My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

Tag: adobe (Page 1 of 5)

What all happened in March so far

I realize I have been a wee bit silent on the blog (not counting my replies in the comments section). This was due to private issues that drained the desire for social interactions. Nevertheless there was quite a bit of activity on the Slackware packaging front.

So, what new stuff?

First of all: yesterday, Adobe released a security update for their Flash plugins for Mozilla-compatible (NPAPI) and Chromium-compatible (PPAPI) browsers. Check the version 29.0.0.113 installation status on http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/about/. You are encouraged to upgrade.

Chromium browser was updated twice… last week I made the final release in the 64 series available and today (repositories have not been updated yet) I am updating again, to the 65 release. Version 65.0.3325.146 comes with a large list of 45 security fixes, read the release notes to get the gist. Unfortunately, this new release has cost me a full week of recompiles, day & night, all the time running into new compilation errors. It was not trivial to come up with a set of patches that eradicated all the compilation errors. I wrote a couple myself, reverted a chromium commit and borrowed from Gentoo – thanks as always for these guys’ code troubleshooting skills. The discussion on the Chromium Packagers list has given me some ideas for the next iteration of the SlackBuild script that may not require this much patching. But I am pushing this version to my repository anyway, even though I just spotted a newer version on the Google blog… released yesterday. Damn.

Pale Moon browser got an update to  27.8.1. Many improvements and fixes over the 27.7.x versions, check their release notes for the details. Despite the fact that the new Mozilla Firefox is much improved as well, and a lot speedier since Mozilla switched to the Quantum codebase, people may still prefer the older codebase of Firefox from which Pale Moon was forked.

LibreOffice 6.0.2 was released last week and I built packages for Slackware 14.2 as well as -current. Still the best office suite available. I should try to build the LibreOffice online version sometime…

When Slackware 14.2 was graced with an updated set of gcc packages in the “patches” section (gcc-5.5.0 with a series of patches related to retpoline countermeasures for the recent Meltdown/Spectre vulnerabilities) I took the opportunity not only to give the multilib repository for Slackware 14.2 a refresher to gcc-5.5.0_multilib, but I also updated the gcc5 package for slackware-current in my regular repository to that 5.5.0 release – including the retpoline patches. Remember, my gcc5 package for slackware-current contains just the C, C++ and Java compilers and has two purposes: first it re-introduces  the GCC Java compiler which was removed in gcc-7; and second, compiling Pale Moon on slackware-current can not be done with its gcc-7 compiler… you need this gcc5 package.

E-book lovers with a fondness for organizing their collection using open source software will find a new Calibre package in my repository. Calibre 3.x for Slackware 14.2 and -current depends on libxkbcommon, podofo, qt5, qt5-webkit and unrar, and for Slackware 14.2 two additional dependencies are libinput and libwacom. All of those can be obtained from my repository as well. If you are not in need of an e-book catalogue and library program, then Calibre still has its usefulness as it includes a versatile E-book reader and a powerful EPUB editor.

Last but not least: I released a new set of Plasma5 packages. The KDE-5_18.03 release of ‘ktown‘ for Slackware-current offers the latest KDE Frameworks (5.44.0), Plasma (5.12.3) and Applications (17.12.3). Read the README file for more details and for installation/upgrade instructions. If you are adventurous, check out the ‘testing‘ variant of the ktown repository as opposed to the ‘latest‘ variant. In ‘testing’ you will find Wayland support. Note that this is experimental (hence the ‘testing’ tag of course) and not fit for day-to-day production work. The ‘latest’ repository contains a stable and productive, complete, and fun to use, Plasma 5 desktop environment.
One thing I want to mention is that I have added the new Falkon browser to the applications-extra section. Falkon is the renamed Qupzilla browser, based on Qt5, and it is destined to be added to the core Applications (not sure when precisely, probably later this year) and it will take the place of the venerable Konqueror. If you are using slackpkg with the slackpkg+ extension, don’t forget to run “slackpkg install ktown” to get the new falkon package installed, because “slackpkg install-new” will not catch new packages in 3rd-party repositories like ‘ktown’.

I promise to get a new PLASMA5 variant of the Slackware Live ISO image out soon, containing all this new stuff! Stay tuned for more.

Adobe Flash security update June ’17

adobe_flash_8s600x600_2This month’s security update for the Flash Player plugin shows that the player has moved to a new major version number: 26. Time to upgrade, folks – in case you still need Flash on your computer.
The new version is 26.0.0.126 for both the PPAPI (Google Chrome and friends) and the NPAPI (Mozilla Firefox and friends) based plugins.

You can find Slackware packages for the Flash plugins in the following locations:

Have fun.

Adobe Flash security update May ’17

adobe_flash_8s600x600_2I do not post every security update in my repository, but let’s do one again for good measure and to keep y’all sharp and focused.
There’s a new security update for the Flash Player plugin which was released by Adobe earlier today. Check here what version (if any) of the Flash plugin your browser is carrying.
Version 25.0.0.171 is now available for both the PPAPI (Google Chrome and friends) and the NPAPI (Mozilla Firefox and friends) based plugins. Note that these 24.x Flashplayer releases do not support DRM or hardware acceleration as Adobe first wants to focus on security.

You can find Slackware packages for these Flash plugins in the following locations (mirrors may take up to 24 hours to sync):

Have fun.

Adobe Flash security update Feb’17

adobe_flash_8s600x600_2Adobe has released security updates for their Flash Player plugin today.
Version 24.0.0.221 is now available for both the PPAPI (Google Chrome and friends) and the NPAPI (Mozilla Firefox and friends) based plugins. Note that these 24.x Flashplayer releases do not support DRM or hardware acceleration as Adobe first wants to focus on security.

As always, Slackware packages for these Flash plugins are available for download & install in the following locations:

Have fun.

Adobe unifies its Flash plugin releases with version 24

adobe_flash_8s600x600_2Adobe has silently been developing an updated version of their NPAPI based Linux Flash Player plugin for a while.
Remember, NPAPI is the plugin protocol used in Mozilla compatible browsers, for which Adobe was supposedly not releasing any new developments. Instead they only incorporated security fixes to their stone-age version 11 of the Linux player during the past years.

And today this has changed. Adobe have released a unified Flash player plugin version across all supported platforms. Which means, there is now a version 24.0.0.186 for both the PPAPI (Google Chrome and friends) and the NPAPI (Mozilla Firefox and friends) based plugins. I guess that is good news for Firefox users on Linux.

As always, Slackware packages for these Flash plugins are available for download & install in the following locations:

Have fun with these.

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