My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

KDE Software Compilation 4.9.1

Gee wizz! I was happily editing the new SlackDocs Wiki (article submissions are very welcome btw) while at the same time the KDE team released KDE SC 4.9.1 !! I had read on the “kde-packager” mailing list that the public announcement would be on Wednesday, so I was not paying all that much attention to the KDE site. And then all of a sudden there was the announcement on kde.org!

Luckily, I was prepared. I had already built the packages for Slackware-current (or better call that Slackware 14 RC4) and uploaded them to my two mirror servers. Get your KDE 4.9.1 packages .

This release is a bug fix release. Still, there is at least one glaring bug which was only uncovered after the public release (a message about the bug was posted to “kde-packager” which alerted me to the fact that the sources were already public). This is the message:

A nasty regression (was introduced) while fixing a bug inKWin for 4.9.1. With the “wrong” settings and the wrong set of open windows distributed over multiple desktops this can result in a freeze. A freeze in KWin means that the compositor stops, that is the user has no chance to recover from this state unless he knows how to switch to a tty.

A fix should be ready soon, which means a new kde-workspace package. It is a bug which should not affect a lot of people (I have been running KDE 4.9.1 for a few days here without ill effects), so I decided to push out my packages anyway.

The upgrade from Slackware’s KDE 4.8.5 to my KDE 4.9.1 should be safe and fairly trivial, As always, follow the guidelines in the README and you’ll be OK.

Highlights for the new set of Slackware packages:

  • You will find four updated dependencies compared to Slackware’s own KDE 4.8.5: akonadi, shared-desktop-ontologies, soprano, virtuoso-ose.
  • Compared to KDE 4.8.5, there were two package removals:
    • kdemultimedia has been split up into several smaller individual packages.
    • ksecrets has been removed completely in the 4.9.x series.
  • A noteworthy feature in KDE 4.9 has been added to Okular, the document viewer in KDE. Many people will cheer: Okular is now able to save the annotations you make to PDF files.

These KDE 4.9.1 packages are available for download from my “ktown” repository and several mirrors:

Parrot speak: this is a bit of text which I wrote at the time of release of KDE 4.9 release candidate 1 but I will repeat it one last time. After today, you should remember:

As you may have noticed when inspecting the above URLs, I have re-arranged my “ktown” repository. People were confused about what version would work with Slackware -current and what would work for 13.37. Also, some people have asked for sources of older releases for which I no longer host the packages.

I moved all the sources out of the package trees, you will now find a “source” directory right at the top level of the repository. Below that will be the sources of all package sets which I currently have in my repository (KDE 4.6.5, 4.7.4, 4.8.4 and 4.9.1, including all the dependencies you may want for compiling it on Slackware 13.37). The packages will be available below a toplevel directory equal to the Slackware version they were compiled for (at the moment those are “13.37” and “current“). Below that you will find the actual KDE versions and further down, the 32-bit and 64-bit packages.

Have fun! Eric

15 Comments

  1. escaflown

    Thanks Eric!

  2. slakavod

    Good news! Eric- the best!

  3. Mike Langdon (mlangdn)

    Thanks Eric!

  4. Troy Unrau

    You know, you’re better than some major distros at timely KDE releases 😀

  5. alienbob

    Hi Troy

    I strive to release my packages _exactly_ on release date. Not before that date (which would be violating the packagers’ “NDA” like Fedora and Arch do) and not too late (matter of pride and a feeling of achievement 😉

    Eric

  6. jaycee

    Cheers Eric, I look forward to using your packages! Your work, as always, is much appreciated! 🙂 As such, I couldn’t help but wonder whether, as you’ve usually built KDE SC on Slackware-current, you might consider using Slackware 14.0 to build future updates for the 4.9 release series? The combination of Slackware 14.0 and KDE 4.9 is most wonderful, and it’d be a bit of a shame if there were updates issued to -current after the release of 14.0 that made packages built on -current incompatible with 14.0. What are your thoughts?

  7. alienbob

    Hi jaycee

    I am always building my KDE packages on slackware-current and I will not change that.
    After Slackware 14.0 is released, it will of course take a while before my future KDE packages would develop incompatibilties with the stable release.

    You are using slackware-current now, which means you should be prepared to move from Slackware 14 to a new -current cycle.

    Eric

  8. escaflown

    Hey Eric! I hope you still have room somewhere for kde-telepathy builds in extra in ktown 🙂 Nice to have but not urgent.

  9. alienbob

    Hi escaflown

    I looked at that, sometime ago because I thought it was nice to have.

    But, the dependency list for kde-telepathy is huge.
    And since my “ktown” work is basically a preparation for a future Slackware inclusion, I will not add stuff if I know that it will not be added to Slackware later on.

    Eric

  10. Eduardo

    Thank you Eric!!

    Escaflown: I managed to build packages for kde-telepathy. But it’s not easy, be warned.

  11. big_bass

    Hey alienbob

    Thank you for the clear and easy documented upgrade of KDE using slackware 14rc4

    What a beautiful thing pkgtool is
    I will be following your updates and testing them

    all went 100% perfectly fine!

    Joe

  12. escaflown

    Thanks for the heads up Eduardo

  13. y0g1

    Hello,
    In kde-4.9.1 konqueror is useless when we use it with many tabs.
    It always switch address bar to first tab and unfocus current webpage content.
    Can You confirm it? It is my setup problem, or kde/konqueror bug?

  14. y0g1

    Hi,
    It is valid only with old current view settings. When I save new current view settings again, then konqueror doesn’t auto switch to fist tab.
    It is ok now 🙂

  15. y0g1

    That is odd – when I have webpage with auto refresh active, then every refresh (even in background tab) cuse the focus and addressbar to switch to refreshed page. I will look for bugreport.

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