My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

KDE 5_16.05 for Slackware -current

plasma5_startupWhile everyone is waiting for the 14.2 release of our beloved Slackware Linux distribution, those pesky developers keep releasing their own software. So this was the week where KDE Frameworks, Plasma and Applications all had newer versions than I have in my repository. Guess what – I have prepared a new set of Plasma5 packages for the month of May so that I am ready for a new Live ISO… next Slackware release or not.

KDE 5_16.05 is my May release of the combined KDE Frameworks 5.22.0, Plasma 5.6.4 and Applications 16.04.1.

plasma5_about_distro

What’s new in KDE 5_16.05?

  • Frameworks 5.22.0 is an enhancement release with one new framework which was moved here from Plasma: kwayland (we do not yet use this in Slackware). See https://www.kde.org/announcements/kde-frameworks-5.22.0.php
  • Plasma 5.6.4 is another bugfix release of the 5.6 series. See https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.6.4.php .
  • Applications 16.04.1 is also a maintenance release. See https://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-applications-16.04.1.php .
  • I have fixed the ‘sddm-qt5’ package and now SDDM starts (almost) instantaneously again when entering runlevel 4. Some months ago, the “sddm” user account which is used by SDDM was added to Slackware by Patrick, but it was configured with homedirectory which is not useful (“/var/empty” instead of what my package uses, “/var/lib/sddm”). The “sddm” user account writes its status files to its homedirectory. The ‘sddm-qt5’ package’s post-installation script (doinst.sh) will now modify the homedirectory of the “sddm” user if it already exists on the system. Tip: after upgrading, please check the “sddm” account (using getent passwd sddm” command) and fix the homedirectory manually if for whatever reason, the ‘doinst.sh’ script was not successful in its modification.

All in all, a fairly trivial upgrade if you already have my Plasma 5 packages installed. See below for install/upgrade instructions. If you want to give it a trial run, I hope to have a Live ISO available at http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/slackware-live/ soon. Check the timestamp of the “slackware64-live-plasma5-current.iso” ISO.

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_16.04. 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.

What I usually do is: download all the ‘ktown’ packages for the new release to a local disk. Then run “upgrade –install-new” on all these packages. Then I check the status of my Slackware-current, upgrading the stock packages where needed. The slackpkg tool is invaluable during this process of syncing the package installation status to the releases.

Note:

If you are using slackpkg+, have already moved to KDE 5_16.04 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

40 Comments

  1. Willy Arana

    All fine here, thanks eric 🙂

  2. Gérard Monpontet

    work here, 😉

    I do not know why, but the source of ki18n was updated 16 May to ‘5.22.1’ version:

    http://download.kde.org/stable/frameworks/5.22/ki18n-5.22.1.tar.xz

  3. alienbob

    Reason on the mailing list:

    … just uploaded a ki18n-5.22.1 to fix a compilation issue that some peoplehit depending on their libgettext.
    https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=363111
    If it compiled for you, you can skip this release. Gentoo might want toupdate though 🙂
    ki18n v5.22.1

  4. Gérard Monpontet

    OK, thanks, Eric 😉

  5. michelino

    Everything works flawlessly here.
    Thanks Eric

  6. LOE

    Hello.
    Thanks a lot!!!

    ps. krdc still without support of rdp 🙂 (but 1 minute to recompile myself)

  7. alienbob

    LOE, the problem with krdc is that xfreerdp is a RUNTIME dependency, but krcd software configuration disables the support when it does not find xfreerdp installed on your computer. So what I did for the next release (or perhaps I will do it as an intermediate update) is “fake” the existence of xfreerdp when compiling krdc. That seems to work. I do not have a Windows machine to test it with but I do have a “RDP” entry in the krdc protocol dropdown now, even without freerdp installed.
    See http://bear.alienbase.nl/cgit/ktown/commit/?id=457d224ec57625a940612d7288904c25547e5338

  8. Geremia

    Unfortunately for me, Baloo still crashes upon loading KDE. This seems to be why I can’t search in the KDE menu without it freezing for a few minutes. Any idea how to reset Baloo? thanks

  9. Eduardo

    Thank you Eric!! Everything works smoothly here so far.

  10. alienbob

    Geremia, the baloo database is located in ~/.local/share/baloo

    You can try deleting all that is in there, and then manually edit the baloo configuration file ~/.config/baloofilerc and make sure that the “first run” parameter is set to “true” (incorrectly documented in https://community.kde.org/Baloo/Configuration) so that baloo will start the index process from scratch again.

    Note that in the Plasma5 Live ISO I have disabled baloo filesearch and you have to enable it manually in “System Settings > Search”.

  11. Eduardo

    I can report an issue now. When I first booted this new Plasma build I was at office, where I use a monitor attached as my laptop, working as a secondary display.

    Upon booting this new Plasma, my panel now appeared at the *secondary* monitor instead of appearing at my laptop (primary) display as usual. All this, with no change in the KScreen configuration; my laptop display is still listed as primary. No big deal, I thought.

    But today I’m working from home. Upon booting in Plasma without any secondary displays and suddenly I was left with no visible panel. I added another panel, and from the widget selector is evident that my original panel is there, but it’s off the screen area and it’s inaccessible.

    Thank you again for everything Eric!

  12. Geremia

    alienbob, thanks for the help w/ Baloo

    Also, how do I make my custom compose key keystrokes in ~/.XCompose work with GTK apps? What sort of input does Slackware use? XIM? SCIM? Something else?
    thanks

  13. Michelino

    I don’t know if it’s just my problem, but in my
    “/etc/polkit-1/rules.d/ : 10-enable-suspend.rules”
    first line is

    “polkit.addRule(
    function(action, subject) {”
    (two lines)

    instead of

    “polkit.addRule(function(action, subject) {”
    (single line)

    I had to put everything back on a single line to have my “suspend/hibernate” feature working again.

  14. rvdboom

    Michelino, I had the same issue with missing suspend options for two or three months now and thought that this was a bug in KDE5. Your post gave me some hope, as indeed I have the same rule over two lines, however your fix doesn’t work for me. How did you find out about this?

  15. Michelino

    rvdboom I’ve just compared my “10-enable-suspend.rules” with the one that I’ve found here: http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/kde-5_16-03-for-slackware-current/#comment-28249

    I’ve modified mine according to it and rebooted my pm.
    It did the trick

  16. rvdboom

    Michelino, thanks a lot! I grepped in /var/log for “kit” and found that policykit failed to load the “10-enable-suspend.rules” file. Looking into that, I just realized that for some reason it was in 660 unlike other files in the same dir. Setting it to 644 and reboot brought me back my suspend/hibernate buttons.
    Thanks a lot!

  17. Gérard Monpontet

    A good additional tool, partitionmanager was ported on kf5, and work fine here, Eric.

    it’s splited in two package now, kpmcore and partitionmanager:

    http://download.kde.org/stable/kpmcore/2.1.1/src/kpmcore-2.1.1.tar.xz

    http://download.kde.org/stable/partitionmanager/2.1.0/src/partitionmanager-2.1.0.tar.xz

  18. alienbob

    Thanks guys for finding the cause of the missing ‘suspend’ in the menu.
    I will upload a fixed powerdevil package shortly, where this rules file has “644” permissions.

    • Michelino

      rvdboom you did it all alone, but I’m happy if I have “inspired” you 😉

  19. aocab

    Anyone else having an issue with the locale and UTF-8?
    It used to work and I can’t figure out what happened.

    The settings are there:
    In lilo.conf I have:
    append=” acpi_backlight=vendor vt.default_utf8=1″

    In /etc/profile.d/lang.sh I have:
    export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

    My locale setting when I first login.
    LANG=en_US.UTF-8

    My locale setting after starting KDE
    LANG=en_US.ISO-8859-1

    Anyone have any Ideas?
    TIA

  20. aocab

    just a follow up:
    issue did not occur in a new user account
    tried a new .kde folder issue still there
    with a new .config folder the issue is now gone

  21. Sam Albuquerque

    @aocab I do have issues with Locale. I have tried changing the keyboard layout to UK via System Settings>Input devices and it still types as US. If I switch to a non-X terminal the keyboard layout is UK as I expect. I tried recreating both the .kde and .config directories as well as .local but haven\’t had any success.

  22. lasieab

    Hi Eric,

    Thanks again for a job well-done. I am only picking up one issue though; when I launch ktorrent from the launcher I get “KDE.Init could not lauch /usr/bin/ktorrent”. weird thing though, when I launch it from konsole is launches. I checked the ktorrent.desktop file and made recommended changes as found online, but still I get the same error. Can you advise on this please.

  23. alienbob

    lasieab – ktorrent works fine here, started from the menu, using krunner or started from a console.
    Please check if you have installed the latest versions: ktorrent-5.0.1 and libktorrent-2.0.1.

  24. brianlemin

    Hi alienbob, thanks for all the great work
    unfortunalety I’m unable to open any kind of image file with kde packages:

    gwenview:

    gwenview-16.04.1-x86_64-1alien
    gwenview: error while loading shared libraries: libgcrypt.so.11: cannot
    open shared object file: No such file or directory

    okular:

    okular-16.04.1-x86_64-1alien
    okular(5543)/kdecore (KConfigSkeleton) KCoreConfigSkeleton::writeConfig:
    okular(5543)/okular (app) Okular::DocumentPrivate::loadGeneratorLibrary: Invalid plugin factory for “okularGenerator_kimgio”!

    cheers

  25. alienbob

    brianlemin, your issue is not with gwenview or with okular.
    Some other library which is loaded by those programs is trying to link to libgcrypt.so.11. The library “libgcrypt.so.11” is part of Slackware 14.1 so it looks as if you have installed my Plasma 5 packages on Slackware 14.1… which is not going to work.
    Or else you have another package which was compiled on Slackware 14.1 and which should have been recompiled for Slackware-current.

  26. brianlemin

    alienbob, I do run on current with every update installed and checked, with all latest packages from ktown testing…
    I believe gwenview and okular are part of your kde compilation packages thus not relying on a package I’d have compiled myself
    using strace does not show a lib trying to reach libgcrypt but rather gwenview itself
    please let me know what you think and thanks for your time

  27. alienbob

    brianlemin, both gwenview and okular work flawlessly here on my desktop. And they also work on a Slackware Live ISO (Plasma5 variant). So I can rule out anything which is part of Slackware or my own ‘ktown’ repository.

  28. ZeroUno

    Hello Eric.
    I’m merging some install instruction in this blog page and in README from repository and some other to update the specific notes in slakpkg+.

    the result seems that the package list to remove is
    amor kde-base-artwork kdeartwork kgamma
    ksnapshot ktux oxygen-icons pairs superkaramba
    libkscreen kscreen kactivities kde-workspace libmm-qt
    libnm-qt plasma-nm polkit-kde-agent-1
    polkit-kde-kcmodules-1 kdeconnect-kde

    is this correct?

    also may be useful an slackpkg clean-system in upgrades to remove packages no more existant nor in slackware and ktown ( for example xembed-sni-proxy that you wrote in this blog page ).

    Thankyou,

    Matteo

  29. alienbob

    I think that the problem with implementing “slackpkg clean-system” for 3rd party repositories is that Slackware itself will be in the way.
    Take “libnm-qt”: it must be removed if you install Plasma 5. When you run “slackpkg clean-system” then libnm-qt will not be removed because it is still in Slackware.

  30. RMAU

    Anyone know what ports need to be opened in firewalls for this? I notice discovery doesn t really work while my current iptables rules are up.

  31. ZeroUno

    @alienbob: “slackpkg clean-system” is not for remove libnm-qt; it does not replace “slackpkg remove …” to remove slackware packages at install time, but when you upgrade plasma from 5_15.10 to 5_16.05 you should remove xembed-sni-proxy manually, or with slackpkg clean-system that, since xembed-sni-proxy no more exists in any other repository, remove it.

  32. Arief JR

    Hi Eric!

    Before, i\’m sorry if my question is out of the topic and tickle.

    But i want reset dropbox icon in systray, how to reset or change default dropbox icon not using breeze icons??
    this dropbox icon using breeze theme https://www.dropbox.com/s/d0zccd3j6f007kv/Screenshot_20160521_111659.png?dl=0

    I was moved /usr/share/icons/breeze/status/16/cloudstatus.svg and dropboxstatus-* and the result dropbox icon is ugly and become big.

    Thanks in advance

  33. Gérard Monpontet

    i have build the new krita-3.0 on kf5 it work 😉

  34. alienbob

    Arief, I do not think that a custom dropbox icon can be selected. The dropbox daemon uses its own icons as far as I could see.

  35. Gérard Monpontet

    i have build qt5-5.6.1 and framework-5.23.0, work fine here 😉

  36. alienbob

    Yes me too, as well as Applications 16.04.2 but I wait with releasing all of it until after the next Plasma is also released (next week).

  37. Gérard Monpontet

    baloo has sysconfdir in /etc, maybe it’s better it have sysconfdir in /etc/kde.

  38. John

    Installed Slackware 14.2. Runs well, but… After a day or three, sometimes sooner, attempts to launch anything yeild KDEinit: could not launch error messages. Not even systems applications launch. Have to bring X down and restart everything. Tried the “X-DBUS-StartupType=none” to /usr/share/applications/kde4/konsole.desktop “solution”, but that does not help.

    Also, can not get NFS working, it keeps giving access denied by server messages.

    She is my sys, and I admin her… but I’m not a sysadmin, just an applications programmer.

  39. alienbob

    John , I do not understand why you are posting this story about your Slackware 14.2 troubles as a comment to a year-old article on Plasma 5?
    It would only make sense to post your in the LinuxQuestions forum, which is where Slackware related issues can be brought to attention. This blog of mine is mostly to discuss issues with *my* packages and scripts.

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