

  3. Helios

    There is also a new version of texmaker (5.0) and texstudio is updated frequently. The one I use now is texstudio, and I will try this new kile. But I think that the 3 are almost the same.

  4. pataphysician

    Thanks, working mostly good, though I still have had a number of plasmashell crashing and restarting since the switch to 5.9, this update seems to have fixed the more severe problem were plasmashell would crash but not restartable. I was wondering if we could get qt 5.9.1, if I was to compile this myself, would I need to rebuild all of kde?

  5. Gérard Monpontet

    No problem here, with qt5-5.9.1, and alien plasma packages 🙂

  6. Gérard Monpontet

    Just for info, Eric:

    Finally, i have tested to rebuild ‘framework and the new plasma’ with ‘-DLIBEXEC_INSTALL_DIR=/usr/libexec’ no problem, plasma work correctly, it seem that need just change the ‘kdesu’ link. 😉

  7. 1337_powerslacker

    Today’s ChangeLog (actually dated yesterday, 18 July 2017, just before midnight) included a version bump of exiv2, to 0.26. That update breaks gwenview. I managed to bump exiv2 back down to 0.25. Anyone else using packages dependent on exiv2 might want to keep this in mind, at least until those packages are updated.

  8. cwizardone

    RE: the sound problem with KDE-5 and Xfce mentioned in my message above. I’ve gone back to KDE-4. Problem solved. Don’t know why, but the audio in Xfce is back to “normal.”

  9. Gérard Monpontet

    try this:
    If you have rc.pulse actived, stop it.
    make it not executable, it’s no needed.
    in root
    cd tmp (remove all folder and all file)
    cd /var/run/dbus
    removed all file
    and reboot

  10. casualfred

    Thanks Eric for the updates!! By the way, I found that in your iso2usb.sh script I had to put quotes around the SLISO variable before it would work for me. Maybe because my directories have spaces in their names? Not sure. Thanks again!

  11. Matheus Sampaio

    Anyone had problems with installing it through setup2hd? My installation seems to hang at “Processing 27 Slackware Live Modules (13468 MB)
    15%”
    And won’t advance no more ????.
    Tried it twice already…

  12. alienbob

    casualfred – directories with spaces, in Linux! Blasphemy 🙂
    I will add those quotes to the script.

  13. alienbob

    Matheus – an issue with your USB key perhaps? Is it corrupt or broken?

    Extracting Slackware from the live modules takes longer than installing packages through the regular setup process but you should see progress at some point. Some module files are quite large which means, extracting them may take quite some time.

    You can determine whether files are still being extracted to the USB key by opening another terminal and repeatedly running the ‘df’ command. If anything gets written to the USB stick, it should show up as changing numbers in the “Used” column.

  14. Hubert Phava

    Ciao Eric….
    I’m on 64–current ( last packages) with your multilib and (last) kde.
    I’ve two problem with Kde:
    1) digikam and gwenview both don’t start. Trying from a konsole, for both i receive:

    bash-4.4$ ldd `which gwenview` | grep not
    libexiv2.so.14 => not found

    Symlinking to actual exiv2 doesn’t help; gwenviev strats but crashes at the first mouse click; digikam doesnt start at all.

    2) Il i have an open firefox session, very often i cannot run another browser ( palemoon, vivaldi, another FF session…) and sometimes no other program can run; if i try to run a onsole, the message on it says something like “cannot open IO” and something other regarding xdg.
    I’m obliged to kill kde, delete all its temporary files ( also those in /etm/xdg-runtime-user and restart kde for workaround the problem.

    While problem 1) is only running on your last release of kde, i’ve problem 2) from several releases ( trying to cure it but no success).

    Anyone here has gwen and digikam prob?

    Thanks ( *many* thanks) for you work….

    HP

  15. alienbob

    Hubert, your issue #2 sounds quite peculiar, have not heard of such an issue before.
    Your issue #1 is caused by the volatile state of slackware-current. The exiv2 package got upgraded and that broke a couple of applications as you noticed.
    You must recompile gwenview and digikam.
    I just started work again after a short holiday and will not be able to offfer recompiled packages myself soon.
    But since you are running Slackware-current you probably know how to recompile them. If not, search this blog for the instructions about the use of KDE.SlackBuild.

  16. Hubert Phava

    Thanks Eric.
    Already wgetting your kde-source directories…

    🙂

    HP

  17. Gérard Monpontet

    And libkexiv2, also 😉

    (krita, kdebase-runtime, kfilemetadata, kio-extra)

  18. Helios

    For the issue concerning the new exiv2 I have kept a copy of the old libexiv2.so.14 in /usr/lib64 and everything seems to work

  19. Gérard Monpontet

    Yes, probably a link work also 😉

  20. alienbob

    I have uploaded a set of recompiled packages to compensate for the recent changes in slackware-current:
    kde4:libkexiv2_4,kfilemetadata
    frameworks:kfilemetadata5
    applications:libkexiv2,gwenview,kde-runtime,okular
    applications-extra:digikam,krita

  21. keithpeter

    Plasma 5 looks rather splendid and works reasonably smoothly on a dual-core laptop with 2Gb of ram and a spinning rust hard drive.

    Installed on my test laptop from Plasma live iso and updated using slackpkg, including the exiv2 version, and then updated kde5 packages downloaded from bear just now. All good – gwenview and okular work fine. DigiKam starts up OK (I don’t know DigiKam very well).

    I noticed that /etc/slackpkg/mirrors has a mirror right at the end of the file already uncommented. I chose one nearer to me in preference to cut the load on Slackware’s site.

    Thanks for your efforts in allowing us to preview Plasma 5 on a familiar base.

  22. fabio

    When plasma 5 came out i moved out to XFC5. now months later, i’m very pleased with it. As an android user i was delighted with kde connect. except some plasmashell crashes (it will restart), and ktorrent crashing when i try to activate the scheduler plugin, all the rest running smoothly and fast. So, thank you very much sir for your work.

  23. keithpeter

    Plasma (fallback) is the ‘default’ and works fine. I tried Plasma (wayland) and had a blank screen – no blinking cursor – for many minutes. I could alt-ctrl F2 back to a tty, log in and reboot.

    Anyone got any hints as to where do I look for logs to work out what is happening (or rather not happening)?

    lspci tells me that his old Thinkpad has an “Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07)” in it. Has worked with a Fedora live 26 with Wayland.

  24. alienbob

    The Wayland session does not work. It requires packages that are not in Slackware and needs a recompiled mesa, xorg-server and qt5. It will go into testing sometime but don’t hold your breath. It is low on my priority list.

  25. keithpeter

    Thanks for clarification and I fully understand the need for a priority list.

  26. alienbob

    Because of the recent update of Slackware-current’s imagemagick, I have rebuilt dvdauthor and digikam and uploaded them to the “current/latest” repository.

  27. Pete Christy

    I’ve been running your KDE 5 packages for a few months now on two machines, and it is all working fine. However, I do have a question about the phonon backends. Although I’ve installed your packages for VLC (2.2.6) and phonon-vlc (0.9.1) the backend does not show up in my system settings – only gstreamer appears there.

    Both systems were upgraded from kde4, so I wonder if there is a stray configuration left over somewhere that might be stopping it from picking up phonon-vlc – or is there something else I’ve missed? Any pointers gratefully received!


    Pete

  28. Gérard Monpontet

    No problem here with phonon-vlc, maybe you have the old phonon slackware current package installed.

  29. Pete Christy

    Well, just to be sure, I completely deleted the phonon-vlc package and installed the one from kde5/5/deps. No change – still only gstreamer showing up in system settings.

    Pete

  30. alienbob

    Pete, I double-checked on my slackware64-current laptop. I have phonon-vlc 0.9.1 and vlc 2.2.6 and I do have “Phonon VLC” as my (primary) backend.
    Like Gérard said, you need not only my phonon-vlc package but also the phonon package which I carry in my “deps” section:

    $ ldd /usr/lib64/qt5/plugins/phonon4qt5_backend/phonon_vlc.so |grep phonon
    libphonon4qt5.so.4 => /usr/lib64/libphonon4qt5.so.4 (0x00007fd84d2ef000)

    The “libphonon4qt5.so.4” library is part of my phonon package but it is not in Slackware’s original phonon package (because Slackware does not have Qt5).

  31. Pete Christy

    Very odd!

    locate libphonon4qt5
    /usr/lib64/libphonon4qt5.so
    /usr/lib64/libphonon4qt5.so.4
    /usr/lib64/libphonon4qt5.so.4.9.1
    /usr/lib64/libphonon4qt5experimental.so
    /usr/lib64/libphonon4qt5experimental.so.4
    /usr/lib64/libphonon4qt5experimental.so.4.9.1

    ldd /usr/lib64/qt5/plugins/phonon4qt5_backend/phonon_vlc.so |grep phonon
    ldd: /usr/lib64/qt5/plugins/phonon4qt5_backend/phonon_vlc.so: No such file or directory

    Locate seems to be saying its there, ldd is saying it isn’t? Missing symlink? The backend folder certainly has phonon_gstreamer in it, but not phonon_vlc.

    Should I just copy it across or symlink it?

    Thanks for your help!


    Pete

  32. alienbob

    The /usr/lib64/qt5/plugins/phonon4qt5_backend/phonon_vlc.so file is part of the phonon-vlc package. It is a file, not a symlink. It looks like you have not installed phonon-vlc then, or perhaps you installed its 32bit version (in that case you would have /usr/lib/qt5/plugins/phonon4qt5_backend/phonon_vlc.so instead)

  33. Pete Christy

    Er, OK, but mine is a pure 64 bit system – I don’t have multilib! And:

    ls /var/log/packages/phonon*
    /var/log/packages/phonon-4.9.1-x86_64-1alien /var/log/packages/phonon-vlc-0.9.1-x86_64-1alien
    /var/log/packages/phonon-gstreamer-4.9.0-x86_64-1alien

    indicates that the correct package is installed!

    There is no /usr/lib/qt5 directory at all.

    I’ll delete it and try again!

    I’m a bit baffled, but thanks for your help!


    Pete

  34. Pete Christy

    OK, I think I might be getting somewhere now, but its still not quite fixed yet!

    I deleted the existing phonon-vlc package and re-installed it. This time I installed it using installpkg, rather than my usual upgradepkg –install-new.

    It installed fine, and now phonon-vlc appears in /usr/lib64/kde4/plugins/phonon_backend, alongside the gstreamer plugin. Its definitely there, and the permissions are the same as phonon-gstreamer. But note: its in the /usr/lib64/kde4/plugins/phonon_backend directory NOT /usr/lib64/qt5/plugins/phonon4qt5_backend which is where ldd is looking for it!

    I’ve copied it across to /usr/lib64/qt5/plugins/phonon4qt5_backend/, and now ldd reports:

    ldd /usr/lib64/qt5/plugins/phonon4qt5_backend/phonon_vlc.so |grep phonon
    libphonon.so.4 => /usr/lib64/libphonon.so.4 (0x00007f208e31f000)

    but it still doesn’t appear in system settings!

    I’m about to try a reboot – fingers crossed…..!


    Pete

  35. Pete Christy

    I must be getting tired and my eyes are watering! Its gone 2300 here now and I’m starting to make silly mistakes! I should be looking for libphonon4qt5 not libphonon!

    libphonon4qt5 does exist:

    locate libphonon4qt5.so.
    /usr/lib64/libphonon4qt5.so.4
    /usr/lib64/libphonon4qt5.so.4.9.1

    but not in /usr/lib64/qt5/plugins/phonon4qt5_backend

    I’m too tired to continue now, but I’ll have a fresh look in the morning. I have the feeling that I’m nearly there……


    Pete

  36. Gérard Monpontet

    It’s normal, just look if you have,
    /usr/lib64/qt5/plugins/phonon4qt5_backend/phonon_vlc.so
    present in your system.

  37. Pete Christy

    Yippee! Finally cracked it! And naturally, it was my fault! Let me explain: I have 3 machjnes here running Slackware64-current – a small laptop (kde4), my main desktop (kde5) and an old desktop in the workshop (kde5). To save on download times, trying to keep them all up-to-date, I have a small NAS server which I rsync against slackware.uk. I then do my updates from the local server.

    At some point, I omitted to switch the kde5 update script from 14.2 to current, so my local server contained the 14.2 version rather than current!

    Looking at it this morning, after a good night’s sleep, I spotted it straight away!

    All is now working as it should.

    Moral: don’t set up updates when you are tired!

    Thanks all for your help!


    Pete

  38. Gérard Monpontet

    Eric, kdenlive crash on exit, it’s ‘mlt’ problem, mlt need this patch:

    https://github.com/mltframework/mlt/commit/a3188e30.patch

    the mlt.SlackBuild need also to add this:

    sed -i ‘s/#include /#include /’ src/framework/mlt_property.h
    like ‘ponce’ mlt.SlackBuild:

    http://cgit.ponce.cc/slackbuilds/tree/multimedia/mlt/mlt.SlackBuild

    it’s needed for recompil ‘mlt’ with new current glibc 😉

  39. alienbob

    Hi Gérard,

    Something to keep in mind when working on the next update.
    Unfortunately, many colleagues are on holiday in August, and many at ASML take 4 weeks leave, leaving suckers like me behind with much increased workload. So I may not be able to release ktown updates for Slackware 14.2 in August. The -current packages are more important because more may become broken before long.

  40. Gérard Monpontet

    Omit, kdenlive doesn’t compil if ‘mlt’ is recompiled without this ‘sed’ change 😉

  41. Gérard Monpontet

    Ok, Eric, good luck, for your job:

    In French it is said ‘that one is the last wheel of the cart’

    ‘ vous êtes la dernière roue de la charette’ 😉

  42. Gérard Monpontet

    New mesa slack-current package cause problem in kscreenlocker here, with amd radeon card

    character font and avatar disappear, just for info

    downgrade mesa solve this

  43. alienbob

    … or recompile kscreenlocker perhaps.

  44. Cooper

    Eric when you get a chance can you please check http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/slackware/slackware64-current-iso/ and http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/slackware/slackware64-current/, not synced to Wed Aug 9 20:23:16 UTC 2017
    Thanks

  45. Gérard Monpontet

    I have already make, without succes, i have make and install another package of the mesa-17.2.0-rc3 version, same problem, it think it’s malicious bug 😉

  46. alienbob

    Cooper, looks like the mirror script had gotten stuck because the rsync server (ftp.osuosl.org) was not responding.
    I’ve killed the hung process, removed the .pid file and restarted the cron script.

  47. Gérard Monpontet

    Ok, osuosl is very slow for a few days here.

  48. Cooper

    Thanks Eric. I really don’t want to distro hop, and Slackware and you pkgs came highly recommended. As soon as I get a chance I’ll throw Slack64 and your Plasma pkgs on a spare laptop.

  49. Joel

    Hi Eric!!
    Just a question. In KDE4 i could add a VLAN using the nm-applet, but not in KDE5. Theres something i need to do to bring back that functionality? Some package i need to install?? I know i can add vlan with vconfig or something like that, but it’s more comfortable with nm-applet.. 😉
    Thanks in advance!

  50. alienbob

    Joel, looks like this bug report: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=376664
    Apparently the developer decided to “go the GNOME way” and hide functionality in the UI for which HE thinks it should not be used by a regular user. Totally against KDE philosophy if you ask me.
    The workaround mentioned in the bug report is to use the commandline tool “nmtui” to manage your VLANs.

  51. Joel

    Hi Eric!!
    Too sad KDE it’s taken the “Gnome way”. On the other hand, I tried openSUSE42.3 and they still provide that functionality, don’t know if KDE put it back or openSUSE aplied some patch.
    Let’s wait and see they correct way! 😉
    Thanks for your efforts!!

  52. Lenny

    Hello, wondering if for the next release you could build Kwave with “-DWITH_MP3=ON” in order to enable mp3 support, if i’m not mistaken mp3 is not an issue anymore.

    https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/kwave/+bug/1233262/comments/5

    If this message doesn’t make sense, please ignore, i don’t know what i’m talking about.

    Bye.

  53. alienbob

    Hi Lenny

    I checked the log file of the last compilation for kwave and also checked the CMakeFile in its git repository.
    Indeed, I will have to add “-DWITH_MP3=ON” because that is required to enable mp3 support.
    Good tip, thanks!

  54. Cooper

    So far I’ve been able to install Slackware64 with your Plasma5 pkgs on 4/5 pc’s and laptops here at work with no serious problems. Most all problems I ran into were solved with a little research of the LQ forum and your blog, actually that was the hardest part of installing. So far so good. 🙂

  55. Gérard Monpontet

    One good news for kde future, Qupzilla join kde:

    http://blog.qupzilla.com/2017/08/qupzilla-is-moving-under-kde-and.html

    I use qupzilla for some time in place of konqueror, and I am quite satisfied 😉

  56. Gérard Monpontet

    If you use kmail, doesn’t update mariadb and jemalloc current package for the moment:

    read this:

    https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/akonadi-and-mariadb-10-2-8-a-4175612895/

  57. Gérard Monpontet

    Eric, i have rebuild qt5-5.9.1, with your SlackBuild, because it’s needed for the new mariadb package in current.

    i have applied two patchs:
    https://github.com/qt/qtbase/commit/386af91c.patch
    https://github.com/qt/qtbase/commit/2a9f678f.patch

    no problem this package work correctly:

    for akonadi problem i have posted one solution here:
    https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/akonadi-and-mariadb-10-2-8-a-4175612895/

    found the patch here:

    https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=626464#c0

  58. alienbob

    Hi Gérard,

    I am unable to work on Slackware at the moment so I am glad you are documenting here what the other people need to do in order to fix any broken applications due to slackware-current upgrades.
    I hope to have time again next week.

  59. Gérard Monpontet

    Ok Eric, it’s just for info 😉

  60. alienbob

    Gérard you’re welcome. I am glad with your feedback. You are mostly ahead of me with testing and rebuilding.

  61. Gérard Monpontet

    Just because I have the time, I understand perfectly that this is not your case at the moment 😉

  62. Nate Bargmann

    Eric,

    I am running Current installed from your Liveslak using setup2hd, etc.

    I am curious about the Plasma Wayland entry in the SDDM selection box. I don’t get anything but a black screen. Is this just an artifact of Plasma’s Wayland support and not functional in Current?

    There is no rush, I am merely curious.

  63. Gérard Monpontet

    Y think, it’s juste an orphan entry in sddm package 😉

  64. alienbob

    Wayland support is not functional in Plasma5 because Slackware’s mesa (and xorg-server) are not compiled with support for it and therefore Qt5 won’t pick up proper support either.

  65. Nate Bargmann

    Thanks for both of the answers.

  66. Gérard Monpontet

    Eric, i have fixed my xscreenlocker problem,

    i have posted the solution on LQ:

    https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/requests-for-current-20151216-a-4175561577/page184.html

  67. Gérard Monpontet

    sorry, ksreenlocker problem 😉

  68. Gérard Monpontet

    kscreenlocker, I am going to sleep……. 😉

  69. alienbob

    Gérard , I have no idea to what post you are referring. You mention many updates on that “page 184”.

  70. Gérard Monpontet

    Eric, kdenlive crash when exit,

    need this ‘mlt patch:
    https://github.com/mltframework/mlt/commit/a3188e30.patch

    and now ‘mlt’ need also mlt-glibc-2.26.patch:
    https://git.archlinux.org/svntogit/packages.git/tree/trunk?h=packages/mlt

  71. Gérard Monpontet

    Just for info, Eric: i have updated en recompiled many dep:
    cfitsio-3.410
    frei0r-plugins-1.6.1
    libxkbcommon-0.7.2
    mlt-6.4.1 (with mlt-glibc-2.26.patch and kdenlive-crash-on-exit.patch)
    OpenAL-1.18.1
    qt5-5.9.1
    wayland-1.14.0
    xapian-core-1.4.4
    poppler (same slack-current version)

    i have tested open-cv-3.3.0, but mlt doesn’t build with this new version here,

    and i have build all kde5 updates, without major problem.

  72. Gérard Monpontet

    Omitted, i have updated lmdb to 0.9.21 also 😉

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