My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

KDE 5_16.06 for Slackware -current

plasma5_startupIt’s that time of the month again, where the three main software collections of the KDE community have had new releases. Time to package and release for Slackware!

KDE 5_16.06 is the June release of the combined KDE Frameworks 5.23.0, Plasma 5.6.5 and Applications 16.04.2 for Slackware.

plasma5_about_distro

You will certainly have noticed that I am still using the words “current” and “testing” in the URLs for my Plasma5 Slackware repository. With the release of Slackware 14.2, I want to change that. The Plasma5 repository on http://alien.slackbook.org/ktown/ will move from “current/testing” to “14.2/latest” to indicate that I no longer consider Plasma5 a “testing ground”. Plasma5 is production-ready as far as I am concerned. When a new iteration of slackware-current starts rolling post-14.2 I will see if there is again something that needs “testing” otherwise “current” and “14.2” will become equal in the repository for the time being.

What’s new in KDE 5_16.06?

This upgrade should be straightforward if you already have Plasma 5 installed. See below for install/upgrade instructions. And if you want to check it out before installing, I am currently generating new Live ISO’s for all variants, PLASMA5 included. They will become available at http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/slackware-live/latest/ soon. Check the timestamp of the “slackware64-live-plasma5-current.iso” ISO.

Installing or upgrading Frameworks 5, Plasma 5 and Applications

You can skip the remainder of the article if you already have my Plasma 5 installed and are familiar with the upgrade process. Otherwise, stay with me and read the rest.

As always, the accompanying README file contains full installation & upgrade instructions. Note that the packages are available in several subdirectories below “kde”, instead of directly in “kde”. This makes it easier for me to do partial updates of packages. The subdirectories are “kde4”, “kde4-extragear”, “frameworks”, “kdepim”, “plasma”, “plasma-extra”, “applications”, “applications-extra” and “telepathy”.

Upgrading to this KDE 5 is not difficult, especially if you already are running KDE 5_16.04. You will have to remove old KDE 4 packages manually. If you do not have KDE 4 installed at all, you will have to install some of Slackware’s own KDE 4 packages manually.

What I usually do is: download all the ‘ktown’ packages for the new release to a local disk. Then run “upgrade –install-new” on all these packages. Then I check the status of my Slackware-current, upgrading the stock packages where needed. The slackpkg tool is invaluable during this process of syncing the package installation status to the releases.

Note:

If you are using slackpkg+, have already moved to KDE 5_16.05 and are adventurous, you can try upgrading using the following set of commands. This should “mostly” work but you still need to check the package lists displayed by slackpkg to verify that you are upgrading all the right packages. Feel free to send me improved instructions if needed. In below example I am assuming that you tagged my KDE 5 repository with the name “ktown_testing” in the configuration file “/etc/slackpkg/slackpkgplus.conf“):
# slackpkg update
# slackpkg install ktown_testing (to get the newly added packages from my repo)
# slackpkg install-new (to get the new official Slackware packages that were part of my deps previously)
# slackpkg upgrade ktown_testing (upgrade all existing packages to their latest versions)
# removepkg xembed-sni-proxy ktux amor kde-base-artwork kde-wallpapers kdeartwork (they don’t exist in the repo anymore)
# slackpkg upgrade-all (upgrade the remaining dependencies that were part of my repo previously)

And doublecheck that you have not inadvertently blacklisted my packages in “/etc/slackpkg/blacklist“! Check for the existence of a line in that blacklist file that looks like “[0-9]+alien” and remove it if you find it!

Recommended reading material

There have been several posts now about KDE 5 for Slackware-current. All of them contain useful information, tips and gotchas that I do not want to repeat here, but if you want to read them, here they are: http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/tag/kde5/

A note on Frameworks

The KDE Frameworks are extensions on top of Qt 5.x and their usability is not limited to the KDE Software Collection. There are other projects such as LXQT which rely (in part) on the KDE Frameworks, and if you are looking for a proper Frameworks repository which is compatible with Slackware package managers such as slackpkg+, then you can use these URL’s to assure yourself of the latest Frameworks packages for Slackware-current (indeed, this is a sub-tree of my KDE 5 “testing” repository):

Where to get the new packages for Plasma 5

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

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

47 Comments

  1. Gérard Monpontet

    work, no problem, for the moment 😉

  2. Eduardo

    Thank you Eric! So far it’s working ok here.

  3. Arief JR

    Yesterday i type update using slackpkgplus:

    http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/people/alien/sbrepos/current/x86_64/ChangeLog.txt:
    2016-06-15 14:47:17 ERROR 404: Not Found.
    http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/people/alien/sbrepos/current/ChangeLog.txt:
    2016-06-15 14:47:18 ERROR 404: Not Found.
    2016-06-15 14:47:20 URL:http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/people/alien/sbrepos/ChangeLog.txt [391773/391773] -> \”/tmp/slackpkg.iv1bwA/sbrepos.txt\” [1]
    Saving ChangeLog.txt from repository sbrepos …

    http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/alien-kde/current/testing/x86_64/ChangeLog.txt:
    2016-06-15 14:47:21 ERROR 404: Not Found.
    http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/alien-kde/current/testing/ChangeLog.txt:
    2016-06-15 14:47:22 ERROR 404: Not Found.
    http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/alien-kde/current/ChangeLog.txt:
    2016-06-15 14:47:22 ERROR 404: Not Found.
    2016-06-15 14:47:23 URL:http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/alien-kde/ChangeLog.txt [113145/113145] -> \”/tmp/slackpkg.iv1bwA/ktown.txt\” [1]
    Saving ChangeLog.txt from repository ktown …

    But still work to get a new KDE 5_16.6, thanks Eric.

  4. alienbob

    Arief, that is caused by an update in slackpkg+ without consideration for the consequences. The 404 errors are actually harmless, it is a pity that by default they are not hidden.
    See http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/slackpkg-errors-following-latest-update-4175582242/

  5. jla

    Do I have to blacklist KDE4 packages? It wants to install libmm-qt, libnm-qt, plasma-nm, kdeconnect-kde back again. and calligra-l10n*, kde-l10n*…

  6. alienbob

    jla, indeed you will have to blacklist those packages if you are running “slackpkg.install-new” and want to get rid of these packages in the list.
    Alternatively you just skip them. You should not have a need for “slackpkg install-new” anyway at this point, since no new packages are being added to Slackware-current now and stable releases rarely, if ever, get new packages.

  7. _metic

    Hello Eric,
    I have applied this update. I have just one thing, i have noticed that comes and goes…. in my last couple of log ins and outs and a couple reboots.

    the Clock in displayed as analog and i get the following error.

    ######
    Error loading QML file: file:///usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.digitalclock/contents/ui/main.qml:46:34: Type CalendarView unavailable
    file:///usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.digitalclock/contents/ui/CalendarView.qml:65:9: Type PlasmaCalendar.MonthView unavailable
    file:///usr/lib64/qt5/qml/org/kde/plasma/calendar/MonthView.qml:173:19: Cannot assign object to property
    ######

    warm regards.

  8. alienbob

    Hi _metic

    They solved this issue in Qt5 5.6.1-1 which was just released yesterday. I think I will have to spend a few days compiling this…

  9. Juan Tovar

    Hi Eric!

    Thank you very much for all the great work on all your packages! I’ve just started using KDE 5_16.06 and everything seems to be working but Kmail inbox sync with yahoo imap. Have you come across the same problem?

    Thanks

  10. alienbob

    I do not use Yahoo, and I also do not use KMail, so I can not comment on your issue, of which you are not giving detailed information. Usually when you run into a KDE related issue it is good to do a search in the KDE bugtracker and open a new bug if you do not find any recorded bug related to your own issue.

  11. Gerard Lally

    Hi Eric,
    just today I installed KDE 5 on a full, clean install of Slackware 14.2 64-bit, after “slackpkg remove kde”. After rebooting I ran xwmconfig and selected the plasma entry.
    The only problem I have is that I get an error when trying startx at runlevel 3: “Could not start D-bus. Can you call qdbus?”
    KDE Plasma 5 does, however, start OK when I log in at runlevel 4 (KDM).

  12. alienbob

    Gerard perhaps you just need to reboot. And, do not try to start Plasma5 as root.

  13. Gerard Lally

    Rebooted twice, and never log in to GUI as root.

    Anyway, it’s Saturday evening and the football’s on, so ignore this. It’s not a major problem; just thought you might want to know about it.

    KDE 5 is great by the way. Very impressed. Good work.

  14. Nicolas

    Hi Eric,

    On a fresh install of Slack 14.2 without KDE and KDEI, I’ve encountered the following bug in your Plasma 5 build :

    I can’t get the user picture dialog to show up.

    I want to change the picture associated to my username when i open up the start menu.

    A click on the default icon should bring up said dialog but it doesn’t work.

    It’s a minor bug i know, but still : Sharing is caring.

    Cheers.

  15. alienbob

    Interestingly, the Personalization menu in System Settings only contains the KDE Wallet settings. It should also have listed Password & User Account – the place where you change the user icon. No idea where that went.

    If you want to change your user icon anyway, just pick a bitmap file and name it “~/.face.icon” .

  16. alienbob

    OK: running the command “kcmshell4 kcm_useraccount” will get you the “Password and Useraccount” program where you can pick a new face icon if you want.
    At some point I will have to investigate into Plasma’s “user-manager” which is replacing this old KDE4 program. I am currently not compiling a package for it because it has unmet dependencies.

  17. Gérard Monpontet

    In dep, slack-14.2 use a new sip-4.18 version,

    i have tested the news versions of these soft, without problem:

    wayland-1.11.0, libxkbcommon-0.6.1, openal-soft-1.17.2, grantlee-5.1.0, PyQt5_gpl-5.6.

  18. Nicolas

    Thanks for your insight.

    Gonna test that kcmshell thingy.

  19. manciuleas

    Hi alienbob,

    I just tested Plasma 5.7 from the 14.2 repository and it seems to break the desktop. No window borders / decorations and I have an error from the taskbar:
    Error loading QML file: file:///usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.taskmanager/contents/ui/main.qml:26:1: plugin cannot be loaded for module “org.kde.taskmanager”:
    Cannot load library /usr/lib64/qt5/qml/org/kde/taskmanager/libtaskmanagerplugin.so: (/usr/lib64/libtaskmanager.so.6: undefined symbol: _ZN8KWayland6Client12PlasmaWindow31virtualDesktopChangeableChangedEv)
    Looks like some library (Wayland related is missing).
    Is something missing from the deps directory?
    Thanks.

  20. alienbob

    manciuleas something seems to have gone wrong when I cleaned my ‘testing’ repository and built Plasma 5.7
    There is a left-over Wayland dependency indeed, so I will rebuilt the following packages that use Wayland in some way:
    breeze
    kwayland-integration
    plasma-integration
    kinfocenter
    kscreenlocker
    kwin
    libkscreen2
    plasma-workspace
    powerdevil

  21. alienbob

    I have rebuilt those packages and updated the repository.
    I have also regenerated the PLASMA5 Live ISO image at http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/slackware-live/latest/ because I noticed that that too, had been generated using my testing repository and contained Plasma 5.7 Beta1 instead of the stable release…

  22. manciuleas

    Thanks alienbob.
    I noticed, however that two packages are missing: breeze-gtk and plasm-workspace-wallpapers even though they seem to be present in the source directory. Are you going to update those as well?

  23. alienbob

    I was not planning on rebuilding them… I moved them out of the repository into the archive by mistake. Bad use of wildcards in the move commands.
    I’ll move them back and re-generate the repository metadata. Thanks for spotting all this, manciuleas.

  24. manciuleas

    Hi alienbob

    There’s more …
    After rebuilding the missing packages I still had the same problems as reported. However I realized that something is wrong with the window manager and tried to start kwin_x11, which failed due to missing dependency (libinput.so.10) – this seems to be another wayland bit. Anyway, I tried to recompile kwin-5.7.0 and it failed because the kwayland the you ship (kwayland-5.6.4) is too old). So, I found and compiled kwayland-5.23 from frameworks, then kwin-5.7.0 (successfully now) and I have a working desktop.
    Hope this helps

  25. alienbob

    manciuleas – when I refreshed the repository with Plasma 5.7.0, I also replaced kwayland-5.6.4 with kwayland-5.23.0 (kwayland moved from Plasma to Frameworks but I had missed that last month). Perhaps you missed that one when you updated the Plasma packages.

  26. MG

    Hi Eric,
    do you think is possible to make the fingerprint reader working in slackware?

  27. manciuleas

    Hi alienbob,

    Updated again, now everything seems fine. Thanks.

  28. alienbob

    MG – the only fingerprint driver that I know of, requires that PAM is present. So for the moment this is not possible in Slackware.

  29. MG

    Ok, I’ll wait… thanks a lot!

  30. montagdude

    Hi alienbob,

    I’m really enjoying your Plasma 5. I’m having one minor problem, though, which is that the desktop search doesn’t seem to work. balooctl status shows this:

    Baloo File Indexer is running
    Indexed 19136 / 19216 files
    Failed to index 0 files

    But when I use Alt+F2 to pull up krunner and search for any files in my home directory, the only ones that come up are the “Recent Documents.” Does it work for you?

  31. Gérard Monpontet

    Eric on plasma5 source ‘profile.d/kde.csh and kde.sh, aren’t the same that you provide on your ‘kde-baseapps’ package, this, cause plasma5 no start. 😉

  32. rvdboom

    Just refreshed with new plasma 5.7 from today 14/07/2016 including libinput. Skype icon disappeared and Folder View plasmoid display the target folder and not its contents.

  33. rvdboom

    Quick follow-up : removing the sni-qt package brings back the skype icon.

  34. e. wayne johnson

    Installed the latest version from the UK mirror. Works very smoothly and with full function.

  35. alienbob

    rvdboom – I may have to recompile a couple of Qt5 related deps.

  36. alienbob

    Gérard, so you rebuilt kde-baseapps using the source?
    The setting “XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/var/tmp” is indeed not correct. I Seem to have deleted the final version of the kde profile scripts and left a non-working version in the repository.
    I discussed the XDG_RUNTIME_DIR variable with Martin Graesslin (KWin developer) and he insists that XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is set and points to a directory on a tmpfs or else the Wayland compositor will not start. Of course, my ktown packages do not support Wayland (yet) but the change in the profile script was meant for Wayland.

    The correct piece of code to define this variable should be:

    if [ “$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR” = “” ]; then
    XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/$USER
    mkdir -p /run/user/$USER
    chown -R $USER /run/user/$USER
    fi

    But I will have to test that, I have just started working on a new set of ‘ktown’ packages.

  37. alienbob

    montagdude – the search function works for me.

  38. montagdude

    Ok, well thanks for letting me know. It’s not working for me on either 14.2 or my -current VM, so obviously I’m doing something wrong. I have the file search enabled with the default settings. If you or anyone has any ideas, I would appreciate it. It’s not critical though, so don’t spend a bunch of time on it or anything.

  39. Gérard Monpontet

    Ok, Eric, thanks

  40. Gérard Monpontet

    I have build latest plasma, frameworks, and applications without problem 😉

  41. Richard Herbert

    Great work on KDE 5, Eric. It went in like butter on my newly upgraded Slackware 14.2 32-bit system. Just wondering what happened to K3b. Would it be okay to install it from the Slackware 14.2 DVD? Thanks!

  42. sigkillall

    Seem to be having similar probs as montagdude

    ~$ balooctl status
    Baloo File Indexer is running
    Indexed 34 / 34 files
    Failed to index 0 files

    Using the default search settings. Balooctl restart hangs.
    Guess it time for me to RTFM.

    ska

  43. alienbob

    Yes I see what you mean. I booted the Plasma 5 Live ISO in a VM and there I notice that baloosearch works but krunner does not show any of the baloo search results.
    I must note that in the Live OS, I disable all kinds of stuff that tax the performance and the USB stick’s durability (turning off file I/O like all the search features) but I erased the live user’s dot directories and logged on again, and still krunner does not show search results from file content.

    Strange thing is that on my laptop, search works fine. I’ll wait for the chance to create a new Live ISO with the latest Plasma 5 packages to see if that changes things. Could be a packaging issue (iincorrect build order perhaps?) but I can not find fault, and it would contradict the fact that on the laptop it works.

  44. alienbob

    I just tried on the VM where I built the new set of KDE 5 packages (Slackware64-14.2 minus all the KDE4 packages) and here, the file content search in krunner just works. I copied a couple of new files over into the VM and those were picked up by baloo and seconds later I could find their content in krunner.
    Weird, no? As soon as the 32bit compilation of Plasma 5 packages is done, I will finish my work on liveslak scripts and create a new Live ISO.

  45. sigkillall

    It’s more of an annoyance that a problem for me on my end.
    So far I have been very satisfied with your KDE 5 packages, not much to complain about.

    ska

  46. montagdude

    For what it’s worth, I also tried getting rid of .kde, .config, and .local (the last two just for good measure) on my VM, and I still have the same problem. It’s strange that it works for some people but not others. But like ska said, it’s just a minor annoyance, and everything else is working flawlessly.

  47. montagdude

    File search now works for me after the latest updates. Thanks again!

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