My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

KDE 4.8.4 (last in the 4.8 series)

With a few days’ delay due to patches which were contributed at the last moment and resulting build failures (…), the KDE team announced the final increment in the 4.8 series: KDE Software Compilation 4.8.4 . I have packages for you and am announcing those for all users of Slackware-current.

The upgrade is trivial if you are already running Slackware-current. It already contains KDE 4.8.2, so the upgrade to 4.8.4 will mostly give you bug fixes and some performance enhancements. There was some talk about adding an unplanned 4.8.5 release because it will take so long until 4.9 stable but it seems that the reasons for wanting this have been addressed in the form of those patches to the 4.8.4 source tarballs which I mentioned above.

Re-compiling the 4.8.4 sources for Slackware 13.37 will not be so trivial, since you have to update quite a lot of other packages in Slackware (and install some new ones). Check out this directory with symbolic links in the slackware-current source tree. It points to all the package sources which you need if you are going to create packages for 13.37: http://slackware.osuosl.org/slackware64-current/source/kde/kde-deps-build/ . If there is enough demand, I will consider adding a “13.37 deps” directory for KDE 4.8.4 to the reposititory.

Get my KDE 4.8.4 packages for -current here:

The accompanying README file contains detailed installation/upgrade instructions.

Remember: if you rather want to try out a beta of the future 4.9 series, then I have that available too! See http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/results-of-a-few-days-of-packaging-software/ . I am running that Beta on my desktop and I have not found a single bug yet.

Have fun! Eric

33 Comments

  1. Willy Sudiarto Raharjo

    Same here. Didn’t found any problem using the first beta of KDE 4.9.

  2. Gabriel Yong

    i would like to have it in my 13.37, thank you!

  3. Etienne

    Thanks for the packages Eric 😉

    KDE works well but gwenview crash when Nepomuk is enabled…

  4. gmg

    Thanks Eric,

    but, I have also this bug:

    https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/30190

  5. cendryon

    Hi

    Thanks Eric

    Same as Etienne here.
    Morever, clicking on a picture in Dolphin crashes Dolphin, even with Nepomuk disabled 🙁

    Cheers

  6. amigib

    Nothing crashes here, maybe deleting old KDE configuration in your home directory will help?

  7. amigib

    oh, btw, i was talking about KDE 4.9

  8. alienbob

    I am running KDE 4.8.4 on this laptop I am typing on right now. And indeed, gwenview crashes whenever I start it. And clicking a picture in dolphin (which launches gwenview) did not just crash gwenview, it took the whole desktop with it so that I had to Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to the console.
    The backtrace contained enough useful info that KDE’s crashhandler let me open a bug report for it: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=301474

    Eric

  9. alienbob

    This is what made gwenview at least start and open pictures:

    rm -r /tmp/akonadi-${USER}.*
    rm -r /tmp/kde-${USER}
    rm -r /tmp/ksocket-${USER}
    rm -r /var/tmp/kdecache-${USER}
    rm -r ${HOME}/.kde/share/apps/gwenview

    However, when I click a picture in dolphin, then gwenview will be launched to display the picture, which still freezes it… and twice my complete desktop froze with it.

    Some Ubuntu noob closed my bug report https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=301474 stating that it was a duplicate of a Kubuntu bug they had in their KDE 4.7.2… but I re-opened it and it seems to be taken more seriously now that two other distros added their comment that they experience the same crash.

    The packagers mailinglist is currently the stage of a discussion of a percieved regression in KDE 4.8.4. Compared to the previous releases, it seems less stable.

    Eric

  10. Willy Sudiarto Raharjo

    Eric,

    can you try to upgrade soprano to 2.7.57 and see if it fixed the gwenview problem?
    It’s not really a stable release for soprano, but if it worked, then it might be better to use this one
    http://sourceforge.net/projects/soprano/files/Soprano/2.7.57/

    I read the comment in the bug report here
    https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=301453#c7

  11. Willy Sudiarto Raharjo

    Soprano 2.7.57 is used in 4.8.80, so probably that’s why 4.8.80 is not affected by this bug.

    But i guess it brings some problems on the new beta 2 packages

  12. alienbob

    Hi Willy

    Spot on! Upgrading soprano fixed the gwenview crash bug. I updated my own bug report with this news.
    However, a dependency on an unstable soprano should not have been forced upon KDE 4.8.4 so I guess someone messed up.

    Eric

  13. Willy Sudiarto Raharjo

    ahh… that was a patch for soprano in order for KDE 4.9 Beta 2 to build. Sorry…

    It’s an upstream bug report
    https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=300633

  14. Janis

    To my great disappointment, kde is getting less and less stable. I am suprised that none seems to have problems with it. For example – Alt-F4 stopped working in KDE 4.8.4 and i have no idea how to solve it. The other problem i have on kde 4.8.4 is non-working C&C (under wine, there is no keyboard commands anymore). I am sure that the problem lies with kde – under XFCE everything is OK. I have suspicions it has to do something with currently non-removable component “activities”.
    P.S. Eric, it would be very nice if you could leave at least build scripts for older kde versions in repository)

  15. alienbob

    Janis,

    If you want old build scripts then you better start collecting what’s here. I am not going to keep a public archive.
    THe fact that things stopped working for you does not automatically mean that KDE is getting worse. The cause could be in your computer. As you state, “I am suprised that none seems to have problems with it”… I am not surprised. Nobody is reporting these problems.

    You could try and create a new user account and use that to logon to KDE. If that session behaves better then there is old stuff in your dot directories which is incompatible with newer versions of the software.

    Eric

  16. Janis

    actually, it (kde) begun misbehave from the first moment after slack-cur reinstallation. I managed somehow to keep things running using hibernation, but this evening was the last. I plan to revert to the 4.6.5 on mu desktop and stay there until Pat will make a new and shiny stable release of Slack.
    To my surprise, there is no such problems on my laptop, while the software and configurations are almost identical.

  17. Helios

    I have installed version 4.9-beta1 and everything is working well. And something stops me to go back to 4.8.3 or 4.8.4 : it seems that 4.9-beta1 runs faster.

  18. Janis

    to add a comment o my previous comment – my laptop is a lot bigger trashbox as it is just upgraded all the way form 13.1, not re-installed as the disfunctional one.

  19. LoneStar

    I am using 4.8.4 on -current x86_64

    I notice krunner (alt-f2) is crashing as soon as I start typing anything to search for something to be launched.

    does it happen to anyone else?

    could this be the case?
    http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/plasma-devel/2012-May/019468.html

  20. Etienne

    Hi LoneStar !

    No problem here but I’m using -current in 32 bits.

  21. crond

    I cant able to download README .

  22. alienbob

    Hi crond

    I fixed the link for the README, please try again.

    Eric

  23. crond

    Hi Eric,
    thanks, I can see the README file now

  24. crond

    hi eric,
    just now I used slackpkg to update the entire system from stable 13.37 to do KDE4.9 testing.
    As of now KDE is 4.8.4
    I am facing a issue with that.
    In the panel I have
    1. kick off application launcher
    which is not showing a pop-up menu when I click that. It was ok with Slackware 13.37?s KDE version.
    Now, I added
    2. Application Launcher, which is working fine.

  25. alienbob

    @crond,

    Did you run “slackpkg install-new” in order to install the packages which were added to Slackware after 13.37 was released?
    I suggest you fix your KDE 4.8.4 issues before you attempt to upgrade to my KDE 4.9-beta2 packages.

    Eric

  26. crond

    yes , sure I did “slackpkg install-new”.

    And I can’t take a widget and place it where-ever I want in the panel. there is no such an option in the panel

  27. crond

    I noticed one more issue. All my wallpapers [ different for each workspace, totally 4 work space ] are get swapping among the work-spaces for each time I reboot or startX.
    And this is also not the case with 13.37’s KDE.

  28. alienbob

    Moving widgets on the panel is only possible when you have unlocked the widgets. just grab a widget in the panel and move it left or right. When you stop moving, wait until the panel creates an empty space and drop the widget there.

    About your wallpaper issue – no iea.

    Eric

  29. crond

    Is it OK , if I proceed to KDE 4.9 rc1.
    So, far I am not done with the issues
    1. kick off app manager
    2. changing wallpapers
    You already advised , not to do that.
    Meanwhile I dont know to solve that either. :'(

  30. crond

    just FYI, the issues mentioned above are with KDE4.8.4

  31. crond

    Hi, now both the application launchers are started to work. I did NOTHING.
    But, now for every click, I am getting some very strange behavior. I just linked the video to you.
    Please spare a minute to help me out there.
    I am very eager to test KDE beta packages . And in Slackware …

  32. alienbob

    If you are testing KDE 4.9 beta / rc packages please post your findings in comments section of the proper article: http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/getting-closer-kde-4-9-release-candidate-1/

    If you are using KDE 4.8.4 then that is now part of Slackware itself, and commenting on it does not belong in this thread anymore. A community site like http://linuxquestions.org/ would be better suited.

    Eric

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