It’s that time again! Nicely following the KDE release schedule, a series of tarballs was uploaded to the KDE ftp server, containing the first release candidate of what will become KDE Software Compilation 4.6.
The Slackware packages I created and had silently uploaded to my server, have already been noticed… but anyway, better late than never, so here is my official announcement:
Your gift for Christmas: grab Slackware packages for KDE 4.6.RC1 (4.5.90 is the official version) here: http://alien.slackbook.org/ktown/4.5.90/ or on any of my mirrors (http://taper.alienbase.nl/mirrors/alien-kde/4.5.90/ or http://repo.ukdw.ac.id/alien-kde/4.5.90/). These packages are not fit for Slackware 13.1. You have to be running an up-to-date Slackware-current! This is still beta software, use at your own risk, yada yada.
Follow the instructions in the accompanying README for installing these packages, or upgrading from an earlier release.
Lots of bugs will certainly have been squashed, although I have not experienced all that many. You can read my previous article on KDE 4.6 beta here: http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/starting-with-kde-4-6. KDE no longer needs HAL, but if you disable it, the k3b CD-writing software will complain about not being able to find an optical drive. Still some work to be done for these guys. If you don’t care for k3b I invite you to disable HAL (chmod -x /etc/rc.d/rc.hald) like I did, and see how that works out.
What’s important to know is the announcement by the PIM team (read the story) that the 4.6 version of kdepim which should accompany the official release of KDE 4.6 has been delayed. At the time when KDE 4.6 is released, there will be an update to the PIM 4.4.x series which is compatible with KDE 4.6 (look out for kdepim 4.4.9, sources are already available I think, and I will certainly package them along with the final KDE 4.6).
In the meantime, I ship packages for the third beta of kdepim 4.6 along with KDE 4.5.90. Please share your thoughts on requiring PIM version 4.6beta3 or 4.4.9 with KDE 4.6. One of the two will have to go into some sort of “testing” directory.
Have fun, Eric
PS: rsync is available as always:
- rsync://alien.slackbook.org/alien-kde/
- rsync://taper.alienbase.nl/mirrors/alien-kde/
- rsync://repo.ukdw.ac.id/alien-kde/
Thanks. I will test this packages on my laptop. What is the recommended testing environment? Start with a new .kde or using the old one from 4.6 Beta 2?
Thanks Eric!
Thanks, Eric! Now powermanagement works as it should. I removed hal totaly from my system. No issues so far. Good job!
@Willy
I just upgraded my packages from the previous beta to this release candidate. I did not have to remove any old configuration files, it all just kept working.
Eric
I removed hal and everything is running smoothly. I noticed one little glitch with the mplayer and vlc phonon backend provided by Eric: whenever I selected one of them, all sound systems play twice. The issue disappears when I revert back to Xine phonon backend.
@Eric: thanks, i also used the same configuration files and it worked just fine, although i also experienced the same problem with Escaflown, i heard the ringing tone twice everytime i logged in and logged out
Another issue: I couldn’t add any icon to the desktop. When I try to add them, they don’t show up.
@escaflown –
I can add program icons to the desktop by dragging them out of the Kickoff menu onto the desktop. The widgets have to be unlocked for this to be possible. But I can not add any icon to the desktop by right-clicking on the program in the Kicker menu and selecting “Add to desktop”. This is definitely a bug. Please open a KDE bug report on http://bugs.kde.org/ if it is not already there.
Eric
You’re right Eric: the program icons show up when I use the drag method.
I opened a KDE bug report for the issue.
Hi, Eric.
Do you know something about udisks on mounting pendrives and windows partitions? Thing is that I do not have permissions to write data to it, it’s got permission 700 for user, but can’t write anything to it.
Thanks,
Rodrigo.
@Rodrigo –
I do not have HAL running anymore, and I can mount a USB stick just fine in my KDE 4.6.rc1,
After it has been mounted (using KDE’s device notifier in the systray) I can write data to the USB stick without problems.
Eric
Hi again, Eric. Thanks for your reply.
Somehow, mine did not work. I had to follow as ponce suggested on LQ, in here: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/kde-4-6rc1-two-questions-852259/ – and now I have everything in place.
Thank you,
Rodrigo.
Unfortunately hal is still needed for most burning programs (like nerolinux which im using).
Wondering how can i disable Kresource migration, it is trying migrate something every time i start system, its annoying.
And after a few minutes i get Strigi error (i got it disabled).
But except those few problems everything is working well.
@Rodrigo –
Dit you mean you originally wanted to mount your Windows partition on the harddisk using udisks? I think that the solution of adding a line to /etc/fstab is cleaner, because it allows for more control about who can access that partition’s files.
Nevertheless, I think we should perhaps have a UDEV rule to force “ntfs-3g” instead of plain “ntfs” filesystem type when auto-mounting a NTFS partition, like shown in http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=304765#c9
Eric
@amigib –
Indeed, it will take some more time until the rest of the Linux world migrates away from HAL to udisks. That is why the next Slackware should not (and will not) ship KDE 4.6. It is too early for that.
The next major release of XFCE will also migrate away from HAL to udisks, and probably that release will not be too far away from KDE 4.6 release (and of january 2011). With all major desktop environment abandoning HAL, other developers will have to follow their lead or people will stop using their programs.
I think that is typical of current-day development in Linux land – too many low-level software is being discarded, and re-developed in an incompatible way. The worst example is of course, HAL and the awkward way in which that was dumped for DeviceKit and then again with some incompatible changes we had that move to udisks, upower, and their buddies ConsoleKit and PolicyKit.
It is as if some people have forgotten (or never learnt) to sit down at a drawing board and properly draft specifications for what they are about to develop.
As for your akonadi and strigi errors and continuous migrations, I think you have a problem with the configuration of Akonadi. Did you read my comments on Akonadi in the other article I wrote about KDE 4.6? Some of it may apply to your situation.
Eric
@Eric,
I have disabled HAL since I upgraded to your packages, and by doing so, UDisks is responsible for mounting devices when on Dolphin, for example. But without that UDEV rule, though I can mount the drive, I cannot write to it, and that was the issue. Sorry if I did not make myself clear. Adding that rule solves the problem easily. 🙂
Thanks,
Rodrigo.
Note for those who disable HAL:
If you put an optical disk into your CD or DVD drive and then start k3b, the optical device will be detected by k3b. Same if you load an optical disk after k3b was started and it complained about a missing optical device: go to “Settings > Configure K3b > Devices > Refresh” and the device will be found.
Eric
I have removed ~/.kde, ~/.local/share/akonadi and ~/.config/akonadi and still no success, but i can live with that until next version, only month left to stable release.
Could someone post the output of ” xlsclients | less” for a point of comparison ? I noticed that in mine, most of the kde apps have multiple instances. For example kded4, kwin, kactivitymanagerd,knotify4, kaccess, krunner, …
This is an excerpt of mine:
”
Freemind64 kwin
Freemind64 kded4
Freemind64 kded4
Freemind64 /usr/bin/kglobalaccel
Freemind64 /usr/bin/kglobalaccel
Freemind64 ksmserver
Freemind64 ksmserver
Freemind64 kwin
Freemind64 kwin
Freemind64 /usr/bin/kactivitymanagerd
Freemind64 /usr/bin/kactivitymanagerd
Freemind64 kwin
Freemind64 /usr/bin/knotify4
Freemind64 /usr/bin/knotify4
Freemind64 /usr/bin/plasma-desktop
Freemind64 /usr/bin/plasma-desktop
Freemind64 /usr/bin/plasma-desktop
Freemind64 /usr/bin/plasma-desktop
Freemind64 /usr/bin/plasma-desktop
Freemind64 /usr/bin/plasma-desktop
Freemind64 /usr/bin/plasma-desktop
Freemind64 /usr/bin/kuiserver
Freemind64 /usr/bin/kuiserver
Freemind64 /usr/bin/plasma-desktop
Freemind64 /usr/bin/plasma-desktop
Freemind64 /usr/bin/plasma-desktop
Freemind64 /usr/bin/plasma-desktop
Freemind64 /usr/bin/plasma-desktop
Freemind64 /usr/bin/plasma-desktop
Freemind64 /usr/bin/plasma-desktop
Freemind64 /usr/bin/plasma-desktop
Freemind64 /usr/bin/plasma-desktop
Freemind64 /usr/bin/plasma-desktop
Freemind64 /usr/bin/plasma-desktop
Freemind64 /usr/bin/plasma-desktop
Freemind64 /usr/bin/plasma-desktop
Freemind64 /usr/bin/plasma-desktop
Freemind64 /usr/bin/plasma-desktop
Freemind64 /usr/bin/kaccess
Freemind64 /usr/bin/kaccess
Freemind64 /usr/bin/krunner
Freemind64 /usr/bin/krunner
“
@escaflown –
Certainly the plasma desktop opens a lot of client connections to the X server:
$ xlsclients | grep plasma-desktop | wc -l
121
$ xlsclients |wc -l
193
Eric
@Eric: Thanks!
$ xlsclients | grep plasma-desktop | wc -l
36
$ xlsclients | wc -l
108
As i know, limit for all connections in Xorg is 255 so it should be enough, for now
A workaround for the k3b problem:
1) start hald:
root@tiamat:~# sh /etc/rc.d/rc.hald start
2) run k3b setting the SOLID_HAL_LEGACY env var:
root@tiamat:~# SOLID_HAL_LEGACY=1 k3b
Hal will be enabled for that single app.
More info: http://websvn.kde.org/?view=revision&revision=1206281
I added an updated k3b package (with the HAL dependency removed and a “100%” crash bug fixed) but unfortunately k3b still can not find an optical drive unless there is an actual medium inside.
I also updated the kdebindings package a few days back to support the new version of perl which was added to slackware-current.
And soon, there will be an all-new KDE 4.6-rc2 …
Eric