Alien Pastures

My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

Day: January 22, 2016

KDE 5_16.01 for slackware-current

January 22, 2016 / / 20 Comments

plasma5_startup I had big issues with my Internet connectivity this past week, when my internet cable modem suddenly died. I was able to use a backup connection on my telephony modem but the 1 Mbit/sec up- and download offered by that outlet was not sufficient for the amounts of data I had to upload. So, I was very happy to get a new modem yesterday evening and found that my 200/20 Mbit/sec connection was restored overnight. That allowed me to upload the latest ‘ktown’ package set to the mirror server. KDE 5_16.01 is now available for your enjoyment. These packages are based on the latest KDE releases: Frameworks 5.18.0, Plasma 5.5.3 and Applications 15.12.1.

What’s new in KDE 5_16.01?

  • Frameworks 5.18.0 is an enhancement release. See https://www.kde.org/announcements/kde-frameworks-5.18.0.php .
    • The ‘bluez-qt’ package is now finally being built since Slackware switched to BlueZ 5.
    • Bug 356529 was resolved: the very visible “I18N_PLURAL_ARGUMENT_MISSING” error in various places.
  • Plasma 5.5.3 keeps polishing the 5.5 series. See https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.5.3.php .
    • Now that Slackware contains PulseAudio, I was able to compile and add the ‘plasma-pa’ package which adds a PulseAudio based volume control Plasmoid for your system tray.
    • Slackware also moved to BlueZ 5 (which caused a requirement for PulseAudio in order to fix the broken BlueTooth audio)  and therefore another new package is available in the Plasma set: ‘bluedevil’.
    • I have added back the previously removed ‘kde-wallpapers’ and ‘oxygen-fonts’ packages to the “plasma-exta” section  (used to be part of Applications) because Plasma 5 was left with just a single ugly wallpaper otherwise and there was a user request for the fonts.
    • Let me also mention again this noteworthy improvement of Plasma 5.5 because some people missed it the previous time:
      • Support for legacy Xembed protocol is back – the blueman and HP systray icons are again visible without having to jump through hoops. The package “xembed-sni-proxy” which I added a few releases earlier, is gone from my repository because its code is now part of Plasma itself. Don’t forget to run “removepkg xembed-sni-proxy“!
  • The Applications 15.12,1 is a bugfix release. For a full list of changes to applications, read this page.
    • After the previous KDE 5_15.12 the overlooked (and therefore missing) ‘baloo5-widgets’ package was added.

Some things to tell about the Plasma 5 dependencies.

  • I upgraded OpenAL again, and rebuilt qt5 and phonon against Slackware’s PulseAudio.
  • There’s a SlackBuild script but no package for “unar” in the repository. Unar is an un-archiver originating from Mac OS-X. The Ark package in KDE Applications can use ‘unar’ to provide RAR view/extraction support, even for the latest RAR formats, but ‘unar’ depends in turn on two pieces of software I did not want to add yet; ‘gnustep-base’ and ‘gnustep-make’. If you really want to have ‘unar’ then download the SBo scripts for these gnustep utilities, build your own packages and then build ‘unar’. Let me know how that went and how big the gnustep packages are.

If you want to test the new release in a Live environment, you need to wait just a little bit longer. I am preparing ISO images for the new 0.4.0 (Beta4) release of my Slackware Live Edition. These ISOs are based on the latest Slackware64-current and the PLASMA5 variant contains my KDE-5_16.01 packages. I hope to be able to upload the ISOs during the weekend.

Installing or upgrading Frameworks 5, Plasma 5 and Applications

You can skip the remainder of the article if you already have my Plasma 5 installed and are familiar with the upgrade process. Otherwise, stay with me and read the rest.

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”, “kdepim”, “plasma”, “plasma-extra”, “applications” and “telepathy”.

Upgrading to this KDE 5 is not difficult, especially if you already are running KDE 5_15.12. You will have to remove old KDE 4 packages manually. If you do not have KDE 4 installed at all, you will have to install some of Slackware’s own KDE 4 packages manually.

Note:

If you are using slackpkg+, have already moved to KDE 5_15.12 and are adventurous, you can try upgrading using the following set of commands. This should “mostly” work but you still need to check the package lists displayed by slackpkg to verify that you are upgrading all the right packages. Feel free to send me improved instructions if needed. In below example I am assuming that you tagged my KDE 5 repository with the name “ktown_testing” in the configuration file “/etc/slackpkg/slackpkgplus.conf“):
# 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)
# removepkg xembed-sni-proxy ktux amor kde-base-artwork kde-wallpapers kdeartwork (they don’t exist in the repo anymore)
# slackpkg upgrade-all (upgrade the remaining dependencies that were part of my repo previously)

And doublecheck that you have not inadvertently blacklisted my packages in “/etc/slackpkg/blacklist“! Check for the existence of a line in that blacklist file that looks like “[0-9]+alien” and remove it if you find it!

Recommended reading material

There have been several posts now about KDE 5 for Slackware-current. All of them contain useful information, tips and gotchas that I do not want to repeat here, but if you want to read them, here they are: http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/tag/kde5/

A note on Frameworks

The KDE Frameworks are extensions on top of Qt 5.x and their usability is not limited to the KDE Software Collection. There are other projects such as LXQT which rely (in part) on the KDE Frameworks, and if you are looking for a proper Frameworks repository which is compatible with Slackware package managers such as slackpkg+, then you can use these URL’s to assure yourself of the latest Frameworks packages for Slackware-current (indeed, this is a sub-tree of my KDE 5 “testing” repository):

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

OpenJDK updated to 7u95_b00

January 22, 2016 / / 15 Comments

icedteaVersion 2.6.4 of IcedTea was released last week. The IcedTea “build harness” for OpenJDK will compile OpenJDK 7 “Update 95 Build 00“. In Slackware terminology: here is the package openjdk-7u95_b00. The release synchronizes with Oracle’s January 2016 updates to OpenJDK. Read more about the release on the blog of release maintainer Andrew Hughes.

This is the list of security fixes and CVE‘s which have been addressed and fixed in this release.

Note about usage:

Remember that I release packages for the JRE (runtime environment) and the JDK (development kit) simultaneously, but you only need to install one of the two. The JRE is sufficient if you only want to run Java programs (including Java web plugins). Only in case where you’d want to develop Java programs and need a Java compiler, you are in need of the JDK package.

The Java package (openjre as well as openjdk) has one dependency: rhino provides JavaScript support for OpenJDK.

Optionally: If you want to use Java in a web browser then you’ll have to install my icedtea-web package too. While Oracle’s JDK contains a browser plugin, that one is closed-source and therefore Icedtea offers an open source variant which does a decent job. Note that icedtea-web is a NPAPI plugin – this prevents use of Java in Chrome & Chromium because those browsers only support PPAPI plugins, but you’ll be OK with all Mozilla [-compatible] browsers of course.

Download locations:

Have fun! Eric

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