Here’s the latest and greatest of KDE’s software collection (Frameworks, Plasma, Applications). SInce my last ‘ktown’ release, all of KDE’s sources have been renewed, and today I am making public a package set for KDE 5 aka Plasma 5 with version 5_15.03: my March ’15 release.
This incremental release of KDE 5_15.03 consists of Frameworks 5.8.0, Plasma 5.2.2 and Applications 14.12.3 plus the latest updates of the KDE 4 Long Term Support (LTS) packages kdelibs, kdepimlibs, kdepim, kdepim-runtime and kde-workplace.
About Plasma 5
Slackware-current will stick with KDE 4, and therefore the next version of Slackware will likely ship with KDE 4.14.3 plus the latest LTS updates. KDE 5, or Plasma 5 as many people like to call it, is not yet fit for the average user. It is stable, has some nice new concepts but if you are not the curious or tinkering kind, you will be better off with Slackware’s KDE 4.10.5 or my own KDE 4.14.3.
If you are curious and like to tinker, and don’t care if some functionality is temporarily missing from Plasma 5 that you were used to in KDE 4, then my Plasma 5 packages will be a nice and interesting update for your Slackware-current computer (32-bit or 64-bit).
Much has been said and written about Plasma 5, not all of that has been positive, but like with so many things, sometimes you need to look for yourself and make your own judgement instead of having to rely on others. You can also read some of my older posts on the blog that give you a good introduction about why I started this KDE 5 project for Slackware even though it may take years to see its appearance in Slackware. These posts contain notes and tips that enable you to transision to Plasma 5 more easily. Worth reading them all if you haven’t yet:
So after installing these packages there will no longer be a KDE 4 desktop on your computer. There is no choosing between KDE 4 and Plasma 5 – KDE 4 will be mostly replaced (I say “mostly” because there are still a lot of KDE 4 applications in this release – wait for Applications 15.04 to see more applications transition to Frameworks 5).
I run this Plasma 5 desktop on my laptop all the time and it’s getting better with every incremental release. Don’t worry, if you are disappointed with Plasma 5, you can always revert to one of the KDE 4 releases (Slackware’s or mine).
The highlights of this 5_15.03 March release are:
- KDE Frameworks have been updated to 5.8.0 (includes two new Frameworks: KPeople and KXmlRpcClient)
- KDE Plasma has been updated to 5.2.2 (bugfixes only)
- KDE Applications have been updated to 14.12.3 (bugfix release, no new KF5 ports)
- KDE Extragear was updated with version 2.9.1 of the Calligra office suite
- The “deps” directory for this release contains two updates to stock Slackware packages: libwpd and grantlee. These version bumps are required by the new versions of calligra and kdepim respectively
- And there’s two new “deps” packages as well: librevenge and libodfgen. Both of those are required for the new version of libwpd
Installing or upgrading Frameworks 5, Plasma 5 and Applications
As always, the accompanying README file contains full installation & upgrade instructions. Note that the packages are available in several subdirectories below “kde”, instead of directly in “kde”. This makes it easier for me to do partial updates of packages. The subdirectories are “kde4”, “kde4-extragear”, “frameworks” “plasma”, “plasma-extra” and “applications”.
Upgrading to this KDE 5 is non-trivial. You will have to remove old KDE packages manually. If you do not have KDE installed at all, you will have to install some of Slackware’s own KDE 4 packages manually. I can not guarantee that there will be no deal-breakers for you (missing functionality or persistent crashes).
Note:
If you are using slackpkg+, have already moved to KDE 5_15.01 or newer and are adventurous, you can try upgrading using these four commands, this seemed to work (assuming in this example that you tagged my KDE 5 repository “ktown_testing”):
# slackpkg update
# slackpkg install ktown_testing
# slackpkg upgrade ktown_testing
# removepkg sddm-theme-breeze
Where to get the new packages for Plasma 5
Download locations are listed below (you will find the sources in ./source/5/ and packages in /current/5/ subdirectories). If you are interested in the development of KDE 5 for Slackware, you can peek at my git repository too.
Using a mirror is preferred because you get more bandwidth from a mirror and it’s friendlier to the owners of the master server!
Have fun! Eric
Some folks asked whether the new KDE4-based packages in my KDE5 repository would also apply to KDE 4.14.3. The answer: no they probably won’t, so you better not try what happens.
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