Alien Pastures

My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

Month: October 2012 (Page 2 of 2)

LibreOffice 3.6.1 packages (a bit overdue)

October 3, 2012 / / 19 Comments

Phew! Slackware 14 is born, and I think I should use the quiet post-release moments to create some packages specifically for the new version. Most of the packages I have for Slackware 13.37 will of course “just work” on Slackware 14 as well. During the Release Candidate phase, I already built and uploaded several Slackware 14-specific packages for which the “13.37 version” had issues. If you think I missed a package which is important to you, and needs to be built for Slackware 14 ASAP, please leave a message in the comments section below!

 

Not every package will be built for Slackware 14 from now on. In particular, the package which consumes the most resources and time during compilation – LibreOffice – will be built on Slackware 13.37 as long as the package also works on Slackware 14. The reason for that is: time and availability. If I build LibreOffice for 32-bit and 64-bit Slackware, that takes me two full days (I compile my packages inside QEMU virtual machines which makes the process a bit slower). It makes no sense to also try and compile the same packages for a second Slackware release. I do have a life, you know!

At the end of august, LibreOffice 3.6.1 was released, the first stabilization update in the 3.6 series. I have waited a bit with starting on the 3.6 series, and prefered to offer the latest in the 3.5 series instead a while ago.I feel more confident now with this “.1” release and decided to build some packages for it. The first thing which caught my eye when upgrading and starting libreoffice was the new green splash screen. The “about” box received an update too:

 

Of course, there have been many more enhancements since 3.5.x. If you are curious, check out this page. A great deal of this new functionality is geared toward making LibreOffice more suited as a contender to the non-free Microsoft Office suite. And because the developers keep improving on the interoperability by working on the import and export filters for the MS Office file formats, it is becoming more attractive for organizations to consider a migration away from the proprietary world of “vendor lock-in”. The aforementioned page lists a few cases of such migrations. Well worth considering in these economically challenging times!

Back to Slackware, and the new packages. Again, these new LibreOffice 3.6.1 packages are built on Slackware 13.37 but can be installed on Slackware 14 as well. I did not find any issues on my Slackware 14 desktop yet after I installed it there. You will find the package and source downloads at the usual locations (mirrors will catch up in the next 24 hours):

Be more productive than ever! Eric

 

KDE Software Compilation 4.9.2

October 2, 2012 / / 19 Comments

In their usual unperturbed way, the KDE developers team released the next installment in the KDE Software Compilation 4.9.

This second update, version 4.9.2, offers improved stability in many applications, among which the Kontact suite, Dolphin and Plasma. Check out the release announcement or the release notes for more in-depth information.

If you are running Slackware 14 (just released this weekend) you can get your KDE 4.9.2 packages or better, find a mirror with better download speeds – I have listed them a bit further down.

Don’t try these packages with Slackware 13.37, lots of things will not work properly. Recompiling from source using my KDE.SlackBuild framework would be preferable. Better even, use the opportunity and upgrade to Slackware 14 !

The upgrade from Slackware’s KDE 4.8.5 to the new KDE 4.9.2 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 five updated dependencies compared to Slackware’s own KDE 4.8.5: akonadi, qt, shared-desktop-ontologies, soprano, virtuoso-ose. The qt package is basically the same as Slackware 14, with one exception: I applied a patch which disables TLS compression by default which should safeguard against the “CRIME” SSL attack.
  • 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 4.9.2 packages are available for download from my “ktown” repository and several mirrors (taper is up-to-date, the rest will get updated within 24 hours):

And to conclude this post…

A new version of LibreOffice has been available for several weeks now. I promised to have a look at the 3.6 series after Slackware 14 would have been released. Well, I am currently compiling packages for LibreOffice 3.6.1 on Slackware 13.37 in an attempt to reach as many people as possible (running Slackware 13.37 as well as 14). Keep your eyes open for my next post!

Have fun! Eric

 

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