Alien Pastures

My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

Month: April 2015 (Page 1 of 2)

KDE 5_15.04 for Slackware-current: back to work

April 30, 2015 / / 40 Comments

qt-kde-620x350An update to my KDE 5 packages was overdue. Ever since the “big upgrade” in Slackware-current a week ago on 21 April 2015, there have been some stability issues in the Plasma 5 desktop. The instability was caused by the version bumps of various libraries that the KDE software is depending on – you can not dynamically link to a software library that’s no longer there because it has been replaced with a library bearing a new version number. I felt I had to recompile everything just to be sure there was no hidden “breakage” left, and so I took the opportunity to wait for the newest Plasna release and present you wilth all-new packages.

My April release of KDE 5_15.04 consists of Frameworks 5.9.0, Plasma 5.3.0 and Applications 15.04.0 plus the latest updates of the KDE 4 Long Term Support (LTS) packages kdelibs, kdepimlibs, kdepim, kdepim-runtime and kde-workplace. Also there’s been a bit of a shake-up in the “deps” directory containing the direct dependencies for this release.

About Plasma 5

Slackware-current will stick 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 fairly 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 4.14.3.

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). The KDE 5 matures with every release of its components. In particular, the new Plasma 5.3.0 is a “new features” release working its way towards full Wayland support (no, we do not use that yet, and X.Org is also fully supported). And the April ’15 release of the KDE Applications brings the number of applications that have been ported to KF5 (KDE Frameworks 5) to a grand total of 72.

New to the Applications starting with 15.04 is KDE Telepathy (an Instant Messaging & Voice Over IP client on top of the telepathy communications framework) and Kdenlive, the non-linear video editor. BOth are filling a void in the KDE desktop that has existed for many years. I have to tell you that I have not yet built packages for them, but I will look at them for a future iteration. It would only have delayed the release of my packages at this moment.

Remember, 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).

What’s new in KDE 5_15.04?

The highlights of this 5_15.04 March release are:

  • KDE Frameworks have been updated to 5.9.0 (includes a new Framework: ModemManagerQt which is the former libmm-qt5 which has been promoted from Plasma to Frameworks and renamed)
  • KDE Plasma has been updated to 5.3.0 (new features release)
  • KDE Applications have been updated to 15.04.0 (increasing the number of KF5 ports to 72)
  • KDE Extragear has been emptied: all the extragear packages are now available in slackware-current itself. Report any breakage that you encounter!!
  • The “deps” directory for this release contains updates to stock Slackware packages: PyQt, eigen2, phonon, phonon-gstreamer, sip, xapian-core, and there’s three new “deps” packages as well since my previous release: PyQt5, cfitsio and grantlee-qt5. You’ll notice that several other “deps” packages have been upgraded or at least rebuilt.
  • Gone from the “deps” because they are now part of Slackware-current:  LibRaw, akonadi, attica, cmake, eigen3, exiv2, grantlee, harfbuzz, libfakekey, libodfgen, librevenge, libssh, libwpd, orc, poppler, qt, shared-desktop-ontologies, soprano, strigi.

Installing or upgrading Frameworks 5, Plasma 5 and Applications

The recent mass-update in Slackware-current will make this upgrade to KDE 5_15.04 particularly difficult. Remember: “don’t drink and drive“!

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 the following set of commands. This should work but feel free to send me improved instructions if needed (assuming in this example that you tagged my KDE 5 repository “ktown_testing”):
# slackpkg update
# slackpkg install ktown_testing (to get the newly added packages from my repo)
# slackpkg install-new (to get the new official Slackware packages that were part of my deps previously)
# slackpkg upgrade ktown_testing (upgrade all existing packages to their latest versions)
# slackpkg upgrade-all (upgrade the remaining dependencies that were part of my repo previously)
# removepkg sddm-theme-breeze (gone after KDE 5_15.01)
# removepkg libmm-qt5 (gone after KDE 5_15.03)

My observations after upgrading

There were a couple of things I had to go through to get the Plasma 5 desktop into an OK state:

  • At first start, the screen remained black even though I could see the “wmsystemtray” was visible and the mouse pointer was definitely a KDE pointer. I killed the X server (Ctrl-Alt-BackSpace) and started again. This time the desktop came up as anticipated.
  • I had added Konsole  to the Favourites menu earlier. Both Konsole and Systemsettings icons in the Favourites were non-functional and missing their icons. I had to remove and re-add them.
  • KDEConnect was added to my system tray earlier. After the upgrade to KDE 5_15.04 I could see an empty square where I assume KDEConnect wanted to dock – but it did not respond to clicking. I had to right-click on the system tray and disable KDEConnect from being shown, click Apply, and then make the KDEConnect widget show again.
  • The default desktop background and the start/lock screen are quite a bit flashier. I like the changes in the theming.
  • Still no suspend/hibernate buttons. And the shutdown/reboot options will only appear if you edit the “/usr/bin/startkde” script – removing the call to “kwrapper” as explained here.

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

Multilib gcc updated to address changes in slackware-current

April 25, 2015 / / 11 Comments

slackware_multilib

In slackware-current two inter-related packages were updated yesterday: libmpc and gcc. It turns out that the update of libmpc caused a library version change. Since the gcc compiler is dynamically linked to libmpc, the gcc packages had to be recompiled in order to make it link against the new libmpc.so.3 library. Another reason for recompiling the gcc package was the missing libiberty.a file. The gcc.SlackBuild needed an additional configuration parameter to make it install into the package again.

Unfortunately that slackware-current update broke the multilib gcc packages which I have in my own repository, as several people noticed … the quick’n’dirty fix was (cd /usr/lib64 ; ln -s libmpc.so.3 libmpc.so.2).

I have recompiled the multilib gcc twice (after applying Slackware’s updates to the gcc-multilib.SlackBuild): first compilation was done with that symlink created like I just described. That resulted in the desired linkage to the new libmpc.so.3 library. Then I removed the symlink which I had created earlier and compiled the gcc packages again, just to be sure (for Slackware, this double compilation was performed as well).

The new gcc packages are now online, along with an update to the massconvert32.sh script which is part of the compat32-tools package. Also I refreshed the set of 32-bit “compat32” packages which I create from the official 32-bit Slackware package tree, because there were several updated packages in Slackware (again), and I added the libva-intel-driver-compat32 package on request.

Here is where you can find the updated packages:

If you wonder what this multilib is all about: it is needed if you want to use (binary-only) 32-bit software on 64-bit Slackware. Examples of that are Skype, Valve’s Steam Client, the WINE emulator, the Pipelight browser plugin, Citrix client etc.

Instructions on how to add or update multilib on your 64-bit Slackware can be found on the Slackware Documentation Project. Also, the slackpkg+ extension to Slackware’s own slackpkg contains the script “setupmultilib.sh” which can help you in setting up multilib properly.

 

Enjoy! Eric

PS: The nice graphic at the top was taken from the page http://gnu-linux-slackware.blogspot.nl/2013/01/switch-to-multilib-with-32-bit.html which is a Slackware related blog by Ismail.

First victim of slackware-current update 20150421 healed: LibreOffice

April 24, 2015 / / 11 Comments

Three days ago, there was a massive update to Slackware’s development tree. More than 50% of all packages in Slackware have either been rebuilt, upgraded or added new.

The result of these massive (core) library updates was to be expected: all kinds of 3rd party packages stopped working because the libraries they were dynamically linking to, have disappeared. My KDE 5 packages definitely need a big make-over, but since those packages are considered “testing” anyway, even for Slackware’s development standards, I thought it was more important to concentrate first on a package which to many is a productive tool for every day use: LibreOffice.

Three weeks ago, a version of LibreOffice was released which I had not yet packaged: LibreOffice 4.4.2. For some time now, my LibreOffice packages which I am compiling on Slackware 14.1 would not run in combination with my Ktown packages of KDE 4.14.3 for Slackware-current – thanks to the updated harfbuzz package that I shipped together with my KDE packages. Users of LibreOffice could simply downgrade to the harfbuzz package of Slackware-current and LibreOffice would work again. A simple enouigh fix without serious consequences to their KDE desktop.

And now finally, all those KDE packages, including the latest harfbuzz, have been added by Patrick to Slackware-current itself… causing permanent breakage for LibreOffice. A libreoffice package compiled on Slackware-current was the only option to fix this.

I wanted to grab that LibreOffice 4.4.2 source I just mentioned, but noticed that the mirror carried 4.4.3 “prerelease” sources too. Since we are all happily beta-testing Slackware here, I thought that I should grab these 4.4.3 sources instead. And so I did, and built packages out of them. People on LQ have already confirmed that they work like a charm.

My LibreOffice 4.4.3 packages for Slackware-current are ready for download from the usual mirror locations (mirrors should be fully sync-ed in 24 hours, taper is already uptodate):

New packages for Slackware 14.1 will arrive too, eventually. But my first priority now, is to fix KDE 5 and whatever else is no longer working… not looking forward to compiling Qt 5.4.1 for two architectures. But, I may not wait until I have compiled all packages (both 64-bit and 32-bit). If the 64-bit packages for KDE 5 are done and I am satisfied that they run without issues, I will upload those right away. I don’t think there are that many people running Slackware-current with my Plasma desktop on 32-bit.

Have fun! Eric

 

VLC 2.2.1 “Terry Pratchett”

April 16, 2015 / / 28 Comments

largeVLCThe first incremental update for the VLC 2.2 series is available now. The version 2.2.1. fixes a lot of bugs; numerous crashes (FLAC, SPC), codec issues (VP9, Atrac3, AAC), regressions and several issues (Resume, MP4 chapters, MKV over network). And it addresses some security issues too which makes this a recommended updgrade.

The source release was several days ago but the VideoLAN team has waited with the official announcement in order to double-check that this release does not contain unwelcome surprises.

In memory of Terry Pratchett, the famous writer of fantasy books who passed away recently, this release has been dedicated to him. VLC 2.2.1 has been nicknamed “Terry Pratchett (Weatherwax)“.

Where to find my latest VLC packages:

Rsync access is offered by the mirror server: rsync://taper.alienbase.nl/mirrors/people/alien/restricted_slackbuilds/vlc/ .

For BluRay support, read a previous article for hints about the aacs keys that you’ll need.

Note  I compiled the packages on Slackware 14.1 which is the cause of one bug in the package if you use it on Slackware-current: the ProjectM visualisation plugin does not work because of a libGLEW library version error. I have not yet been able to find a fix for it, but the impact is fairly minor so I let it pass.

My usual warning about patents: versions that can not only DEcode but also ENcode mp3 and aac audio can be found in my alternative repository where I keep the packages containing code that might violate stupid US software patents.

Have fun! Eric

Chromium: the answer to life, the universe and everything

April 16, 2015 / / 10 Comments

Chromium and Widevine:

chromium_iconGeeks and Sci-Fi fans, as well as otherwise properly educated people, will recognize the blog title for what it is.

Chrome 42 is released. Big jump: a major version change. Mostly changes under the hood again it seems. The Chrome binaries for this version contain a new version of the PepperFlash plugin, which I have extracted for use with the chromium browser – see my earlier blog. The packages for Slackware 14.1 and -current are available for download so that you can enjoy the latest Chromium browser (and its optional Widevine plugin) in your trustworthy Slackware environment.

In the  Chrome Releases blog you can read the announcement for Chrome/Chromium 42 to the Stable Channel (full version is 42.0.2311.90).

The new packages for my chromium and chromium-widevine-plugin packages both have version 42.0.2311.90 – indicating that they should be used together. The Widevine plugin reports itself as version “1.4.7.796” in chrome://plugins – same version as in my chromium-dev 43 package.

You don’t have to install the Widevine plugin. Chromium without Widevine plugin is a pure and open source browser, even the Widevine “adapter module” inside the Chromium package is open source. The Widevine library itself is a closed-source Content Decryption Module (CDM) which therefore is not part of the Chromium package but separately packaged (after extracting it from Google’s binary download of the Chrome browser with the same version number). You would typically want to install the plugin if you have a Netflix subscription and want to watch your movies in a Chromium browser.

Download locations:

Have fun! Next on the blog: new packages for VLC, the VideoLAN media player!

Eric

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