My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

KDE 5_16.04 for Slackware-current

plasma5_startupYou may already have tried it through the PLASMA5 variant of the Slackware Live Edition which I uploaded yesterday, and here is the announcement of the addition of KDE 5_16.04 to my ‘ktown’ repository – the April release of the combined KDE Frameworks 5.21.0, Plasma 5.6.3 and Applications 16.04.0.

What’s new in KDE 5_16.04?

  • Frameworks 5.21.0 is an enhancement release with one new framework: kactivities-stats. See https://www.kde.org/announcements/kde-frameworks-5.21.0.php
  • Plasma 5.6.3 is the third iteration of the 5.6 series, a jump from the previous 5.5.x release in my repository. I have upgraded Qt5 to 5.6.0 to accompany this Plasma release. Lots of visual improvements, the task manager is much more informative about running tasks and the weather applet is back…
  • Two packages were removed that I added to ‘plasma-extra’ to cover for the period after release of Frameworks 5.20.0 and before Plasma 5.6.0. The package ‘kactivities-workspace’ has been absorbed in Plasma and
    Applications packages, and ‘kactivitymanagerd’ is now part of Plasma itself. See https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.6.3.php .
  • Applications 16.04.0 was just released. KColorChooser, KFloppy, KMahjongg and KRDC have now been ported to KDE Frameworks 5, and the Kontact Suite (KDEPIM) has been subject to massive bughunting (and -fixing). Lots of PIM related libraries were split-off into their own source tarballs, resulting in 16 new packages. For the announcement, see https://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-applications-16.04.0.php .
  • KDE Telepathy now officially has a voice & video GUI application. Previously I shipped a beta release of the “ktp-call-ui” package. Also I upgraded or recompiled the complete stack of “deps/telepathy” packages.
  • ktorrent (and libktorrent) have also been ported to KF5, and packages for these have been added to kde/applications-extra/ .
  • Phonon, and its plugins for gstreamer and VLC backends, have been upgraded offering improvements for the Qt5 build, better volume slider and muting support, and use of the VLC 2.2 API. Remember, if you actually want to use the VLC backend for phonon you will have to install a VLC package separately (it is not included with the ‘ktown’ releases).
  • And finally (as hinted before), QT5 was updated to the latest release 5.6.0. A new package was also added (qt5-webkit) because the Qt5 WebKit source code has been removed from Qt5 since 5.6.0 and it needs to be compiled/packaged separately now.
  • New source tarballs I did not compile into packages: minuet (music education software) because it required several additional dependencies; breeze-grub (a theme for GRUB which blends in with the Plasma 5 theme);
  • I removed the “kde-workspace” package from “kde/kde4” because I think it is no longer needed. Let me know if that was an incorrect assumption.

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

Upgrading to this KDE 5 is not difficult, especially if you already are running KDE 5_16.02. 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_16.01 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

53 Comments

  1. Gérard Monpontet

    Work here Eric , no tested telepaty part 😉

  2. LOE

    Thanks!!!
    One issue: it seems, that you compile krdc without xfreerdp installed.
    I needed to recompile krdc to get support for RDP connections.

    And one more: I use Viber and there is no icon in tray

  3. Geremia

    Thank you! This update seems to have fixed several glitches, and it seems slightly faster, too.

  4. Helios

    Thank you very much.

    Suppose that I want to make a slackware64-current installation DVD with kde5 instead of kde4. Is it enough to put everything in the kde5 deps/ directory in slackware64-current l/, and all the other packages in slackware64-current kde/ and kdei/ ?

  5. alienbob

    LOE – the xfreerdp package is not part of my dependencies but perhaps it is time to add it.

  6. alienbob

    Helios it is not that simple. You can not create an installation DVD with KDE5 just bycopying the packages.
    The setup program uses the tagfile information to determine what needs to be installed so you will have to edit the “maketag”, “maketag.ez” and “tagfile” files yourself.

    You could use the Slackware Live Edition (PLASMA5) to install Slackware with KDE5.

  7. alienbob

    LOE, I do not know Viber. But if it is a 32bit program, you will have to grab the 32-bit version of Slackware’s “libdbusmenu-qt” and my “sni-qt” packages and run “convertpkg-compat32” on them and then install both “libdbusmenu-qt-compat32” and “sni-qt-compat32.
    Those two are mandatory addons for displaying system tray icons of 32bit binaries in Plasma5.

  8. webster

    Thanks !

    btw, Alien, the last one version of krdc supporting rdp connection after install freerdp. This new one krdc doesn’t support rdp :/

  9. alienbob

    webster, a few posts higher-up LOE explained that krdc needs to be recompiled with xfreerdp installed.

  10. CockCrow

    Hello!
    You can provide the Qt SlackBuild 5.6?
    Here gives error in build.

  11. alienbob

    CockCrow I do not understand your question. You do not have to compile it, because I provide all the packages already. Or did you just not want to search and wanted me to give you the answer?

    You can download the package for qt5-5.6.0 here: https://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/alien-kde/current/testing/
    And you can find the qt5.SlackBuild plus source and patches here: https://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/alien-kde/source/testing/deps/qt5/

  12. webster

    Alien, LOE, could you help me ? I have no idea how to recompile krdc with xfreerdp. Are there any special flags for RDP?

    Thx

  13. alienbob

    I assume you only have to install freerdp and then recompile krdc. It should hopefully detect the installed freerdp and enable support for it.

    Download KDE sources and scripts and run:
    # ./KDE.SlackBuild applications:krdc

  14. CockCrow

    AlienBob
    I actually prefer to compile my packages.
    I Download your KDE sources since Slack 13.x
    I compile Qt with Postgres and FreeTDS.
    I tried to compile using QT 5.5.1 SlackBuild but gives error.
    Qt 5.6 is not here:
    http://alien.slackbook.org/ktown/source/5/deps/qt5/
    http://alien.slackbook.org/ktown/source/testing/deps/qt5/
    http://alien.slackbook.org/ktown/source/latest/deps/
    The link “bear.alienbase.nl” is ok!

    Thanks for the great work!

  15. webster

    Alien !!! 🙂 It does work 😀 Thank you !!! :)))

  16. Eduardo

    One question: Eric, you said that you removed kde-workspace but I did not see on the README any instruction on its removal when upgrading from 16_03. Is that correct and no removal is needed?

  17. Eduardo

    Well, I just upgraded and the whole thing looks and feels much better. Thank you Eric!

  18. Gérard Monpontet

    CockCrow

    it’s good here:

    http://slackware.uk/people/alien-kde/source/5/

  19. Gérard Monpontet

    try:
    rsync -av rsync://slackware.uk/people/alien-kde/source/5 .

  20. alienbob

    CockCrow I forgot to update the files on alien.slackbook.org. Thanks for mentioning that, I am uploading now.

    I have issues when compiling Qt5 if there is already an installed qt5 package. So I always make sure that I compile Qt5 on a computer without qt5 pre-installed.

  21. alienbob

    Eduardo, removal is not needed but you can.
    In a future README I will add that info.

  22. Dhaby

    KCalc has a bug, the window size is 0 and the window not appear.

    The patch in Gentoo’s repo solves this problem.
    https://www.mail-archive.com/gentoo-commits@lists.gentoo.org/msg198719.html

  23. alienbob

    Thanks Dhaby, a fixed kcalc package will be uploaded soon.

  24. Gérard Monpontet

    libxkbcommon-0-6.1 is available, work here 😉

    http://xkbcommon.org/

  25. Gérard Monpontet

    kcalc work now.

  26. Michael

    I agree with Geremia. Makes a great first impression and looks like a keeper this one. Thanks a lot ! 🙂

  27. Gérard Monpontet

    new pyqt-5.6 and other python qt binding are available:

    https://www.riverbankcomputing.com/software/pyqt/intro

  28. alienbob

    Damn, how broken can a system get on upgrade when you do not keep your mind focused…
    Upgraded from a not-so-recent slackware64-current to latest -current with latest Plasma5… and managed to install Slackware’s kde-workplace (overwriting the startkde script of plasma-workspace) and qt5-5.5.1 (because I still had that in my regular repository).
    Result: errors about “kdeconfig4 failing” and a white SDDM screen.

    I will update qt-5.5.1 to qt-5.6.0 in my regular slackbuilds repository…

  29. Michelino

    Just to let you know that on one of the two machine running KDE5 I had problem with the keyboard layout.
    KDE had “us” keyboard despite the fact that in “System setting” it was set to “it”.
    Anyway “setxkbmap -layout it” did the trick.

    P.S.: Erik I did the same error “upgrading” qt5-5.5.1 from your regular repository 😉

  30. Geremia

    Hmmi, KDE was working well on April 22, but when I ran slackpkg upgrade-all yesterday and rebooted, KDE is behaving very strangely. It knows all my settings, but they don’t seem to affect anything. Most icons in the system preferences are missing, and my taskbar is set to autohide, but it doesn’t. I wonder what happened.

  31. alienbob

    Geremia, I updated my desktop and laptop yesterday to latest 64bit -current. The desktop is running Slackware’s KDE4 and the laptop is running my Plasma 5. Both are fine, but the laptop gave me headaches as described a few comments up.

  32. ZeroUno

    32bit -current.
    the package
    ./deps/phonon-* is missing, so plasma does not start.
    it exists in 64bit release.

  33. alienbob

    Hm, I must have misplaced them and now they are nowhere to be found. I will compile new versions, thanks for reporting.

  34. Geremia

    I had to run “slackpkg reinstall ktown_testing” today. For some reason the “slackpkg upgrade-all” I performed on April 26 downgraded somethings. Does slackpkg+ just look at last modified dates and not actual version numbers for determining what is an upgrade? Or was there something wrong with the repository? “slackpkg upgrade-all” run today doesn’t report any potential “upgrades”.

  35. alienbob

    Geremia,

    Slackpkg+ is a nice tool but it does not guarantee success if you are mixing packages from multiple repositories, some of the packages having identical names (like Slackware with Ktown on top).
    Ultimately you have to inspect the package list which is proposed by slackpkg before you hit “OK”. Sometimes a Slackware package can slip through the mazes, or a package which I have both in my regular reposititory and in the Ktown repository (like qt5).

    Slackware’s package tools do not care about version numbers or build numbers. For upgradepkg the only thing that counts is: different numbers. That is why in Slackware you can just as easily downgrade as you can upgrade a version with “upgradepkg”.

  36. Geremia

    Thanks for the explanation. Yes, my slackpkg+ does use “multiple repositories, [with] some of the packages having identical names (like Slackware with Ktown on top).”

  37. Drakeo

    This one seems much more stable. Has anyone else tried right click compress Here TAR.GZ seems it does not like things like kdenlive-16.04 it compresses to kdenlive-16.0.tar.gz weird. leaves the 4 off seems the reload bug in dolphin is back the one from slk-14.0
    any way do not build kdenlive-16.04 it is far from ready.
    Version 15.12.3 seems pretty stable.
    Eric great job. I really like the feel of this build.

    latest MIXXX 2.1.0-alpha-pre (build master r5743) build
    great and runs wonderful. Just keeps getting better.

  38. ZeroUno

    @Geremia,

    Be sure that you have TAG_PRIORITY=off

    Even if you install with slackpkg+ you must follow the instructions http://alien.slackbook.org/ktown/current/5/ regards removepkg
    The package kde-workspace that was in ktown/deps, now no more exists in ktown, so upgradepkg reinstall the slackware official kde-workspace.

    slackpkg+ is a good tools, but it does not substitute the humans and require the user review the package list proposed, specially where a repository override official packages or has an invasive impact.

  39. Drakeo

    ksnapshot: error while loading shared libraries: libkipi.so.11: cannot open shared object file What package is that in.? 🙂

  40. alienbob

    ksnapshot has been replaced by the spectacle package in KDE Applications 15.12. You can remove ksnaphot.

  41. Drakeo

    Yes I am on top of that I will fix it. not a problem. I understand whats going on.

  42. Drakeo

    May be I am going blind but I do not see ksnapshot in this repo
    or on the list http://alien.slackbook.org/ktown/current/5/x86_64/PACKAGES.TXT

  43. _metic

    Hello.
    Just upgraded a machine and noticed that krunner no longer works with Alt-f2 and or Alt-Spacebar.

    Also wondering if it is just me or the mix initial loading into Plasma and old KDE4 icons are normal now.
    Ctrl Alt + Del gives me the KDE4 icons for with the Moon grey scale and Logout, Turn Off Computer, Restart computer.

    just wondering if this is normal

    thanks.

  44. _metic

    sorry for the double addition.

    xwmconfig now shows:
    “xinitrc.kde KDE: K Desktop Environment”

    As an option is this normal now in all previous upgrades i only had all the default plus of course xinitrc.plasma but never xinitrc.kde.

    warm regards

  45. alienbob

    _metic you probably installed (or kept) the kde-workspace package from Slackware. Remove that package and then re-install plasma-workspace.

  46. alienbob

    Drakeo – you can not find ksnapshot in PACKAGES.TXT because the package is no longer there. It has been replaced by the “spectacle” package which now implements the screenshot functionality in Plasma5.

  47. _metic

    Much thanks i did track that issue down.

    Re: Current update.
    It is wicked snappy thanks for all your efforts, and what seems like … you are wasting your time to answer daft responses.

    warm regards.

  48. Drakeo

    Thanks Eric your the best . You know getting old my eyes are getting bad. Glasses thicker reminder I am a working dyslexic.
    It’s quit a Spectacle :).

  49. bormant

    Seems to me that alien-kde/current/5/x86 is broken.

    kde/powerdevil-5.6.3-i486-1alien.txz package has
    usr/lib/qt5/plugins/kf5/kded/powerdevil.so library linked with
    libphonon4qt5.so.4
    libphonon4qt5experimental.so.4

    but
    deps/phonon-4.9.0-1alien.txz doesn’t contains these.

    bzcat MANIFEST.bz2 | grep -F libphonon4
    doesn’t show these libraries too.

    kded modules powerdevil and networkmanagement affected by this.

  50. Drakeo

    so spectacle is not capturing rectangle it is getting everything else. So I grabbed the latest Frameworks for ksnapshot 1.0 from kde git hub made a package installed it am running both.
    They both have the same options. Except ksnaptshot 1.0
    KDE Frameworks 5.21.0
    Qt 5.6.0 (built against 5.5.1)
    The xcb windowing system
    going to rebuild spectacle on my qt5 only system and let you know. Really busy but if I find time will look at the code.

  51. Drakeo

    They both have the same options. Except ksnapshot 1.0 frameworks does capture rectangle.

  52. alienbob

    There is a critical bug in Spectacle, introduced in 16.04.0, which breaks rectangular image captures when you have a Nvidia GPU (regardless of whether you are using nouveau or the proprietary driver).

    Patch here: https://quickgit.kde.org/?p=spectacle.git&a=commit&h=abbbe6d13de870f9e9349acc2542cffc5d41b76d
    Another patch for Spectacle is to fix the HiDPI that was broken as well: https://quickgit.kde.org/?p=spectacle.git&a=commit&h=3d4dcacc6cbbd75f9d31d26bfa2a1f2ced37f721

    I hope to have some time soon to assemble a virtual machine with Plasma5 installed and build a patched spectacle patch. In the meantime youcan get the patches from this commit: http://bear.alienbase.nl/cgit/ktown/patch/?id=3e6b9539aae9f7d6c3da49d4f4042fa133be9c44

  53. alienbob

    bormant – I have recompiled the phonon* packages and will upload them along with the bugfixes for Frameworks and Applications.
    Looks like I forgot to install qt5 when I compiled them for 32bit Slackware.

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