KDE 5_15.10 for Slackware-current brings Telepathy

plasma5_startup It’s october, the leaves are falling, we had our first frost this week… and here is yet another KDE 5 release for Slackware to keep you warm and cozy. I am happy with my KDE 5_15.10 update. Again I waited until every KDE source was refreshed: this set contains Frameworks 5.15.0, Plasma 5.4.2 and Applications 15.08.2.

And you know what? The “progress bar issue” which has plagued me ever since the first Plasma 5.4 release could finally be resolved, thanks to  Gérard Monpontet who posted the solution in the comments section of previous Plasma 5 blog post. I love it when the Slackware community helps fixing issues well before they start bothering Pat. Apparently, desktop sessions not only need to be started using a ConsoleKit process but also using a DBus invocation.

plasma5_startup

But that’s not all; there is a bit more to tell about the October release.

What’s new in KDE 5_15.10?

  • Frameworks 5.15.0 is an enhancement release with no new Frameworks added. You can read the details on https://www.kde.org/announcements/kde-frameworks-5.15.0.php
  • Plasma 5.4.2 is a bugfix release and perhaps the last before 5.5.0, because 5.4.3 will only be released if there’s a need for it. See https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.4.2.php . New this month is that I enabled the compilation of the “plasma-mediacenter” application, which you may or may not like, but at least you can check it out now.
  • Applications 15.08.2 was just released today. It is a bugfix release – but for Slackware it means the sudden appearance of a lot more packages. Because:
  • I have finally enabled KDE Telepathy in my KDE.SlackBuild framework. That’s 14 new packages for you! Only the voice & video GUI is still missing, the KDE Telepathy developers are looking for someone knowledgeable to port the old KDE 4 version to Frameworks 5.
    And to support building them, I had to add yet another 18 packages in the “deps” section. You will find those dependencies all self-contained in a single “telepathy” subdirectory right below “deps”. That way, if you don’t care much for Telepathy you can easily skip these packages. Similarly, the new KDE Telepathy packages are all located in a subdirectory “telepathy” below “kde”. The full list of new Telepathy dependencies is : libotr, libnice, farstream, libaccounts-glib, libaccounts-qt5, signon, signon-plugin-oauth2, signon-ui, libsignon-glib, telepathy-glib, telepathy-farstream, telepathy-haze, telepathy-gabble, telepathy-qt5, telepathy-logger, telepathy-logger-qt5, telepathy-mission-control and telepathy-accounts-signon.
  • I added a new package to “plasma-extra” because I did not want to wait for Plasma 5.5 where this program will likely be included by default. It is called “xembed-sni-proxy” and on startup (automatically when you launch a Plasma 5 desktop session) it will dock into the Plasma system tray area and start listening for XEmbed requests. Tray icons for applications adhering to the “legacy” XEmbed protocol will be displayed seamlessly inside the Plasma tray area, courtesy of xembed-sni-proxy). There is no longer a need for external tray applications like trayer-srg or stalonetray.

Here is a screenshot which shows the (XEmbed) HP system tray icon – snugly placed inside the xembed-sni-proxy tray area. You’ll also notice the reddish avatar at the left – that is KDE Telepathy, its color informing me that it is does not have any account configured yet.

plasma5_xembed

Installing or upgrading Frameworks 5, Plasma 5 and Applications

The remainder of the article is mostly a re-hash, but I include it every time so that you do not have to search through this blog, and have everything together on a single page.

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_15.09_02. 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_15.09_02 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 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)
# 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 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

61 thoughts on “KDE 5_15.10 for Slackware-current brings Telepathy



  1. Telepathy is unusable, plasma crashed when trying to configure accounts, crashed when trying to connect (reproduced with google account as \”google\”, as \”jabber\” too).

    Other applications works fine, thanks for your work, Eric.




  2. Likewise, all is well EXCEPT Telepathy. It crashes Plasma as soon as I try configuring my Google account settings. Plasma crashes HARD when this occurs. Reboot time. Normal uptimes here are in weeks, if not months.


  3. Great! Reading about Telepathy, a minor suggestion came into the mind – may be it is worth to put all games and edu packages into separate subdirectories? It takes a lot of time to hunt them down if one has no need for them.



  4. Looks like a fix for ktp-accounts-kcm shown here: https://quickgit.kde.org/?p=ktp-accounts-kcm.git&a=commitdiff&h=07c7cc5309e11171b2e552678d58257ccfc44e42 (found in the bug report https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=351785) has not been applied before the 15.08.2 tarball was created.

    I just checked and I am indeed using the published ktp-accounts-kcm-15.08.2 source tarball.

    Tonight I will try that patch and see if it fixes the crash. If one of you is able to test it earlier, be my guest! I’d love to hear if the patch is needed.



  5. Gérard, i try to install your package, segfault with configuration has gone, but i can\’t connect to gtalk (via jabber account and google hangouts account of telepathy)


  6. Hi Eric,
    it seems that part of the new set of packages in has gpg issue, according to slackpkg(+).
    Thanks for your work



  7. Yes I can confirm that the patch does its job. Updated ktp-accounts-kcm packages are on their way.
    I could connect my ICQ and Jabber accounts successfully.
    On Google I am using two-factor authentication to avoid hi-jacking of my account. I never was able to make that work with external applications like LibreOffice’s GDrive integration, and now KDE Telepathy.



  8. About GPG issue:

    $ gpg –verify farstream-0.2.7-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc farstream-0.2.7-x86_64-1alien.txz
    gpg: Signature made Sun 11 Oct 2015 21:44:24 CEST using DSA key ID A75CBDA0
    gpg: BAD signature from “Eric Hameleers “




  9. Yes, these packages fail GPG verification:

    ==============================================================================
    WARNING! One or more errors occurred while slackpkg was running
    ——————————————————————————
    farstream-0.2.7-x86_64-1alien.txz: gpg
    libaccounts-glib-02d16e50_20150911git-x86_64-1alien.txz: gpg
    libaccounts-qt5-13d1af2a_20150911git-x86_64-1alien.txz: gpg
    libnice-0.1.13-x86_64-1alien.txz: gpg
    libotr-4.1.0-x86_64-1alien.txz: gpg
    libsignon-glib-1.12-x86_64-1alien.txz: gpg
    signon-d09cb035_20150911git-x86_64-1alien.txz: gpg
    signon-plugin-oauth2-7b8274da_20150911git-x86_64-1alien.txz: gpg
    signon-ui-0.17+15.10.20150810-x86_64-1alien.txz: gpg
    smokeqt-4.14.3-x86_64-3alien.txz: gpg
    telepathy-accounts-signon-1.0-x86_64-1alien.txz: gpg
    telepathy-farstream-0.6.2-x86_64-1alien.txz: gpg
    telepathy-gabble-0.18.3-x86_64-1alien.txz: gpg
    telepathy-glib-0.24.1-x86_64-1alien.txz: gpg
    telepathy-haze-0.8.0-x86_64-1alien.txz: gpg
    telepathy-logger-0.8.2-x86_64-1alien.txz: gpg
    telepathy-logger-qt5-15.04.0-x86_64-1alien.txz: gpg
    telepathy-mission-control-5.16.3-x86_64-1alien.txz: gpg
    telepathy-qt5-0.9.6.1-x86_64-1alien.txz: gpg
    farstream-0.2.7-x86_64-1alien.txz: gpg
    libaccounts-glib-02d16e50_20150911git-x86_64-1alien.txz: gpg
    libaccounts-qt5-13d1af2a_20150911git-x86_64-1alien.txz: gpg
    libnice-0.1.13-x86_64-1alien.txz: gpg
    libotr-4.1.0-x86_64-1alien.txz: gpg
    libsignon-glib-1.12-x86_64-1alien.txz: gpg
    signon-d09cb035_20150911git-x86_64-1alien.txz: gpg
    signon-plugin-oauth2-7b8274da_20150911git-x86_64-1alien.txz: gpg
    signon-ui-0.17+15.10.20150810-x86_64-1alien.txz: gpg
    smokeqt-4.14.3-x86_64-3alien.txz: gpg
    telepathy-accounts-signon-1.0-x86_64-1alien.txz: gpg
    telepathy-farstream-0.6.2-x86_64-1alien.txz: gpg
    telepathy-gabble-0.18.3-x86_64-1alien.txz: gpg
    telepathy-glib-0.24.1-x86_64-1alien.txz: gpg
    telepathy-haze-0.8.0-x86_64-1alien.txz: gpg
    telepathy-logger-0.8.2-x86_64-1alien.txz: gpg
    telepathy-logger-qt5-15.04.0-x86_64-1alien.txz: gpg
    telepathy-mission-control-5.16.3-x86_64-1alien.txz: gpg
    telepathy-qt5-0.9.6.1-x86_64-1alien.txz: gpg


  10. Confirmed, the ktp-accounts-kcm patch works. Still having issues authenticating w Google, and I don’t use 2 factor authentication. My old Kopete still works fine for GoogleTalk, but was hoping for their sneaky Hangouts to start playing nice w KDE. Nonesuch luck. Thank You Eric for all you do here.



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  12. If anything, the issue now affects all the packages, not only the ones in the “deps/telepathy”.
    Do you know why?


  13. Hi all,

    First thousand thanks to you Eric for enhancing Slackware !

    As I fear a bit to make the jump on this release as my system is working good (but so curious…), does anyone has a hint to backup current state wich may makes things easier to revert ?

    I was thinking of just backing up the ~/.kde directory since I believe a simple slackpkg install kde (without ktown) should do the trick.

    Just wondering if I am forgetting something…

    Thanks for any help.


  14. Michelino I checked all GPG signatures on taper.alienbase.nl and Ican not fnd a bad signature. Do you have example error output? What is the repository URL you are using?


  15. Tonus you need to make backups of .kde but also of .config and .local directories to be safe.

    And when you switch releases, you need to *delete* the following cache directories:
    /var/tmp/kdecache-${USER} and /tmp/runtime-${USER} and /tmp/akonadi-${USER}*

    The command “slackpkg install kde” will install the KDE packages from the Slackware repository, not my own ‘ktown’ packages; is that what you want?


    1. Thanks a lot for your answer!

      I was meaning “slackpkg install kde” to revert changes. So all is ok.

      Thanks again for all your hard work.


  16. telepathy-glib’s slack-desc is incorrect. It says telepathy-mission-control so it will not be shown up during installation


  17. Eric you are right, gpg issue has gone, but now I’ve md5sum error, even if the md5 seems correct:

    # slackpkg install farstream

    ERROR – Package not installed! md5sum error!

    Searching for NEW configuration files
    No .new files found.

    ==============================================================================
    WARNING! One or more errors occurred while slackpkg was running
    ——————————————————————————
    farstream-0.2.7-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc: md5sum

    And

    # md5sum -c farstream-0.2.7-x86_64-1alien.txz.md5
    farstream-0.2.7-x86_64-1alien.txz: OK

    I’ve no ideas why, any suggestion?


  18. The GPG issue is gone, but now I get MD5 checksum errors for these files:

    ==============================================================================
    WARNING! One or more errors occurred while slackpkg was running
    ——————————————————————————
    farstream-0.2.7-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc: md5sum
    libaccounts-glib-02d16e50_20150911git-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc: md5sum
    libaccounts-qt5-13d1af2a_20150911git-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc: md5sum
    libnice-0.1.13-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc: md5sum
    libotr-4.1.0-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc: md5sum
    libsignon-glib-1.12-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc: md5sum
    signon-d09cb035_20150911git-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc: md5sum
    signon-plugin-oauth2-7b8274da_20150911git-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc: md5sum
    signon-ui-0.17+15.10.20150810-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc: md5sum
    smokeqt-4.14.3-x86_64-3alien.txz.asc: md5sum
    telepathy-accounts-signon-1.0-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc: md5sum
    telepathy-farstream-0.6.2-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc: md5sum
    telepathy-gabble-0.18.3-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc: md5sum
    telepathy-glib-0.24.1-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc: md5sum
    telepathy-haze-0.8.0-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc: md5sum
    telepathy-logger-0.8.2-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc: md5sum
    telepathy-logger-qt5-15.04.0-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc: md5sum
    telepathy-mission-control-5.16.3-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc: md5sum
    telepathy-qt5-0.9.6.1-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc: md5sum
    farstream-0.2.7-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc: md5sum
    libaccounts-glib-02d16e50_20150911git-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc: md5sum
    libaccounts-qt5-13d1af2a_20150911git-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc: md5sum
    libnice-0.1.13-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc: md5sum
    libotr-4.1.0-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc: md5sum
    libsignon-glib-1.12-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc: md5sum
    signon-d09cb035_20150911git-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc: md5sum
    signon-plugin-oauth2-7b8274da_20150911git-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc: md5sum
    signon-ui-0.17+15.10.20150810-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc: md5sum
    smokeqt-4.14.3-x86_64-3alien.txz.asc: md5sum
    telepathy-accounts-signon-1.0-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc: md5sum
    telepathy-farstream-0.6.2-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc: md5sum
    telepathy-gabble-0.18.3-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc: md5sum
    telepathy-glib-0.24.1-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc: md5sum
    telepathy-haze-0.8.0-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc: md5sum
    telepathy-logger-0.8.2-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc: md5sum
    telepathy-logger-qt5-15.04.0-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc: md5sum
    telepathy-mission-control-5.16.3-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc: md5sum
    telepathy-qt5-0.9.6.1-x86_64-1alien.txz.asc: md5sum


  19. Geremia, the repository checks out fine. I tested the following command in the root directory on taper.alienbase.nl , the primary mirror (this command can be found in the header of the CHECKSUMS.md5 file itself):

    $ tail +13 CHECKSUMS.md5 | md5sum –check |grep -v OK

    And that came up empty, i.e. all md5sums checked OK.
    Your issue is most likely caused by Akamai caching. Akamai’s servers are inbetween taper.alienbase.nl and your computer.

    You can try a different mirror or wait a while for the Akamai cache to expire.



  20. How do? I am about to do a clean install of your packages today, I notice in your README file – your instructions say to remove KDE 4.14.3 – but a number of files in -current appear to be 4.14.6 – so the question begs to be asked : ) Does your README FILE need to be updated, or am I off base?


  21. The remaining few core KDE packages that do not have a 4.14.3 version are safe to stay because they are going to be upgraded anyway in the next set of upgradepkg commands in the README.
    I could have fine-tuned the set of commands because there are many KDE related (non-core) packages that have different version numbers but it would require at least 10 more commands. The upgradepkg command takes care of things well enough.

    And anyway, this is a testing repository for Slackware-current which is itself a development version – I expect people to use their brain when they visit these pages. Blindly following a README is not going to a guarantee for 100% success.




  22. Anyone experienced freeze while drkonqi is invoqued?

    I have got random freeze of the desktop (mouse still movable) and save an error related to drkonqy not starting on tty1 with a faulty pid.

    When I kill the faulty pid in another tty, desktop reacts normally…


  23. I don’t have MD5 sum issues anymore!

    Now, Telepathy won’t go online. It gives a password error. Also, it doesn’t accept an application-specific Google password.


  24. Congratulations! You’ve arrived at precisely the same state as the rest of us. I suspect NOBODY will be signing on with Google until they allow this build of Telepathy and KDE-apps to connect to them.



  25. Tonus, me too, sometimes my kde stay a little freeze but i don’t know why .. and wicd icon on system tray it’s gone XD

    and Eric thanks for all you work 🙂




  26. Hi All, I had an issue where servicemenus disappeared from from Dolphin – found the following fix:

    ln -s /usr/share/kde4/servicetypes/konqpopupmenuplugin.desktop /usr/share/kservicetypes5/

    #ifithelpssomeoneelse





  27. My laptop is connected to an external monitor at work, i.e. right now. I have set a different background image on both monitors. I run the latest -current with the latest set of Plasma 5 packages. No issues here.


  28. Sam, I had the same issue. I had to set KDE to auto login ( because I could not see the login sddm prompt ). Then went into System Settings -> Display Configuration. What happens is that both your monitors are on top of each other – you need to drag one off to the left or right depending on your preference, so that they are side by side. Hope that helps.



  29. after I install kde 5, I found some problems:
    – The first I can not setup the usb modem in kde-NetworkManager at the last step that is not able to push the button “OK”.
    – Secondly I can’t connect VPN using kde-networkmanager and it says “starting the service providing the vpn connection failed”

    How to solved? thanks


  30. Hi Arief

    I have actually never used a VPN connection in KDE, and also I do not have a USB modem, so I can’t give you a good advice on how to fix this… I hope that someone else reading this page will be able to give a better answer.



  31. Hi, I’m in love with the new KDE but have two big problems: one is that i can’t run Yakuake anymore. I tried to recompile from the source, but It’s open and then don’t load kterminal session. Can you help to find a solution?
    The second big trouble is with dropbox: at the beginning, with the initial release of KDE5, dropbox client starts regularly. But now not work anymore. I’ve downloaded the latest client (64 bit) how the site suggest :

    cd ~ && wget -O – “https://www.dropbox.com/download?plat=lnx.x86_64” | tar xzf –

    and then now I run the 3.10.9 version…but it simply don’t start. I don’t know why.
    Can you give me some advices, please?


    1. About yakuake you have to compile git (framework) version.

      About Dropbox, it’s strange, it works flawlessly here. Try to delete “.dropbox” directory (better mv to “.dropbox_bkp)




  32. Yes Gérard, that was a recent update (the default was to disable PAM but non-Slackware distros needed to EN-able it all the time 😉
    It’s queued up for next week when all the KDE software sources should have fresh releases.


  33. I have one minor annoyance.

    I use the US Dvorak keyboard layout but launching programs with shortcuts follows the US Standard layout e.g. I have Meta-‘F’ to launch Firefox but typing Meta-‘F’ does nothing. I have to type Meta-‘U’, which is where the US Standard ‘F’ key is, for Firefox to launch.
    I was going to compile khotkeys and got the src from your repos but couldn’t find a slackbuild just for khotkeys and I don’t know enough to make one so I used src2pkg and your slackbuild toolkit but they both failed for different reasons.



  34. Hi Eric,

    I did what you suggested and khotkeys compiled and re-installed without problems but it did not solve the issue.
    This didn’t start to happen until the July release, before then it was working fine.
    Thanks for the help.


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