My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

KDE Plasma 5 for Slackware – end of the year edition

There has been a bit of a hiatus in my Slackware related activities and a relative silence on this blog, It’s mostly related to my new job which proved to be a bit more time-consuming than I anticipated. I also have to fulfill my old job role until that vacancy is filled. Actually, February 1st is when the successor for my old job will start in my new team. A little less than two months to go, meaning that the hard work continues. But, I get to visit the US of A in January, just booked the flights and hotels today. Wilton and San Diego will be my ‘targets’ but a sunday stroll in New York will certainly be an option, unless there’s a meter of snow of course.

Here is some Slackware related news for you.

I just uploaded a whole new batch of packages containing KDE Plasma5 for Slackware. The previous batch, KDE 5_18.10 is already two months old and has some library compatibility issues. The new KDE 5_18.12 for Slackware consists of KDE Frameworks 5.53.0, Plasma 5.14.4 and Applications 18.08.3. All this on top of Qt 5.11.3.
Compiled on the latest Slackware -current, it’s running smoothly here on my laptop.
I decided against upgrading to QT 5.12.0. This is a new LTS release, but I will wait for the other distros to find bugs in this new software. Next week, KDE will release KDE Applications 18.12.0 and that too is something I want to check a bit before releasing Slackware packages. Therefore it’s likely that a new batch of packages containing Qt 5.12 and KDE Applications 18.12 will see the light shortly after the New Year.

I updated some of the other packages in the periphery of the KDE software collection. In plasma-extra there’s new versions of kdeconnect-framework and wacomtablet. And in applications-extra I updated kdevelop, kdev-php, kdev-python and kmymoney to their latest versions.

There’s also a package removal. The kde-wallpapers package in plasma-extra originates in the old KDE4 era, and the new Plasma5 has its own wallpapers in the package plasma-workspace-wallpapers.

As always, the ‘ktown’ repository https://slackware.nl/alien-kde/ (rsync://slackware.nl/mirrors/alien-kde/) is the master for the KDE Plasma5 packages for Slackware-current. A fast mirror is http://slackware.uk/people/alien-kde/ (rsync://slackware.uk/people/alien-kde/).
The source code history for the ‘ktown’ package build framework can be found in git: https://git.slackware.nl/ktown/ . I will create a new “5_18.12” tag there today.

A fresh Plasma5 variant of the Slackware Live Edition based on liveslak is in the making and will be uploaded to https://slackware.nl/slackware-live/latest/ once it is ready and I have tested it properly. Check the ISO timestamp somewhere later this week.

Have fun! Eric

48 Comments

  1. Antoine

    Do you think you could bring back the multilib 32compat to the Plasma 5 based liveslak image? I know it would be too big for a DVD, but most people use large USB sticks for liveslak these days anyway.

  2. alienbob

    Indeed, the reason for not including the multilib packages in the Plasma5 ISO is that the size of the ISO needs to stay below the DVD media limit.
    But, I always publish the squashfs module for multilib here: https://slackware.nl/slackware-live/bonus/ – I have offered that as a separate download always, even when it also was part of the Plasma5 ISO.

    If you use liveslak on a USB stick then all you have to do is download the multilib module and copy it into the /liveslak/addons/ directory. It will then always be enabled on boot, by default.

  3. Antoine

    Nice! I did not know that. It might be worth it adding a short note about it on your main multilib page: https://wiki.alienbase.nl/doku.php?id=slackware:multilib

  4. alienbob

    It’s completely unrelated to that multilib page,

  5. Michael Langdon

    Thanks Eric! Flawless as usual (at least when I don’t make an error 🙂 ).

  6. Res

    Wow you have to wait till after the holidays. to, well, have your holiday 🙂

    KDE Q, if your desktop has been up for days and weeks, and you issue a shutdown (by start menu OR command line) does the box shutdown normally, AKA quickly? I’m still using kde485 and well, Ive re-purposed my UPS onto the TV ages back because KDE takes 15+ minutes to exit! so its a waste of time since UPS issues shutdown at lowbatt being 20% capacity – I get journal recovery either way. Ive had little corruption so far, but hope to eliminate it totally. only seems to happen if box up for more than 24 hours, if I shut it down after 5 hours, its like gnome – exits right away.

  7. acidtripper

    Thanks eric, installing it right now.

  8. Eduardo

    Thank you Eric! Downloading right now

  9. Jen

    This winter might be odd with the El Niño. It seems like when we’ve got a mild summer with few storms or hurricanes, we get slammed in the winter (see also 2015.) It’s been pretty cold and dry so far, though.

  10. anonymous

    Is KDE 5 not planned for Slackware 15?

    Many people have been using it for quite a while, from ktown.

  11. acidtripper

    Eric will you visit Pat in USA? any idea about kde5 introduction on slack15?

  12. alienbob

    anonymous, nothing has been decided yet for Slackware 15. But KDE4 is unmaintained and stale and needs to be removed as far as I am concerned.

    I expect that at least the KDE5 dependencies will be taken care of in Slackware 15 (qt5 and qt5-webkit in particular). In that case, and if Plasma5 is not getting added to Slackware 15, I may continue pushing updates to my ktown repository.

    I will definitely *not* be maintaining Plasma5 for ever if Pat decides to skip all of it.

  13. alienbob

    Res, I do not know what the shutdown time of Plasma5 is when you have kept it running for several days. I run Plasma5 on my livingroom PC and my laptop and both are down during the night.
    But shutdown is very fast after a day’s work.

  14. acidtripper

    Do you have any idea about this segmentation fault? https://pastebin.com/t62BDFTx happens when trying to start telepathy for example. when loggin to google account. what would be related to?

  15. alienbob

    acidtripper I have not seen any crashes on my laptop, however I am seeing crashes in kdeconnectd in virtual machines I am testing Plasma5 on.

  16. acidtripper

    I have that error on kdeconnectd. yesterday installed on bare metal t460 latest -current iso + new kde. and have that annoying error . Now installing on other machine, seems to be ok, no kdeconnectd error. but always the same lib which fails: libthread_db.so. no clue about it. baloo sometimes fail also. when extracting a tar.gz for example.

  17. Eduardo

    Eric, I’m running this Plasma release and everything seems to be running smoothly. Thanks!!
    I think it’s high time for Slackware to include Plasma 5. Thanks for all your effort.

  18. alienbob

    I recompiled qca-qt5 and that seems to solve the segfaults.
    I’ll also create a new 32bit package and upload those to the repository.

  19. acidtripper

    Thanks eric, qca-qt5 seems to solve that problems, testing it right now. Your work is very appreciated, and i hope Pat will take into account KDE5 introduction.
    We have many reasons to include it on slack15. Plasma is pretty mature, stable , qt libraries are being used a lot in new projects, and this issues are fine tuning. Keeping kde4 would be a thing of the past. Maybe a is a good idea to make some voting in web. Personally i see pretty straight forward Slackware 15 with kde5. Mature and stable as have always being.
    Thanks again! Gonzalo Navarro.

  20. anonymous

    Well, I don’t use Plasma, although I do use several KDE apps in my daily work.

    Although dropping Plasma while keeping kdelibs only doesn’t seem to make much sense either.

  21. rs

    Certainly won’t be a meter of snow in San Diego in January.. Is this your first visit to SD?

  22. alienbob

    rs, the meter of snow is a possibility during the Wilton/New York part of my visit. In San Diego I expect nice weather. I was there for a couple of weeks, several years back, but that was in July and it was sweltering hot. I hiked for a couple of sundays in Elfin Forest and that was tough. Needed drink a lot of water to cope.

  23. burdi01

    Playing with your Dec’18 Plasma5 Live ISO I found that Lumina segfaults in libQt5Widgets, just as it did in several of the previous incarnations of the Plasma5 Live ISO.

    Dec 12 13:10:27 darkstar dbus-daemon[2070]: [session uid=1000 pid=2068] Successfully activated service ‘org.a11y.Bus’
    Dec 12 13:10:29 darkstar kernel: lumina-desktop[2076]: segfault at 200090029 ip 00007f894917e625 sp 00007ffdf4633a30 error 4 in libQt5Widgets.so.5.11.3[7f89490cd000+35f000]
    Dec 12 13:10:29 darkstar kernel: Code: 8d 50 10 48 63 48 08 48 63 40 0c 48 8d 2c ca 4c 8d 2c c2 49 39 ed 74 45 0f 1f 44 00 00 48 8b 5d 00 48 85 db 74 2e 48 8b 43 08 40 20 01 74 24 48 89 df e8 6d 6e f8 ff 48 89 de 48 8b 10 48 89
    Dec 12 13:10:48 darkstar dbus-daemon[2340]: [session uid=0 pid=2338] Activating service name=’org.xfce.Xfconf’ requested by ‘:1.0’ (uid=0 pid=2347 comm=”xfce4-session “)

    No panic, just reporting …
    Regards, Dick 😀

  24. burdi01

    Hmm, googling for “lumina libqt5widgets” gives a number of hits …
    For as far as I read them none of these mention a segfault just after the Lumina startup …
    😀

  25. rs

    Yes, a poorly worded post on my part. I realized the comment about snow could be read in two ways a few minutes after I submitted, but it was too late to change it. Typing before bed.. July is certainly not the season to be hiking in Elfin forest. Those inland areas get quite hot at the peak of the summer. Especially in confined canyon areas, or when tropical humidity blows up this way from storms in the Gulf of California. It gets truly hot & tropical at those times. Unpleasantly so. Coastal areas are a lot more pleasant that time of year. Funny you should mention Elfin Forest. A rather obscure place. San Diego County is full of obscure but beautiful places & things.

  26. regnad kcin

    looking good. no noto-cjk worries. wacom tablet settings upgrade is quite welcome. continuous progress is occurring.

  27. alienbob

    I have uploaded a patched ‘plasma-desktop’ package to fix a crash in the taskmager when “application grouping” is enabled.
    I also compiled the latest Krita which was released yesterday and uploaded that.

    Next on the list will be the package recompiles that are required after Pat updated the ‘boost’ package in -current.

  28. acidtripper

    Great alienbob, I installed it. since i work with 2 monitors, one hd and other 1366×768. after hard day work. sometimes the grouping made crash panel. So this is a good fix, i think kde related bug or what do you think? .
    Also it would be interesting to check telepathy, i tried adding my google account and it doesn’t go online. it says something like “Checking SSL” and then it fails to auth.
    Which is the way to run kde with debug activated?
    Thanks.

  29. Jeffy

    Do you have the time to update your OpenJDK package?

    Thanks!

  30. alienbob

    Jeffy, seems I missed that one in October, thanks. I will add it to the TODO for this week.

  31. anonymous

    Sorry for the off-topic, but I don’t seem to be able to compile freetype from the public slackware git, on the latest -current.
    (root@machine: git remote -v
    origin git://bear.alienbase.nl/current.git (fetch)
    origin git://bear.alienbase.nl/current.git (push)
    )

    Patches are not gzipped, so zcat | patch fails.

    Maybe I should address this to Patrick, but I don’t think his repo is public.

  32. djs

    Just a heads up, harfbuzz-2.2.0 breaks building wine multilib, causes an error with freetype for the 32-bit build.
    I reverted to 1.9.0 and it is working. The 64 bit configure works fine with the newer harfbuzz, but fails on the 32bit.

  33. anonymous

    >>Just a heads up, harfbuzz-2.2.0 breaks building wine multilib, causes an error with freetype for the 32-bit build.
    I reverted to 1.9.0 and it is working. The 64 bit configure works fine with the newer harfbuzz, but fails on the 32bit.

    I confirm!

  34. alienbob

    anonymous, so just gzip that patch yourself man! Don’t be a wuss.

    The git repository is mine, not Slackware’s. I commit every distro update to git, I use a script for that which gunzips all patches in the Slackware-current and unpacks a lot of other stuff before committing to git. This allows you to read the patches online and also track their modifications.
    If you want to use my git repository to rebuild the Slackware packages, you will have to run the ‘recompress.sh’ script first. That script reverses all my actions on gzipped files.
    You can find it here: https://git.slackware.nl/current/tree/recompress.sh .

  35. anonymous

    >>Just a heads up, harfbuzz-2.2.0 breaks building wine multilib, causes an error with freetype for the 32-bit build.

    You need 32-bit graphite2.

    Damn, this cryptic error message as actually due to freetype linked to harfbuzz, which is linked to graphite 2.

    For some reason, slackpkg install-new doesn’t didn’t install graphite2-compat32. I don’t know why, maybe it is a bug in slackpkg+.

    >>anonymous, so just gzip that patch yourself man! Don’t be a wuss.

    yeah, that’s what I did! And I did found the recompress.sh. Just thought it would be a bit more `self-documenting’, as the GNU people like to say, to mention it somewhere, like in a readme file.

  36. anonymous

    Indeed, for example, on my machine, at the moment,

    slackpkg search multilib

    lists

    uninstalled multilib lmdb-compat32-0.9.22-x86_64-2compat32

    On the other hand, if I command:

    slackpkg install-new

    Looking for NEW packages to install. Please wait… DONE

    No packages match the pattern for install.

    So don’t trust slackpkg install-new too much.

  37. alienbob

    anonymous, sorry, I can not take you seriously. Fuck GNU people.

    Read the fucking documentation is one. I have told and written uncounted times that “slackpkg install-new” only works with OFFICIAL SLACKWARE PACKAGES. You need to “slackpkg install ” to install new packages in a 3rd party repository.

    And two: Use a name or a nick instead of the fucking cowardly anonymous. This is the last time I talk to “anonymous”.

    Yes I had a bad night, thank you for asking. I am *very* unforgiving to comments like this before my first coffee.

  38. regnad kcin

    actually I just noticed that if I display a folder content (like Desktop) on the desktop, the content is not properly refreshed (not the actual content of the folder) and the icons are not clickable. I havent looked into it further yet, as I am busy and it is only a minor issue.

  39. regnad kcin

    well, if I set the “Specify a folder:” dialog radiobutton and field to “file///home/usernamehere/Desktop” , the folder display works fine.

  40. anonymous

    Hey, Eric, this wasn’t a complaint. You’re doing an excellent thing for us all.

    My comment about slackpkg wasn’t a complaint either, I was just thinking about someone googling djs’s comment about ‘harfbuzz-2.2.0 breaks building wine multilib,’. So I just posed a solution here for the people who find it after me.

    Even so, it wouldn’t have been slackpkg’s problem, but maybe I need to suggest Matteo Rossini to add this feature (install new packages) to slackpkgplus.

    Just ignore this as a metadata.

    P.S.: I wrote my true email when commenting this thread, and WordPress even loaded my Gravatar. My nickname is Lockywolf. I just don’t like webspiders trawling the net for my personal data.

  41. alienbob

    The “slackpkg install-new” command works by scanning the Slackware ChangeLog.txt for lines that have “Added.” in them. This allows slackpkg to create a list of all packages that got added between one release and the next.

    This is functionality that can not be expanded to 3rd party repositories. In those cases you will have to use “slackpkg install <3rdpartyrepo>” to get a list of the packages you do not have installed locally.

  42. alienbob

    This blog has no place for people who want or need to stay anonymous. In such a case, you can try emails.

  43. Gérard Monpontet

    dep, ‘json-glib’ is in current, now, Eric 😉

  44. Jeffy

    Thanks much for the updated OpenJDK/JRE packages.

  45. Jen

    Hey thanks for the openjdk update! Happy holidays!

  46. Zoltan

    Hi Eric!
    On current I installed the Plasma 5.14.5.
    After the startx I got the messages:
    Error: Failed to load the shared libraries libKF5Archive.so.5 not found,
    and Failed to lod the shared libraries libKF5GlobalAccel.so.5 not found.
    How can I solve that ?
    Thanks Zoltan

  47. alienbob

    Zoltan, did you literally mean, you *only* installed the Plasma 5.14.5 packages on top of Slackware and have omitted the Frameworks packages? The missing library is part of karchive which is a Frameworks package,

  48. Zoltan

    Hi Eric!
    I downloded all from the directory latest, except two packages. Now works fine.
    Many thanks!

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