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):
- http://alien.slackbook.org/ktown/4.8.0/ (the master repository), rsync URI: rsync://alien.slackbook.org/alien/ktown/4.8.0/
- http://taper.alienbase.nl/mirrors/alien-kde/4.8.0/ (my fast mirror), rsync URI: rsync://taper.alienbase.nl/mirrors/alien-kde/4.8.0/
- http://repo.ukdw.ac.id/alien-kde/4.8.0/ (willysr’s Indonesian mirror), rsync URI: rsync://repo.ukdw.ac.id/alien-kde/4.8.0/
- http://scw.net.br/alien-ktown/4.8.0/ (a mirror maintained by Herbert Alexander Faleiros), rsync URI: rsync://rsync.scw.net.br/alien-ktown/4.8.0/
Have fun! Eric
thx Eric!
Faster than light!!!
Thanks!! 🙂
Thanks for work Eric. But it seems to me that KDE becomes more and more overloaded… If Pat will be in a bad mood he will remove it from the distribution as he did it with Gnome (joke) )
wow, that’s fast.
Did you forget the “alien” tag in the x86_64/kdei directory? It was there in the other versions..
Hans,
Oops, fixed.
Eric
xa0c,
Actually, with the modular KDE.SlackBuild script I created it has become extremely easy to add/rename packages. For instance, with the release of 4.8.0, the big kdeutils and kdeaccessibility got split up into many small sub-packages and I had to rename two other sub-packages. That was only a couple of minutes work, mostly spent in creating the slack-desc files.
There are a lot of updated dependencies but the list of new dependency packages has not changed much since KDE 4.6.
KDE is easy to build!
Eric
Thanks!!!!
I created mirror (without source dir) on my FTP.
Ukraine/Odessa
ftp://ifconfig.com.ua/pub/Software/Linux/Slackware/Graphics/KDE/4.8.0/
I think kdegraphics should also be removed from previous version as it’s now split into several packages
Thanks a lot Eric!
I assume the three new kdegraphics-* packages make kdegraphics-4.7.4 obsolete?
At last! Thanks a lot, Eric!
But… I can’t rsync it((
Thanks Eric!
thanks a lot for the packs. running rsync right now 😀
just asking, are there any chances that we could have caligra office suite package? 😀
BroX:
Yes, it’s being split just like other packages
FYI,
Panorama by default needs hugins and enblend package (requires libxmi) which is not available (only in SBo) so unless you install them on your machine, it’s quite unusable. Once you have them all, it’s quite marvelous
@Eric: I have left over from 4.7.4: kdeaccessibility-4.7.4-x86_64-1alien kdebase-4.7.4-x86_64-1alien kdeutils-4.7.4-x86_64-1alien. Should they be removed?
Thank you for this work.
I have a problem with the sound : no sound at startup and in amarok. But vlc and alsaplayer work fine.
Great work! Thank You, Eric! Splendid!
Several answers in one message:
@Willy: Yes, kdegraphics package is obsolete too, now. It should be removed.
I have updated the README file in the 4.8.0 directory.
@Widya: I will add calligra as soon as its developers release a stable version. Then it will replace koffice.
@Doctor Fungus: what rsync command are you trying?
@escaflown: Please follow the installation README and you will see what packages to remove since they have become obsolete.
@Willy: I had not even heard of Panorama before, but I will have a look at it. Introducing even more dependencies is something I want to avoid (otherwise I would have added speechd, festival, libotp and many others already…)
@Helios, I have not tested Amarok because I do not like the application. So if other people could comment on it?
Eric
@escaflown:
It’s in the README:
# removepkg kdeaccessibility
# removepkg kdebase
# removepkg kdeutils
(among others)
I’ll copy the conversation I had with Willy per email, since it will benefit more people if they can read it here in the blog:
On Thu, 26 Jan 2012, Willy Sudiarto Raharjo wrote:
>Hi Eric,
>
>I got this warning everytime i start my konsole
>QDBusConnection: session D-Bus connection created before
>QCoreApplication. Application may misbehave.
>
>Do you get the same message like this one on 4.8.0?
>I don’t get it on 4.7.4 though and i’m suspecting it’s related to Qt
Yes, it is Qt 4.8.0 related and it should be fixed in kdelibs soon enough:
http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.kde.devel.core/73464
In the meantime, since it is just a warning message, I will not patch kdelibs for this.
But; I will patch kdelibs for making uPnP support optional, to get rid of messages like:
UPnP device entered: “uuid:7423dc12-32b9-458d-a9f5-e85b5b6e34b9”
whenever a DLNA or uPnP device on the LAN changes its state. It makes some of my applications crash or start up very slowly.
I already pushed the patch to my repository, and will rebuild kdelibs as well, soon.
Cheers, Eric
@Helios: Amarok is working fine here.
alienbob:
@Doctor Fungus: what rsync command are you trying?
this:
rsync -avrh rsync://alien.slackbook.org/alien/ktown/4.8.0/x86_64/ .
Already works
@eric
I can confirm that there’s no sound at startup, but there is sound in Amarok
I used MPlayer as the backend FYI. It’s working fine with 4.7.4.
About panorama, that’s just an additional information and i would not ask you to add those packages, since people can built it by going to SBo (i have did this). It’s just to reminder for people who might be interested to get this package since it’s
For others who had problems with sound, try changing the backend and see which one works. I had to try to change to VLC, MPlayer, Xine, and GStreamer and i found out that mine works with MPlayer. It may be different for you
Thanks Eric! Almost everything works perfect. Only problem is the one that Helios mentioned earlier, no notification sounds and no sound in Amarok. Managed to get sound in Amarok by changing Phonon backend to mplayer, but system notification sounds problem persisted.
I have problem with Amarok too. Though although when I switch backend to mplayer and amarok actually does produce a sound, it seems, at least to me, that it doesn’t have the ability to go to the next song. It hangs on end of every song almost like someone pressed stop.
@alienbob Read in one other comment of yours that you aren’t using Amarok so just interested 🙂 if it’s not a secret, what do you use?
@Eric: my mistake: I didn’t take time to go through the README file.
Re system notification sounds: solution is at this thread;
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=132307
@AJ Field:
Thanks. That fixed the problem of startup sound
Thanks Eric for your packages.
They have done my life with Slackware easier and comfortable.
Cheers!
The problem with the requirement to add path names to notification sounds in knotify is broader than just this.
The problem was introduced by a commit in Qt 4.8.0 and it affects KDE in several places.
A few bug reports:
https://bugreports.qt.nokia.com/browse/QTBUG-22382 (a link which I cannot access at the moment)
http://bugs.kde.org/285028
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=749213
As soon as there is a patch for this I will apply it where applicable and if possible.
Eric
Thanks Eric, everything seems to work, and the new wicd client is great. I just miss the hebrew language pack, can you add it?
Hi niv,
I can not add a Hebrew language pack because the sources have not been made available…
An announcement to the packager mailing list, back on 16 january 2012 mentioned the changes in language and localization support between KDE 4.7 and 4.8:
Differences against 4.7 are:
Added: fa, si, tg, vi
Removed: he, id, kn, ug
I.e. the Hebrew language was one of the removed localizations. A language gets removed if the translation team is unable to supply a 100% translation of KDE.
Perhaps it will get re-added sometime in future – check with the Hebrew translation team: http://l10n.kde.org/team-infos.php?teamcode=he
Eric
If somebody got problems with opening folders from desktop here is a temporary fix until next kde release (i hope, this bug is quite old)
http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=98770
When I open new tabs in Konsole, I don’t get login shell. Only the first tab has login shell. It can be clearly seen in htop, where one child process of konsole is ‘/bin/bash -l’ and another ‘/bin/bash’. Can somebody else confirm this?
I have set “bash -l” as my shell to start in konsole (Settings > Configure Current Profile.. > General > Command). When I create new tabs, a login shell will be started just like with the very first tab.
No issues here.
Eric
@alienbob: Thanks, that fixed it for me. For some reason it was set to ‘/bin/bash’ (probably from the previous KDE versions).
And huge thanks for KDE packages!
@Eric:
The new kdelibs wasn’t pushed to taper repository
@Willy
The taper mirror is up to date now (automatic cron job took care of that).
When I tried to pull it out of my home server manually yesterday, I ran into a “max connections reached” because some other Slackware team members use my homeserver as master too. I failed to see the error message…
Eric
Eric, Thanks for the ne KDE SC.
meanwhile, please note that pairing bluetooth mouse fails with bluedevil.
from /usr/doc/bluedevil-1.2.2 I learned
quote
NOTE: Be sure to install only obexd-client and not obexd-server, since the last will conflic
unquote
and it looks like we have the server in slackware but not having client. Not sure what is the right way to move forward, but it seems that bluedevil is not functional.
Or do I miss something?
Thanks a lot Eric for your packages. I hope Pat will catch up soon (and push a 3.x kernel also in -current !)
I have a little problem with Dolphin (same in Konqueror) when sorting by size. Some elements are not sorted correctly.
I didn’t find the bug in KDE bugtracker so I wonder whether it is slackware related… (I have it now mainly with big files i.e. > 2GB, on x86_64)
Sorting by date works perfectly …
Can anybody else confirm also ? (maybe I did something wrong)
Stephane.
Sorry, my fault. I do not have hidp in my kernel. Forget about it. Will look into this matter later.
The first! Thanks a lot Eric for your packages.
The second! There is black background in GTK-apps after logout from KDE (without rebooting system).
http://itmages.ru/image/view/402739/fc71ff2a
Can anybody confirm this bug?
@dr_alex:
it happened on my laptop and workstation too, but not in my desktop. I guess it’s Intel ?
@sberthelot
Mine is working fine (sorting) here on 32 bit system with 4 GB of RAM as well
@dr_alex:
sorry, my issue was having a black background when i select the logout button. It’s like a flicker, so probably it’s quite different with yours. Sorry…
@dr_alex
same here, i have Nvidia, to fix that i have to restart X (ctrl+alt+backspace)
@amigib
Yes, it helps only restart!
@amigib
Yes, it helps only restart! I also have NVidia card.
Thank you Eric for your work. One question – after starting kde in the / directory appears folder /.config.How to fix it ?
Icons of KDE apps in tray have become monochrome.
How can i return colors to them?
No Coment
http://www.linux-bg.org/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=42431.0;attach=2304
Thanks, Eric. I finally got around to upgrading today. I didn’t really notice the sound issue until I read about it here. Notifications are now fixed. Everything seems just fine!
Hi Eric,
thanks for your great work and support.
@amigib
I have solved the problem with black background in gtk apps. To avoid this trouble nvidia driver 275.43 must be installed!
@jackie
Apparently you are linking to an attachment, but without logging in nobody will be able to see what you wanted to show us on http://www.linux-bg.org/
And I am not going to create an account just to see a picture.
Eric
Doctor Fungus
The monochrome icons are here to stay. If you want coloured icons back then you would probably have to change your desktop theme, because Air contains this monochrome set.
Alternatively you can download and install a set of coloured icons (basically it’s the Air icons touched up with inkscape) from http://kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=134914
Eric
###
Comment from alienbob
Posted: January 28, 2012 at 12:08
@jackie
Apparently you are linking to an attachment, but without logging in nobody will be able to see what you wanted to show us on http://www.linux-bg.org/
And I am not going to create an account just to see a picture.
Eric
###
http://jeliazkov.org/aaaaa.png
Downloading
Everything’s fine for me after upgrade except Amarok which consistently crash at start, even after reboots. amarok -debig shows these messages at the end :
amarok: BEGIN: virtual void CollectionTreeItemModel::requestCollectionsExpansion()
amarok: END__: virtual void CollectionTreeItemModel::requestCollectionsExpansion() [Took: 0s]
QSortFilterProxyModel: invalid inserted rows reported by source model
QSocketNotifier: Invalid socket 30 and type ‘Read’, disabling…
QSocketNotifier: Invalid socket 57 and type ‘Read’, disabling…
QSocketNotifier: Invalid socket 58 and type ‘Read’, disabling…
KCrash: Application ‘amarok’ crashing…
KCrash: Attempting to start /usr/lib64/kde4/libexec/drkonqi from kdeinit
sock_file=/home/vdb/.kde/socket-coyote/kdeinit4__0
Reverting to amarok 2.4.3 allows it to start and work again properly.
@rvdboom:
Try this:
mkdir ~/.kde/share/config/backup
mv ~/.kde/share/config/amarok* ~/.kde/share/config/backup/
and restart Amarok
@dr_alex
thanks
there seems to be some other smaller problems with this KDE but in time i will eradicate them, some configs from 4.7 are not compatible with 4.8 which is annoying
Hello Eric. Nice to know you.
I’m new here :-).
I’ve alreadu install KDE 4.8. But /etc/rc.d/rc.networkmanager doesn’t exist. Can you supply this file?
PS: sorry if my english is bad
@Fakhry:
The file do exists. Please check the .new file using
find /etc -name “*.new”
Network Manager is located outside kde and deps directory. It’s located in test/ directory. Please make sure you have installed all the packages there
It’s solve now. thx Mr. Willy.
KDE 4.8.0 looks fine and feels good, thank you
After upgrade qt alien ver 2
System again enable sound, Thank you for fix!
I don’t know if is just an issue of mine, but upgrading kde sc to 4.8 the “Mobile broadband” tab in nm-applet doesn’t work anymore it’s just gray).
Some of you have the identical problem?
As usual: sorry for my english
forget my post, it was a bad phone set up, nm-applet works perfectly…..sorry!!!!
“Note that libktorrent is now located in “deps” instead of “kde” directory because it has become a dependency for more than just ktorrent.”
I haven’t seen it mentioned elsewhere and I’m curious.. What else has libktorrent as a dep? Also, KDE 4.8 is working great!
@otho
Why did you not read the line that followed?
“For instance, having libktorrent already available when compiling “kdenetwork” will enhance Kget with torrent download capability.”
Eric
Ah, sorry. I now see that mentioned in the README. My question (and quote) was referencing the blog post.
Thanks alien for all this work! This is awesome.
Quick question, I’m new to this, but to properly configure my slackpkg blacklist file should put in the -current packages that are removed as part of the upgrade to KDE 4.8.0?
I.e.:
polkit-kde-1
kdeaccessibility
kdebase
kdebase-runtime
kdebase-workspace
kdebindings
kdeedu
kdegraphics
kdeutils
konq-plugins
Thanks,
put this in /etc/slackpkg/blacklist
[0-9]+alien
Thanks Willy, I put that into my blacklist earlier but this confirms I got it right.
But I’m assuming I also need to blacklist Slackware’s official KDE packages since I’m using Alien’s now, right?
Thanks,
Yes, it’s the right to do if you want to stick with Eric’s KDE packages, but soon or later, it will be added into Slackware-Current (hopefully soon enough)
Thank you Eric for the wonderful KDE.SlackBuild
I had to patch kde-workspace for debugging and it was so easy with your slackbuild.
Add patch to patch/kde-workspace/
Edit patch/kde-workspace.patch
./KDE.SlackBuild kdebase:kde-workspace
That saved me a lot of time so thanks 😀
NOTE:
You may experience the issue that two launchers keep appearing in your taskbar right after you login (a konqueror and a dolphin launcher usually). Removing them does not help; after logging out and logging back in they just re-appear!
This is a known bug, see https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=278724 . There is a workaround described here: http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=96351#p201489
However I did something else to get rid of them:
I unlocked the widgets and removed the task bar widget (don’t panic, the bottom area gets all weird but we’ll solve that in the next step). Then I just re-added it from the available widget collection. That helped too.
Eric
kdesu doesn’t work for me.
Does it work for anyone else?
remove /tmp/ksocket-$USER/kdesud_:0=, after which kdesu will work again.
Thanks djemos it worked 😀
I can not get KDE 4.8.0 running – after upgrade from 4.7.4 and restart i get just black screen. The splash screen is displayed before everythings black out.
If I try the same but without restarting, KDE 4.8.0 starts. What could i miss?
I even tried to upgrade dependencies for 4.7.4 to 4.8.0 to have everything consistent there un just change the kde packages
to elaborate a bit – that relates to slack64-cur no VBox virtual machine. Didn’t tried on physical “iron” yet.
Janis,
On virtualbox the usual suspect is the lack of compositing capability of the virtual hardware.
Try to explicitly disable compositing in the X.Org configuration:
To disable the composite extension in X.Org, add the following lines either to /etc/X11/xorg.conf or to a file in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d (the choice is up to you):
Section “Extensions”
Option “Composite” “Disable”
EndSection
And restart your X Window session.
Alternatively you can start a KDE failsafe session, this option will be available in the session list when you boot in runlevel 4.
Eric
I found the problem – as I did not installed everything, the one package lacking was activities package, the lack of which, seems, had no influence in times of KDE 4.7.4.
Everything works without disabling of composition.
Which leads us to the only right conclusion:
Start with a full installation of all packages (for my KDE packages, that also means all the dependencies) and start stripping away packages only after you verified that everything is working well.
Eric
Hi eric,
i’m compiling on 13.37 multilib bits as we speak…
alldeps.Slackbuild ask for libsgutils2… (sg3_utils)… hopefully this will be the last dependency needed.
I am compiling on 13.37 x86_64, a fresh installation without KDE. Building alldeps fails at libktorrent:
ERROR: Could not find KDE4 kde4-config
It looks like libktorrent should be compiled after the basic KDE packages, unless you have a previous KDE installation.
You’re right fgcl2k – it needs KDE.
I will have to think of an alternative build order which allows libktorrent to compile, and still expands kget with torrent download functionality.
Thanks, Eric
After installing a prebuilt libktorrent the build stops again in kdebase:
Linking CXX shared module ../../lib/kcm_dolphinviewmodes.so
CMakeFiles/kdeinit_dolphin.dir/panels/information/phononwidget.o:(.data.rel.ro._ZTV19EmbeddedVideoPlayer[vtable for EmbeddedVideoPlayer]+0x38): undefined reference to Phonon::VideoPlayer::event(QEvent*)’
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make[2]: *** [lib/libkdeinit4_dolphin.so] Error 1
make[1]: *** [dolphin/src/CMakeFiles/kdeinit_dolphin.dir/all] Error 2
But phonon was successfully installed in deps.
The problem with kde-baseapps was due to symbolic links in /usr/lib64/qt/lib pointing to an old version of libphonon in /usr/lib64/. I rebuilt all deps and the links went away completely. Only after creating them manually could I successfully compile kde-baseapps-4.8.0-x86_64-1.
So I guess there is a problem with the creation/removal of those links.