My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

KDE SC 4.11.2 and new networkmanagement applet for testing

As part of the 4.11 development cycle, the KDE Software Compilation 4.11.2 has been released yesterday.

I built the packages but (no) thanks to not feeling well, I was not able to get them ready in parallel with the source code release. Not a big deal really, since this is a minor bugfix release. The upgrade will be straightforward.

There is one thing I want to mention however. A Redhat team (as far as I know at least) is working on a replacement for the networkmanagement widget (which you can use in KDE to manage the Network Manager connections). The new  Plasma applet is written in QML/C++ and is meant to be a drop-in replacement for the older widget-based networkmanagement applet. The new applet is optimized for Plasma active (the touch interface of KDE) but should also work well with the Plasma desktop UI.

To this purpose, I have added three new packages to the kde/ directory: libmm-qt, libnm-qt and plasma-nm. If you install these, you will be able to add a new networkmanagement widget and remove the old NM widget. I have only tested this briefly on my own desktop with wired network (without issues), but I have no idea how it behaves on a laptop with wireless. Apparently this applet will be the way forward, so I added the packages for preliminary testing.

How to upgrade to KDE 4.11.2 ?

Note: you have to be running Slackware-current! These packages are not suited for Slackware 14.0.

You will find all the installation/upgrade instructions that you need in the accompanying README file. That README also contains basic information for KDE recompilation using the provided SlackBuild script You are strongly advised to read and follow these installation/upgrade instructions!

Where to find packages for KDE 4.11.2 ?

Download locations are listed below (you will find the sources in ./source/4.11.2/ and packages in /current/4.11.2/ subdirectories). 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

19 Comments

  1. Adriel Oliveira

    Hello,

    I want know if the newest version of kde will be on next stable version of Slackware (14.1).

    Thanks. =)

  2. gmg

    Thanks, Eric. 😉

  3. alienbob

    Hi Adriel,

    This has been asked (and answered) a couple of times already but you may have missed that.

    Slackware 14.1 is sticking with KDE 4.10.5.
    I will keep providing KDE packages for newer releases. Eventually a KDE upgrade will land in slackware-current but that will be _after_ Slackware 14.1.

    Eric

  4. Adriel Oliveira

    In fact I missed it, Eric.

    Thanks a lot for answered again. =)

  5. Niki Kovacs

    Hi Eric,

    In terms of mere stability and solidity, would you rather recommend to stick with 4.10.5 on Slackware 14.1, or go for 4.11.x?

  6. Oscar Noah Rosas

    Thanks Eric, This version seems to work better =)

  7. alienbob

    Hi Niki

    I can not really comment on preference with regard to stability and solidity – both releases are solid and stable.
    I added a new network management appet to KDE 4.11.2 which may be nice to play with, but a lot of the changes went under the hood. Faster, less memory-hungry etc… just read the release notes of the 4.11 series.
    I do not use KDE 4.10.5 anywhere at the moment, I upgraded all my own machines to KDE 4.11.

    Eric

  8. cwizardone

    Since installing 4.11.2 the panel clock only shows the UTC time (GMT) and nothing I can do with the KDE settings will correct that. However, this is not a problem with Xfce, so it is not the system clock.

  9. alienbob

    cwizardone, you mean the digital clock in the panel? In its configuration dialog (right-click on it) you can set a default timezone to display in the “Time Zones” section. Also you can check as many additional timezones as you want,. and their localtimes will additionally be shown when you left-click the clock.

    Eric

  10. cwizardone

    Yes, the digital clock in the panel, and, yes, I tried changing the configuration dialog. Didn’t change a thing.

  11. Raul

    Hi Eric,
    I receive the following error when trying to rsync
    rsync: failed to connect to alien.slackbook.org (207.223.116.211): Connection refused (111)
    rsync error: error in socket IO (code 10) at clientserver.c(128) [Receiver=3.1.0]

    I had never had this kind of issue before, i have tried several ISP services and i get the same error, please if you have any hint to sort this issue just let me know. Thanks in advance

  12. alienbob

    If you read my latest blog post Raul, you will realize that not all services on the hosting server (slackbook.org) have returned to normal.
    Rsync to alien.slackbook.org will become available again, but taper.alienbase.nl will probably offer better download speeds anyway…

    Eric

  13. Raul

    thank you very much Eric, i will try taper.alienbase.nl and i will pay more atention to what i read now on…

  14. Floreal

    Thanks for this new version ! It correct the bugs I had with KDE 4.10.5. With this version I don’t notice any bug… So perfect !

  15. alienbob

    Hi Floreal

    I am glad KDE 4.11.2 works well for you.
    By the way your web site http://www.conseilsencuisine.fr/ made my mouch water…

    Cheers, Eric

  16. gmg

    ark , need rebuild on new libarchive current package 😉

  17. alienbob

    Hi gmg

    I rebuilt and uploaded packages for ark, and also added rebuilt packages for calligra. Slackware’s calligrawords was broken because it depended on a library which was removed after upgrading to the marble package of KDE 4.11.2.

  18. gmg

    Thanks , Eric 😉

  19. houzi

    Eric – Thanks for your continued contributions. I am ever so thankful.
    I wasn’t sure if I should mention it, but I hope it will be of benefit to tell you that ever since this KDE release, my laptop wifi has been quite flaky at system startup.
    Before, I was using standard network manager and everything was rock solid. After this upgrade, the wifi will not connect the first time it connects to a given AP.
    The little applet in the system trey says something about “waiting for authentication” and seems to be stuck in some unrecoverable state. I’ve recently discovered that restarting /etc/rc.d/networkmanager will solve it.

    Please let me know if you want more details. Just tell me what you want and I’ll mail it all to you.

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