My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

Slackware-current gets KDE 4.8.2, hooray

It was bound to happen, and while I was asleep Pat updated slackware-current with a fresh batch of packages… containing KDE 4.8.2 and all the stuff that it depends on!

The update to the ChangeLog.txt makes up almost 20% of the full ChangeLog length so far! Finally we have a beefy update to -current. It’s playtime for those who had not used my own unofficial “ktown” builds yet.

Note that Slackware’s version of Calligra (the successor to Koffice) is now at the official stable release, version 2.4. My own package was still a release candidate.

Also note that Networkmanager was added to Slackware! So, what I had kept separately in a “testing” directory because I was not sure what Pat would want to do with it, is now being used in the distribution after all. Enabling NetworkManager is done like in my own instructions: make the rc script executable (Slackware will ship NM disabled by default) using the command “chmod +x /etc/rc.d/rc.networkmanager”, and add the NetworkManager plasmoid (widget) to your KDE desktop in order to configure it.

The good old way of using rc.inet1 to configure your network is still available of course, this will not change! Also, you can still use WICD instead if you prefer that. Users of XFCE will want to stick with WICD anyway, since Slackware does not have a graphical configuration tool for managing NM connections, apart from the KDE widget.

Upgrade instructions:

If you are currently running “alien” packages for KDE 4.8.2 and want to upgrade to the official packages in Slackware-current, then you’ll have to be prepared for some manual labour. But it may not be that hard after all, except when you have a lot of my other packages installed as well (like multilib versions of gcc/glibc and lots of “compat32” packages).

  1. If you are using slackpkg to maintain your Slackware,Β  then probably you have blacklisted all of my packages.In this case, temporarily remove or comment the line in “/etc/slackpkg/blacklist” that goes “[0-9]+alien”. Then use slackpkg to upgrade to slackware-current as usual, with this condition: do not blindly accept the list of packages to be upgraded, but review every single package shown by slackpkg as a candidate for upgrading. De-select every package which you want to keep! All the “alien” packages related to KDE and its dependencies must stay in a “selected” state. Then let slackpkg do its upgrade work and you’ll end up with a proper slackware-current.
  2. If you want to upgrade using slackpkg but are not prepared to review lots of packages manually to see if they should be upgraded or left alone, then a very fast way of upgrading from my own to Slackware’s packages will be the following four commands followed by a regular upgrade using slackpkg (example paths are for 64-bit Slackware, so if you are running 32-bit Slackware then you have to ignore the “64”):
  1. upgradepkg /path/to/local-mirror-of/slackware64-current/slackware64/a/*.t?z
  2. upgradepkg /path/to/local-mirror-of/slackware64-current/slackware64/l/*.t?z
  3. upgradepkg /path/to/local-mirror-of/slackware64-current/slackware64/kde/*.t?z
  4. upgradepkg /path/to/local-mirror-of/slackware64-current/slackware64/kdei/*.t?z

Note that if you blindly ran these four commands and you are on a multilib system, you will have overwritten the multilib versions of the glibc packages with original (non-multilib) Slackware versions. You will have to download and upgrade to my multilib glibc packages again. Note that this will not break your Slackware installation… it merely disables the use of 32-bit software until you re-install my multilib glibc packages.

Have fun! Eric

44 Comments

  1. Wild Wizard

    slackpkg wont touch the compat32 packages due to the compat32 been enclosed by “-” the multilib packages will come up as multilib is prefixed by “_”

    Also the _multilib files are only gcc-* and glibc-* so they all clump together in the slackpkg dialog which makes deselecting them all very easy

  2. alienbob

    Well, that is true for the “slackpkg upgrade-all” part..
    However, you will have to *remove* several packages as well, and if you use slackpkg for that, you will see all the compat32 packages in the list of potential removals.

    Eric

  3. Didier Spaier

    Though I be not a real fan of KDE but merely a happy fluxbox user, I guess it’s about time for me to install -current again…

    Un grand merci pour toutes tes contributions qui rendent Slackware encore meilleur.

  4. John

    My slackware64-current-iso is over 5.5G. How do I fit this on a DVD?

    AlleyTrotter

  5. gmg

    It seem, many soft are not present in the ‘calligra’ slackware-current package,

    calligrawords,cstester,calligrastage,cstrunner,visualimagecompare,calligramobile
    these soft are present in your package,Eric.

    gmg

  6. ArTourter

    For information, regarding networkmanager, the one package Patrick hasn’t provided is the commandline interface to NM, cnetworkmanager.

    Greg

  7. jaycee

    Well, this is certainly a pleasant surprise! Cheers for letting us know Eric! So, is this an indication that Pat’s preparing for a release of Slackware 14.73 within the next couple of months? Also, now that Pat appears to be devoting more attention to Slackware Current, will you continue to make packages like LibreOffice for Slackware 13.37, or will you start compiling them just for Slackware Current instead? Thanks again Eric! πŸ˜€

  8. alienbob

    Artourter,

    We decided to remove cnetworkmanager because it is no longer maintained and would not even compile (my own package was copied from one KDE to another during the past months).
    If you need a commandline interface to NM, then “nmcli” is what you need to use.

    Eric

  9. alienbob

    @John,

    A decision needs to be made about what to do with the amount of stuff in Slackware… it will no longer fit on a DVD, or on the 6-CD set.
    That is a decision for the future though.

    In the meantime if you want to install -current from a DVD then you will have to exclude parts of it (the sources for instance).

    Eric

  10. alienbob

    gmg,

    It seems yu are right. I upgraded my own KDE 4.8.2 to -current and saw that a lot of stuff got deleted from my hard drive when calligra was updated.
    I notified Pat and we’ll see what needs to be done about it.

    Eric

  11. alienbob

    @jaycee

    There is no indication at all that a new release is imminent. The update to KDE 4.8.2 was so long overdue that it looks like a big deal but it really is just a lot of catching up with reality.

    My own packages like VLC and LibreOffice will continue to be built on Slackware 13.37. I compile packages on the stable release if they are meant for public consumption. The exceptions are “ktown” and my multilib packages.

    Eric

  12. alienbob

    Calligra reports these applications with my package of 2.4RC1:
    $ calligra –apps
    flow
    karbon
    krita
    plan
    sheets
    stage
    words

    And this is what the calligra 2.4 package of slackware-current reports:
    $ calligra –apps
    flow
    karbon
    krita
    plan
    sheets

    Some have clearly gone missing.

    Eric

  13. gmg

    Thanks, Eric.

  14. Hernan from Mexico

    Well done! Congratulations for the hard work!
    Is there any plan to include Robbie’s xfc in current?

  15. Hernan from Mexico

    I mean xfce 4.8

  16. alienbob

    @Hernan

    There are no concrete plans to add XFCE, just like there were no concrete plans to upgrade KDE before.
    You never know!

    Eric

  17. alienbob

    @gmg

    I have found out why words and stage were not built. I updated Pat with my findings. Basically he forgot to apply the instructions sent to us by the calligra developers.

    Eric

  18. jamesf

    I think the instructions in Changelog.txt regarding polkit-qt-1 are incorrect.

    My machine with a pre-KDE 4.8 -current has polkit-qt-1-r1145513-i486-2.

    My machine with a KDE 4.8 -current has polkit-qt-1-0.103.0-i486-1.txz.

    Changelog.txt says after the upgrade to removepkg polkit-q1-1.

    If you do this you delete the polkit-qt-1 that you just installed.

    Am I correct, or did I misunderstand something?

    Thanks for looking. πŸ™‚

  19. jamesf

    Oops. Above I said “Changelog.txt says after the upgrade to removepkg polkit-q1-1.”, and it should have been “Changelog.txt says after the upgrade to removepkg polkit-qt-1.”.

  20. Schmatzler

    Using slapt-get, the upgrade is very easy. I had alien-kde installed previously and I use the multilib packages.

    So I added these lines into /etc/slapt-get/slapt-get.rc:

    # Base url to directory with a PACKAGES.TXT.
    # This can point to any release, ie: 9.0, 10.0, current, etc.
    SOURCE=ftp://ftp.fu-berlin.de/unix/linux/slackware/slackware64-current/:OFFICIAL

    #multilib
    SOURCE=http://connie.slackware.com/~alien/multilib/:CUSTOM

    After that, a “slapt-get –update && slapt-get –upgrade” upgraded all kde 4.8.2 packages to the official ones. πŸ™‚

  21. Willy Sudiarto Raharjo

    now the calligra problem has been sorted out in -Current

  22. alienbob

    I thought so too, but then I upgraded calligra in a virtual machine. Still some of the applications are not visible in the menu.
    And when I start calligrawords in a console, I get an error about “words part.desktop not found” and Words does not start.

    Is this what you get as well?

    Eric

  23. alienbob

    Hmmm, bah.
    After re-installing every KDE package, calligra works perfectly now. I guess the upgrade of my virtual machine yesterday went wrong somewhere…

    Eric

  24. FeyFre

    Thanks for work!
    Trying to install into slackware 13.37. Since because of glibc versions – forced to rebuild manually. Question:
    1. In source/deps/alldeps.SlackBuild there are double entry of polkit-qt-1 : after virtuoso-ose & qt and at very end. Is it intended to be so? Or error?
    2. In that list there is libktorrent. But no subdir with sources & SlackBuild. But libktorrent is present in source/kde/src/extragear. As I found-out libktorrent is dependent on kdelibs and so cannot be built before KDE built/installed itself.
    Since pre-built packages is not compatible with older releases of Slackware I think it would be greate to make revision in order to get rid of such conflict cases, in order to easy life to other guys like me who want update KDE on stable release. Is it possible?

  25. alienbob

    Hi Feyfre

    It is not my intention to keep that 4.8.2 tree for long since Slackware-current has 4.8.2 itself now.
    I updated the alldeps.SlackBuild script nevertheless, removing the double entry for polkit-qt-1 and the line for libktorrent (since that is now being built as part of KDE itself in KDE.SlackBuild).

    If you run alldeps.SlackBuild first, and KDE.SlackBuild next, every package will be created and installed. I have no idea what you need to do extra to make this work on Slackware 13.37, if you want to leave those instructions here then other people may profit. If I have the time I may even create a new KDE package set for Slackware 13.37 at some time.

    Eric

  26. Willy Sudiarto Raharjo

    Yes, i got the same problem, but i guess there’s a delay between the doinstall.sh script takes effect.

    Here’s the message i got after i initially installed Calligra

    willysr@office:~$ calligrawords
    words(6378)/koffice (lib komain): “words” part.desktop not found.

    words(6378)/koffice (lib komain): Run ‘kde4-config –path services’ to see which directories were searched, assuming kde startup had the same environment as your current shell.

    words(6378)/koffice (lib komain): Check your installation (did you install Calligra in a different prefix than KDE, without adding the prefix to /etc/kderc ?)

    and here’s 2 seconds later

    willysr@office:~$ calligrawords
    (Soprano::Redland::BackendPlugin) creating model of type “hashes” with options “hash-type=’memory’,contexts=’yes'”
    words(6381)/kdecore (KLibrary) kde4Factory: The library “/usr/lib/kde4/stateshape.so” does not offer a qt_plugin_instance function.
    words(6381)/koffice (lib kopageapp) KoOdfLoadingContext::KoOdfLoadingContext: could not parse manifest document

  27. Armin Besirovic

    Hi Eric,

    There’s a bug in oxygen-gtk2 version 1.2.2 that will crash a lot of GTK+ apps (in my experience it crashed FileZilla and OpenERP GTK Client). They released a new 1.2.3 version which apparently fixes this (more info via filezilla trac: http://trac.filezilla-project.org/ticket/7968).

    Could you brew us a package for the new oxygen-gtk2? I’m reusing your old slackbuild (not the one in KDE4.8.2) to make myself one, dunno if it’ll work.

    Armin.

  28. Willy Sudiarto Raharjo

    @Armin:
    What version of FileZilla did you use?
    I used 3.5.3 and it’s still working fine here

    *I’m the maintainer of FileZilla in SBo*

  29. Armin Besirovic

    @Willy, I’m using FileZilla 3.5.3 on Slackware x86_64 and it was happily crashing until I updated oxygen-gtk2 to 1.2.3 (to try and reproduce, add a site to filezilla’s site manager which uses ssh and click Connect).

    Second app was openerp-client (6.0.3) which crashed whenever I tried to close the Attendances module tab (from OpenERP) in the GTK client.

  30. Willy Sudiarto Raharjo

    Pat heard your voices πŸ™‚

    Tue Apr 17 16:35:04 UTC 2012
    kde/oxygen-gtk2-1.2.3-i486-1.txz: Upgraded.
    Addresses crash bugs.

  31. FeyFre

    For now I found only one of incompatibilities/problem of build process with 13.37(in alldeps.SlackBuild):
    First package to build is virtuoso-ose but no sources/SlackBuild provided. I have borrowed it from -current source tree. I really don’t know what depend on it, but decided to not to risk and built it also.
    I didn’t finished build yet, but I don’t think there will be any problems to run KDE4.8.2 on 13.37 (I have managed to install it fom pre-built packages into 13.37 earlier, when it was linked against older glibc – no problems detected)

  32. alienbob

    I removed the “virtuoso-ose” line from alldeps.SlackBuild just a moment ago. That package was upgraded in Slackware-current so there was no longer a need for me to create a package for it.

    Eric

  33. weput

    I wonder if pat will accept an “official” multilib version of slackware…

  34. alienbob

    Hi weput

    This has been discussed many times. Slackware for x86_64 will never be multilib. If you need that, you will have to use my add-on packages.

    Eric

  35. Henry

    Hi Eric, i readed in LQ about Slackware Linux problems and i wanna donate some money to Patrick but the web page and the store don’t are available today

    Please, email me the link to the Patrick Pay Pal link to contribute to Slack and you too (of course πŸ˜› )

    Long live to Slackware! πŸ˜›

    NOTE: Sorry about my bad inglish but i don’t speak him

  36. alienbob

    The Slackware Store was suffering from a sort of DDoS, but according to Pat that has been resolved now.

    Eric

  37. Henry

    No, the Store do not is available right now. I wait to the night and see…

    Thanks Eric!

    Thanks for this and for your works with the packages, SlackBuilds, configs, etc…

  38. Didier Spaier

    When I click on the page http://store.slackware.com I am redirected to http://www.freebsdmall.com/
    Something should be wrong ???

  39. Willy Sudiarto Raharjo

    It loads fine here

  40. praisebob

    Thanks for all the work you and pat are doing for us users.
    I wanted to donate a little bit (not much because i am poor lol)

    But everywhere I see only paypal and stuff, and if I donate
    a small amount they probably take a fee on top of it – eek.

    Have you guys heard about bitcoin? It is a opensource p2p cryptographic currency. Checkout weusecoins.com or the
    project site which is bitcoin.org

    If you or pat post a bitcoin address I would surely send some coins
    your way.

  41. p431i7o

    Thanks for all the hard work, I was one of these that have not used your own ktown packages, but it was just to no risk my current instalation, but I really appreciate your work.
    Today I just run my slackpkg update and then upgrade-all

    and, I know, I forget to run the install-new

    but when things went wrong, a quick look over LQ, I just pick the answer, fortunately I have installed also XFCE so I could just change my default desktop enviroment (one thing that I love from Slackware are the flavors of Desktop Enviroment).

    So, again, thanks Eric !! and everyone on the Slackware team!

    BTW, Slackware 13.37 will be a year old next 27th of april!!

  42. Yabazakra

    pager problem with kde 4.8.2 & compiz, keeps forgetting row setting can’t force 2, reverts to 0 on reboot any fix for this?

  43. Marcelo

    Eric, KDE 4.8.2 seems to introduce a problem, at least to me.

    The default mount options doesn’t include the option “flush”, so when I copy big files to a pen-drive for example, it will just copy them when the device is unmounted, which takes a while…

    If I umount the device manually, it times out and I never know if it has finished transfering the files, resulting in corrupted files…

    There’s a ugly workaround that is list all mount devices in the /etc/fstab , but I would really like a real solution…

    The https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=273792 is related.

  44. Willy Sudiarto Raharjo

    @Marcelo:
    I always mount/umount flash disk manually using a simple alias on my system

    whenever i wanted to eject, i always flush the cache by issuing sync command. That way, i’m sure that the changes has been committed to the disk and updates the superblock πŸ™‚

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