Slackware and Plasma5… what will 2020 bring?
For starters, Pat just added Kerberos to Slackware-current! That is the first (small but significant) step towards a big change in Slackware which will unfold over the coming period. And at the end of that, I expect that Plasma5 gets folded into the distro as well. Here’s hoping!
In any case, I just released KDE-5_20.01 and the packages are available for download from my ‘ktown‘ repository. As always, these packages are meant to be installed on a full installation of Slackware-current which has had its KDE4 removed first. These packages will not work on Slackware 14.2.
What’s new in the January 2020 release
This month’s KDE Plasma5 for Slackware contains the KDE Frameworks 5.66.0, Plasma 5.17.5 and Applications 19.12.1. All this on top of Qt 5.13.2.
Deps:
This month’s updates to the ‘deps’ are: qt5 (where I patched two vulnerabilities) and noto-cjk-font-ttf where I also fixed a file permission issue which prevented the font from ever being found… and alongside the Sans fonts I added a Serif font collection as well.
Frameworks:
Frameworks 5.66.0 is an incremental stability release, see: https://www.kde.org/announcements/kde-frameworks-5.66.0.php.
Plasma:
Plasma 5.17.5 is a an incremental bug-fix release, and the last in the 5.17 cycle of the KDE desktop environment. Next release (5.18) will get Long Term Support (aka it’ll be a LTS release). See https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.17.5.php
Plasma-extra;
In plasma-extra I updated sddm-qt5.
Applications;
Applications 19.12.1 is a stability and bugfix update for the 19.12 cycle. Remember that I still call this ‘Applications‘ but KDE folk prefer the new name ‘Releases‘. See https://kde.org/announcements/releases/19.12.1/
Applications-extra:
In applications-extra I updated alkimia, kmymoney, kstars and kdevelop, kdev-php, kdev-python. I also added a new package: ktimetracker, which was finally ported over to KF5.
Telepathy:
KDE Telepathy is no longer part of my ‘ktown’ distribution of KDE Plasma5.
Where to get it
Download the KDE-5_20.01 from the usual location at https://slackware.nl/alien-kde/current/latest/ or one of its mirrors like http://slackware.uk/people/alien-kde/current/latest/ .
Check out the README file in the root of the repository for detailed installation or upgrade instructions.
Development of Plasma5 is tracked in git: https://git.slackware.nl/ktown/ .
A new Plasma5 Live ISO is available at https://slackware.nl/slackware-live/latest/ (rsync://slackware.nl/mirrors/slackware-live/latest/) with user/pass being “live/live” as always. Also check out the bonus material on the site: several addon squashfs modules with lots of my other packages. If you are unsure about how to handle these addons, read my recent article on Slackware Live.
Have fun! Eric
Nice. If Plasma goes to current, would this be one less thing for you to maintain, or would you still be handling it?
I would still maintain a ktown repository for testing all the new stuff. I doubt that Pat is going to go with the same monthly cycle as I do – it would be too time-consuming.
Also, I am pretty sure that not all of my packages are going to be adopted. The usability packages (the speech stuff, and apllications-extra) may never be part of Slackware and then you can keep getting those from me.
Thank you Eric!
Downloading now
So Pat seems to have decided to go for PAM now (at least this is the only plausible assumption to make).
A new directory, /alkimia5, has shown up in KDE-5_20.01 from the alkimia-8.0.3 package. Did my install go a little wonky or is that expected in the / directory?
Thanks for ktown Eric!
Hi Eric,
Thanks for the new KDE 5 version. Upgrade went smoothly with slackpkg. Noto CJK fonts are OK.
Regarding chuck56 previous comment on alkimia, I can confirm that alkimia 8.0.2 package put the financequote.pl script into directory /usr/share/alkimia5/misc while alkimia 8.0.3 package put the script in /alkimia5/misc.
This may have to do with the following part of src/CMakeLists.txt in the source file. For KF5, the comment is ??? Variable APPDATA_INSTALL_DIR seems to be empty for KF5.
Sorry I cannot help further as I don’t have adequate developer skills.
# install perl script in expected location of build dir
# KDE4: set KDEHOME to build dir
# KF5: ???
make_directory(${FQ_LOCAL_INSTALL_PATH})
configure_file(${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/financequote.pl ${FQ_LOCAL_INSTALL_PATH}/financequote.pl IMMEDIATE COPYONLY)
install(PROGRAMS financequote.pl
DESTINATION ${APPDATA_INSTALL_DIR}/alkimia${ALKIMIA_PATH_SUFFIX}/misc
)
Hi gegechris99
I fixed this omission with a rebuild of the alkimia package, thanks.
Thanks for quick correction.
It seems that the root cause is that variable SHARE_INSTALL_DIR in not set in CMakeLists.txt file in source root directory when not building QT4 (i.e. BUILD_QT4=false).
Adding the following code at line 124 (at the end of the ELSE statement) fixes the issue.
—
if(NOT SHARE_INSTALL_DIR)
set(SHARE_INSTALL_DIR ${DATA_INSTALL_DIR})
endif()
—
It looks like an upstream issue as they do this check only if BUILD_QT4=True.
Hi Eric,
Thanks for the update. I installed the December version of your live ISO image, and I have kept it updated, and also added many 3rd party programs, some from Slackbuilds. Initally I used Plasma for my desktop, but it made my screen flicker often, and KDE’s menu system annoyed me a bit, so I switched to XFCE, and will stay with it.
This brings me to my question: Just to make things simple, should I update/upgrade all, including the KDE / Plasma stuff, even if I’ll never use it, or would it make sense to exclude KDE from the update? Which method is less likely to break my system, considering the many third party programs I have installed?
Thanks,
Karl
Karl, either you remove the KDE Plasma5 packages completely, or else you have to keep them up-to-date when new packages are released.
The usual rsync address I have been using for downloads no longer works. Thanks
Unless you mention that particular rsync URI I cannot help you Tom.
My bad Eric. In the meantime I switched over from .nl to .uk mirror which is much faster from my location. Thanks for the new update. Works a treat here.
All, seem to be work correctly here, Eric 😉
just the alkimia package have folder ‘alkimia’ at /,
one suggestion is, update libsass and sassc in dep to 3.6.1, because Robby, has this new version in its XFCE packages.
Plasma 5.18, to be released in the next month, will be LTS. Together with the addition of Kerberos to -current, this could be “the chance” 🙂
Thanks Eric,
Only one problem. I am the only user, and I have it set up to automatically log me in with no password. That no longer works. Don’t have to select the user, but I have to enter the password. I select login automatically and enter the root password, but it does not work and the selection is cleared when I check again. Can’t find the old login manager.
Oh snap…..I found it under the advanced tab of the sddm login screen……..
Everyhing seems to work fine here
Thanks again Eric!
First off, thanks for your continuous hard work.
Do you have any plans to upgrade qBittorrent to 4.2.1?
The qbittorrent question is not on-topic here. But, I can upgrade it, sure.
I’m sorry then, much appreciated! 😉
Hi Eric,
Thanks for the new KDE 5 version.
Seems alkimia-8.0.3-x86_64-1alien package create /alkimia5 directory in root “/”:
root@lotar:/# find /alkimia5/
/alkimia5/
/alkimia5/misc
/alkimia5/misc/financequote.pl
root@lotar:/# grep financequote /var/log/packages/*
/var/log/packages/alkimia-8.0.3-x86_64-1alien:alkimia5/misc/financequote.pl
/var/log/packages/alkimia-8.0.3-x86_64-1alien:usr/include/alkimia/Qt5/alkimia/alkfinancequoteprocess.h
/var/log/packages/kmymoney-5.0.8-x86_64-1alien:usr/share/kmymoney/misc/financequote.pl
root@lotar:/# ls -l /var/log/packages/alkimia-8.0.3-x86_64-1alien
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 10849 Jan 22 19:02 /var/log/packages/alkimia-8.0.3-x86_64-1alien
Giuseppe, you are repeating what was already covered in the first few comments on this page…
Also, you did not upgrade to the latest packages which would have applied the fixed alkimia package on your computer.
Hello Eric, thanks for this new version of Plasma!
I noticed another 2 outdated packages in your alienbob repository compared to ktown, brotli and qt5:
installed ktown qt5-5.13.2-x86_64-2alien
uninstalled(masked) alienbob qt5-5.13.2-x86_64-1alien
installed ktown brotli-1.0.7-x86_64-2alien
uninstalled(masked) alienbob brotli-1.0.7-x86_64-1alien
Cheers!
Thanks, I will have to add these updated ktown packages to the regular repository.
Hallo Eric,
thanks for all the efforts you put in manteining “ktown”.
Just a suggest, every time I upgrade sddm-qt5 I’ve to re-modify the “Xsetup” script (to add italian keyboard layout), is it possible to add a “.new” file to avoid the overwriting or “slackpkg new-config” wouldn’t look for that directory?
Hi Michelino,
Good idea, I will implement that.
Thank you!
Hi Eric,
Got bitten by this poppler bug, which causes okular to crash every time it opens a PDF signed (validly) in a certain way:
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/poppler/poppler/issues/766
The option would be to update poppler or, alternatively, to patch it with this patch:
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/poppler/poppler/commit/eaeac5c7dba6f53acef3f0be6b226facecfc5f28.diff
Could you look into the matter, please? Thanks in advance!
Eduardo, this patch you are referring to fails to apply to the -current poppler-0.68 source – the code changed too much.
I will not update poppler unless it is updated in Slackware-current itself.
Please post your request in the appropriate LQ thread: https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/requests-for-current-14-2-15-0-a-4175620463/
Thanks Eric. Will do that.
Instead of using ‘alpha’ version of qtwebkit, you can use the stable one:
https://download.qt.io/snapshots/ci/qtwebkit/5.212/1568196124/src/submodules/qtwebkit-opensource-src-5.212.tar.xz
I’ve test it using your SlackBuild and it compiles without error.
As suggested by the developer: https://github.com/qtwebkit/qtwebkit/issues/905
If you look carefully at the URL you provided and the one in https://github.com/qtwebkit/qtwebkit/issues/905#issuecomment-531542683 you’ll notice that this is just a git snapshot and not at all a stable release.
So, I’ll stick with what was officially released. Even though it is called “alpha3”.
There’s not many ‘ktown’ packages relying on qt5-webkit anyway, most have moved to qt5-webengine instead (part of the qt5 package). I think calligra and kdenlive can use it optionally. Umbrello, alkimia and libkgeomap require it.
Hi Eric.
Regarding my liveslack USB stick I used with setup2hd script:
How “live modules from /liveslak/addons” can be installed AFTER setup2hd script was executed.
I got a post install notification with instructions but unfortunately I rebooted my machine before “unsquashing” these modules.
Thanks in advance for your help and for this update.
Francisco
Hi Francisco,
From https://git.slackware.nl/liveslak/tree/setup2hd.tpl?h=1.3.4#n261 (and replacing some placeholders with actual text):
After finishing system configuration and before rebooting, you can add any further Live modules from /liveslak/addons/ and /liveslak/optional/ to your hard drive, using a command similar to this:
# unsquashfs -f -dest /setup2hd /mnt/livemedia/liveslak/addons/mymodule.sxz
If you have already rebooted then that command may not play well with your running OS, even if you replace “/setup2hd” where liveslak mounted your harddisk with the root of your filesystem “/”
So I suggest you reboot the Live USB stick, mount your hard disk partition(s) on /setup2hd (you need to create that directory first and then run:
# unsquashfs -f -dest /setup2hd /mnt/livemedia/liveslak/addons/mymodule.sxz
Hi Eric, thanks for your suggestion.
Maybe I did something wrong.
1. I booted live USB stick.
2. Then as root: #mkdir -p /setup2hd
3. Then as root #mount /dev/nvme0n1p13 /setup2hd
P13 is my slackware root partition used for my previous setup2hd script execution
3. Then as root: #unsquashfs -f -dest /setup2hd /mnt/livemedia/liveslak/addons/060-alien-current-x86_64.sxz
Same command for addons: 0060-alienrest-current-x86_64.sxz and 0060-daw-current-x86_64.sxz.
No errors, all ok
4. Then as root: #umount /setup2hd
#sync
5. Rebooted
6. When rebooting to be install I get:
Testing root filesystem status: read only file system
Checking root filesystem
/sbin/e2fsck : is a directory while trying to open /
7. I entered a system maintenance mode and run e2fsck -v -y /dev/nvme0n1p13
Ended on an deported a clean file system
8.. After rebooting I got the same messages from point #6.
Any suggestions.?
I am going to repeat this in another install using new liveskack iso released today.
Thanks in advance eric.
Hi Eric.
Regarding this issue:
Maybe was it my mistake if I made a “refresh iso2usb.sh -r of my liveslack USB stick without updating addon files? I did it unintentionally with and old livestack addon .txz files.
With a new release for liveslak do those addon .txz files need to be updated also? I kindly suggest for iso2usb.sh script to add functionality in order to download a copy to /addon dir those files. What about -r “refresh option”? are they updated? I have not seen the script internally.
Anyway I repeated the whole process generating a new liveslack USB stick (plasma) and moved current addon files (end of january), before I reboot liveslack.
All went fine: No problems at all with first boot, I went through addons installed apps (chrome, etc), but after I rebboted I got the same error droping me to a shell:
Testing root filesystem status: read only file system
Checking root filesystem
/sbin/e2fsck : is a directory while trying to open /
No idea what happened. Maybe another kind liveslack user can reproduce this? to make sure this is not only on my side.
By now, I am using liveslack _without addons_ I will try to install libreoffice, etc by means of slackpkg+
Thanks in advance, for your comments and help.
Best Regards.
Hi Eric,
just a couple of questions concerning your latest release.
First I noticed that there’s a “xdg-desktop-portal-kde” package that allows firefox to use the kde file picker dialog.
This package will not work as intended unless the package “xdg-desktop-portal” is installed (luckily it is available at
SBo together with its dependency “pipewire”). After installing these two firefox will use the kde file picker just fine.
Perhaps you could consider adding these two packages to the set of deps?
Secondly, a bit unrelated but still kind on the qt-kde topic, I remember some time ago you were mentioning something
about adding the qtcreator “IDE” to your set of packages. Perhaps now that some of the maintenance burden is being transferred to the main
slackware tree, you are still considering this? It’s really a nice piece of software and would complement well with the rest of the bundle.
Anyway thanks for the release, all working really well on my end.
Hi Matteo
I am not going to add new dependencies to my ‘ktown’ package set, in fact I am going to leave new releases up to Patrick Volkerding.
It’s a good thing that slackbuilds.org exists to supplement the core of Slackware with extra functionality.