Alien Pastures

My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

Month: September 2010

New adobe flash player for Linux

September 16, 2010 / / 18 Comments

Yesterday, Adobe Labs released their “Preview 1” of a new flashplayer browser plugin they have been developing. As you may know, the previous test version of a Linux version of their plugin was withdrawn because it was riddled with security holes, performance issues and suffered from a bad codebase.

The newly developed code seems to be cross-platform since there are preview releases of this Flash Player ‘Square’ to be downloaded for Windows and Mac OS as well.

See http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/ for the announcement and downloadables.

So far, I am pleased with the performance and feature-set of this new plugin. Other people report that this plugin finally supports Hulu, which is a US-only video broadcast service so I can not test it from here.

I have created Slackware packages for the new flashplayer (32-bit as well as 64-bit), you can grab those at http://slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/flashplayer-plugin/ . These pacakges install the plugin into the generic mozilla plugins directory so that all mozilla-based browsers will be able to use it.

Eric

My new mirror

September 3, 2010 / / 14 Comments

I have a new mirror server.

I have configured a VPS (a virtually hosted server using QEMU) which was donated to me by a Slackware supporter who wishes to remain anonymous. The physical server is on a gigabit Internet connection, so I guess I can offer a speedy  mirror service!

In fact, the mirrors are already complete. With a re-sync of several times a day, I hope to offer an uptodate service. I am mirroring the following:

  • My own complete package repository and tools – including my “restricted SlackBuilds” area, containing things like lame, libdvdcss etc.
  • My “Ktown” repository of KDE packages – where I made available new packages for KDE 4.5.1 earlier today.
  • The full SlackBuilds.org repository.
  • Slackware-current – both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures will be mirrorred.

Plus, I am using my mirror-slackware-current.sh script to create bootable DVD ISO images of slackware-current (32-bit and 64-bit). These ISO images will be re-generated every time there is an update to the -current ChangeLog.txt.
These ISO images do not contain source code. This allows me to keep the ISO file size below 2 GB which will make it a worthwhile download for you.

And most important – mirror access:

Hammer it good!

Cheers, Eric

KDE 4.5.1 – I took the plunge

September 3, 2010 / / 16 Comments

Yes! KDE 4.5.1 Packages are now available for slackware-current (32-bit and 64-bit).

Read installation/upgrade instructions in the provided README file.

In my previous post I wrote that I was not sure who would be building new packages for KDE, but then I decided that this would be a nice test of my new build box with virtual machines. Indeed my total build time for KDE has been reduced to almost a third of the time that was needed before!

My new KDE 4.5.1 packages are only meant for  Slackware-current. They are not guaranteed to work on Slackware 13.1, so if you want KDE 4.5.1 you are encouraged to upgrade to Slackware-current!

There is one additional dependency to be installed on slackware-current: libdbusmenu-qt (which does not yet exist in Slackware).  You’ll find it in the “deps” directory.

Let me repeat this note from when 4.5.0 was released:

NOTE:

The kdepim and kdepim-runtime packages are not part of KDE 4.5.1 !!
The PIM developers decided that their applications are not yet stable enough to get included, and instead you are encouraged to keep the kdepim and kdepim-runtime packages of slackware-current (version 4.4.5).
There is one caveat: the consequence is that you will only be able to use the english localization of kdepim, because the language files are contained in the kde-l10n-* packages of the old version. You can not install that in parallel with the 4.5.1 version of your language files.

Enjoy, Eric

KDE 4.5.1 will get Slackware packages… not sure when and where

September 2, 2010 / / 3 Comments

Some of you may have noticed that source tarballs for KDE 4.5.1 are available now.

I talked to Pat about this last week, to see if this release could end up in Slackware-current. He answered that that would be a possibility. There are several other things brewing for slackware-current, so I have no real good estimate of when that will happen.

If it takes too long, I will just build packages for KDE 4.5.1 myself. There are no new dependencies and slackware-current is fully up to date with regard to support for KDE 4.5.1.

Here’s hoping!

Eric

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