As you most certainly noticed, there was virtually no movement with regard to building Slackware packages after the announcement of the KDE Software Compilation 4.7.0 …but today that changes. Let me point you to a (huge… it’s triple the old number) set of KDE 4.7.0 packages for Slackware.
The 4.7.0 release comes in the form of many more tarballs than usual. I needed to find time to re-write the KDE.SlackBuild we use to compile all of the KDE-related packages, and the holiday period was the first time I found some time to think and work on the script. I took the modular X.Org script and modeled the new KDE.SlackBuild after that. The advantage with the new script is that new source tarballs can easily be incorporated into the build framework now, and the new package that would be created from that source takes only a few extra lines of configuration to be added. Unfortunately, writing and testing took a while, and you had to wait for a complete set of packages a little longer.
The obvious advantage to you, the end user of the modular KDE in Slackware, is having more control over what you want to install or leave out if your primary interest lies with KDE’s applications, not with the desktop environment as a whole.
I want to stress the point that you have to be running Slackware 13.37 (32bit or 64bit) or (preferably) slackware-current in order to use these packages. The packages themselves were built on slackware-current. Note that between 13.37 and -current, there was an incompatible Perl upgrade which may cause some of the “language bindings” to fail on Slackware 13.37 (causing for instance plasmoids to break if those were programmed in perl).
Please read the accompanying README file for installation and upgrade instructions! Be prepared for some bumps in the transition from KDE 4.6 to 4.7… I had some crashes but they always occur right after login (kwin, kded, nepomuk-stub) but they disappeared after I quit KDE, deleted the KDE related “*username*” directories in /tmp and /var/tmp, and logged on again.
Some of the highlights of these KDE packages:
- PIM (kdepim and kdepim-runtime) is finally back in sync with the overall KDE development cycle and is now at version 4.7.0 too.
- There are several updated dependencies since KDE 4.6.5 if you had that installed already. KDE 4.7.0 is a big stride away from 4.6. You’ll have to update akonadi, phonon, shared-desktop-ontologies, soprano.
- The list of updated dependencies with regard to the stable Slackware 13.37 is a bit bigger: PyQt, QScintilla, akonadi, attica, ebook-tools, hunspell, libdbusmenu-qt, phonon, shared-desktop-ontologies, sip, soprano, system-config-printer, virtuoso-ose.
- Not part of Slackware 13.37 at all (yet): grantlee, herqq (added for KDE 4.7.0), libatasmart, libbluedevil, libssh, sg3_utils, udisks.
- You will find two useful new applications as “KDE extragear”, compared to Slackware’s own version of KDE: I already added bluedevil to my 4.6.5 package-set. Bluedevil is the new KDE bluetooth stack with a nice GUI, based on the BlueZ libraries already present in Slackware. I added its package to the “kde” directory. It integrates a lot better into KDE than the GTK application “blueman” which is now primarily meant to be used with the non-KDE desktop environments. And with KDE 4.7.0 I have included kplayer, a KDE front-end to MPlayer. The ugly “gmplayer” GUI of MPlayer has been abandoned by its own developers, so there was a need for a better GUI. Even though I really like the Qt-based UMPlayer front-end, I think kplayer is a better choice for KDE users, since it integrates properly into KDE.
The KDE 4.7.0 packages for Slackware 13.37 & current are available for download from my “ktown” repository and several mirrors. The Indonesian mirror may need a bit of time to sync up but Willy is usually very fast with that:
- http://alien.slackbook.org/ktown/4.7.0/ (the master repository), rsync URI: ?rsync://alien.slackbook.org/alien/ktown/4.7.0/ (note that the rsync URI has changed)
- http://taper.alienbase.nl/mirrors/alien-kde/4.7.0/ (my fast mirror), rsync URI: rsync://taper.alienbase.nl/mirrors/alien-kde/4.7.0/
- http://repo.ukdw.ac.id/alien-kde/4.7.0/ (willysr’s Indonesian mirror), rsync URI: rsync://repo.ukdw.ac.id/alien-kde/4.7.0/
Have fun! Eric
This is amazing! Got something to do tonight 😀
Thank you Eric!
Great!!!
But, I have some questions…
What about some “old” packages? For instance: kdebase-workspace was renamed to kde-workspace (apparently) as well as kdebase-runtime to kde-runtime, kdebingings was splitted.
The README file just mentions to remove polkit-kde-1, what about this others?
By the way, thanks :).
@Francisco-
Excellent comment! I always remove all traces of the previous KDE before installing the new so it did not occur to me consciously that some of the old big packages have to be removed because they no longer exist in 4.7.0.
I will update the README right away.
Thanks, Eric
Will we see again e new version of KDE officially in Slackware?
Thanks for all your work Eric.
Thanks, UKDW’s repo has finished mirroring 🙂
Just woke up this morning and saw this great news. Thanks!!
Thanks Eric! You’re simply the best!
Thanks Eric.
Is it time for new libreoffice now ? 😉
Eric, you make this a good morning 😉
Thanks again, and congratulations to the KDE Team.
@y0g1
Indeed, I am already using a 64-bit LibreOffice 3.4.2 on my Slackware laptop, and last night the 32-bit packages should have completed building as well (still have to check the status of that build).
Eric
I discovered last night that the strigidaemon won’t run. Or, it will start but when it starts indexing it segfaults after a few seconds… anyone else saw this too?
Eric
Thank you so much, it’s working great here. KDE is really awesome and so is your work packaging it.
Thank you very much.
I have just a problem with sound : KDE sounds do not work, and amarok too. But VLC or mplayer run fine.
I get this message with amarok :
WARNING: bool Phonon::FactoryPrivate::createBackend() phonon backend plugin could not be loaded
Thanks Eric for your work
No problem here with strigi/nepomuk
but as toto no sound in kde, vlc ok
any ideas?
thanks everyone
another issue maybe related, kplayer segfaults when started…
thanks again
Another problem : impossible to leave KDE, unless I use Ctrl-Alt-Backspace
@toto –
According to someone who sent me an email I need to create two new packages because of the update to phonon which was required for KDE 4.7.0: phonon-backend-gstreamer and phonon-backend-xine . Otherwise you will indeed have sound issues in some applications.
I will add those tonight after I get home.
Eric
Strange, i have no problem with sound on KDE and also Amarok works (i built the latest 2.4.3 though)
i have installed KDE 4.7.0 it’s look great on my desktop.
but i have a problem when i want to open libre office.
here the error code “The application cannot be started.
[home/bluebird/.libreoffice/3/user/extentions/shared/registry/com.sun.star.comp.dployment.configuration.PackageRegistryBackend/registered_packages.db] berkeley db error (0): Db::open: Invalid argument”
i can’t work if libreoffice won’t work 😀
Eric if your having trouble getting kross-interpreters to build disable the ruby part as it is incompatible with ruby 1.9
I also recommend installing the jdk while building to ensure any java components are built.
And I also noticed you had the digikam slack-desc in there so if your thinking of package the latest version and want the current version of opencv to behave here is a patch to make it install in lib64
http://wildwizard.abnormalpenguin.com/linux/slackware/libopencv-2.3.0-libdir.patch
PS thought you would keep the packages bundled not split …
same here, i can’t leave kde until Ctrl-Alt-Backspace
@elangbieroe
That is not a KDE problem I think… it is an issue I also had when I switched from the prebuilt binaries supplied by the developers, to my own packages.
Or perhaps you still had the LibreOffoce quickstarter running when you upgraded?
After deleting the cache databases your LibreOffice programs should work again (close all LibreOffice programs first!);
$ find ~/.libreoffice -name registry -exec rm -rf {} \;
Eric
@Wild Wizard
Your remark about kross-compilers is worth pursuing. It takes another 5 weeks before 4.7.1 gets released, so perhaps I should not wait that long and try building it earlier.
Yes, I had already added a slack-desc file for the Digikam package because initially I wanted to create a package. But it requires opencv… yet another new package, so I decided not to include it after all.
About the bundle vs. split decision – I think it will be impossible in the long term to fight the modularization of KDE. As you can see on the ftp servers, the promised monolithic tarballs are not even made available. And it requires patching of cmake configuration files to bundle the sub-packages together – and I do not have the time to find out what needs to be patched.
Eric
How can I permanently remove the dolphin and kmclient from the taskbar? I can remove them, but they are back on every startup?
BTW, no problem leaving KDE here. And about the sound issue, it is nothing unusual here, because I have 2 sound devices (onboard and nvidia hdmi), and Alsa randomly choses the default one. So sometimes there is no sound, usually only in non KDE apps. But it can be solved by tweeking the alsa config files, or by changing the output device in apps where that option is available
Even though i have built my own digiKam, OpenCV and Amarok i think if it’s included in the extragear, it would be nicer for most users
Eric, I haven’t understand if you plan to build Digikam 2.0 package or if you decided to exclude it.
@David –
I am not going to include Digikam. If I do, and Pat Volkerding would add KDE 4.7.0 to Slackware later on, I don’t want to force him to add too many new packages…
But I think I will create OpenCV and Digikam packages for my regular repository http://slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/
Eric
Simply amazing… even Firefox is better looking
IMO, OpenCV library will be used in lots of applications in the future, so i guess adding it will give more advantage rather than disadvantages for future Slackware release.
@Eric:
Please include qjson as well if you plan to build digiKam as it will enable Export to Facebook plugin which i think most people would love it. It was previously on Kipi-Plugins package, but since now it’s being included in the digiKam source, that’s the only requirements needed to enable it.
Hi Eric,
Thanks for the great work as always. I have silly question that hopefully isn’t too stupid. I know your README is written from an upgrade standpoint but I need to do a fresh install of Slackware anyway so I was thinking of installing current (iso’s from your mirror current script) without KDE and then installing your KDE packages directly, skipping the need to upgrade them. Do you see any flaws with this approach?
@Mike
There’s no flaw with your approach. It’s much more simpler and time efficient actually
@Mike –
The README focuses on upgrading your existing KDE, that’s right, but it also has the line “Below are the steps you need to take to install or upgrade to KDE 4.7.0”. I.e. the same commands shown there will just as easily perform a fresh install if you did not have any KDE package installed previously.
Eric
Sound work fine but not configurable in system configuration (when i click to phonon backend the program die)
At start 2 program crash: notification and kded.
When i try to exit the windows become dark but don’t exit
re creating the meta packages,patching the CMakefiles which I know the KDE guys have hinted at would have to be the hard way, the easy way is to give the same destdir when running make install to the modules you want to put together and then makepkg on that.
Obviously though with dependencies you need to install some modular packages during the build but they can be later removed.
Now all the problems with sound and exit have disapeared after installing the two additional phonon packages.
the phonon packages solved my problems too
kde works flawlessly
Thanks Eric
I upgraded today to KDE4.7.0. Deleted the temp folders and startx. plasma-desktop crashes. Starting plasma-desktop manually fails too.
plasma-netbook works, but I don’t want netbook UI in my dual headed desktop.
Any pointers?
Ignore my last message. Deleting the old .kde folder fixed this.
I found (maybe) another problem : in the package herqq-1.0.0-x86_64-1alien.txz the libraries are in /usr/lib (and not /usr/lib64).
@toto –
You are absolutely right. I have patched the SlackBuild and rebuilt the 64-bit herqq package. I will upload it in a few minutes.
Thanks for reporting, Eric
Great work, Eric! Thanks yet again. I had a few glitches, but nothing serious. Just had to reboot twice after considering the .new files.
It may be just me, but everything seems brighter, clearer and cleaner on the Desktop and with all apps I’ve used so far.
Yay, thanks Eric 🙂
It feels a bit faster.
Now i only need to upgrade libktorrent and ktorrent.
I saw the leftover slack-desc for them.
After the installation of phonon package kmix and notification daemon crash
root@roberto:~# KCrash: Application ‘kmix’ crashing…
KCrash: Attempting to start /usr/lib/kde4/libexec/drkonqi from kdeinit
sock_file=/root/.kde/socket-roberto/kdeinit4__0
QSocketNotifier: Invalid socket 14 and type ‘Read’, disabling…
In system configuration i can’t configure energy saving (i’ve no profile and i can’t add anything)
Me again.. 🙂
Another package you may consider to remove is konq-plugins. It’s part of kde-baseapps now.
Francisco
@Francisco –
Ah yes… I had overlooked that. Thanks! Time to remove the separate konq-plugins package.
Eric
@roberto –
Please do not run KDE as root…
Eric
Excellent job Eric! You took a well written, but difficult code base and cleanly, flawlessly (apparent to me anyhow) compiled a new set of Slack-packs out of it. Thus far, this build is running on my Slackware64-VERYcurrent AMD Phenom 8400 crate better than any KDE 4.X.Y has to date. I think they even finally got Akonadi into decent shape w Google! Again, Good work Alien Bob.
Hi, Eric,
Thanks for the KDE packages! Just for the record, KMail and akonadi, which were working though slow with version 4.6.1 and 1.5.3 is much more buggy now. Simply trying to delete a mail makes the whole stuff hang. The GUI is still responsive, but KMail can’t seem to display a mail content anymore, nor send a mail. I tried to revert to akonadi 1.5.3 but I guess the kdepim packages must be recompiled against it as kmail crashes when trying to display a mail with it.
I’m going to wait a bit for next version of akonadi and kdepim to see how it evolves but if trend goes on, after having been a faithfull Kmail user for 6 years, I’ll probably move to TBird as the current state of the tool is just too dire. 🙁
@eric: sometime i need to use root…
Is the superuser the problem?
@Eric
Thanks, for ALL your works.
@rvdboom
I must unfortunately confirm that KMail in 4.7.0 is horrible mistake… It take me two days to make it work on minimal acceptable level. But in process, I’ve lost several mails, and lot of nerves. Bugs I found so far:
– It is slow, really slow. It can take several seconds to read folder with 70 just after oomkiller kills X, so it was probably bigger.
– Akonadi Nepomuk indexing eats loots of RAM. On my 2GB RAM machine it eat >800MB. You must also add memory usage by dozens of other akonadi services and mysql
– Messed encoding in replies – even in generated headers!
– It cannot save big mail. It can be workarounded by setting “max_allowed_packet” to much bigger value in my.cnf (akonadi ones).
– It set by its own “old mail removal time” so I’ve lost some of my mail archives.
– It crashes and freezes sometimes.
– Worse HTML rendering.
– Cannot synchronize properly old kmail maildir.
– Often stops POP3 connections.
– A probably more, I can remember now.
And for the end one tip. For me better works system wide mysql rather akonadi separate one. It don’t why, just after switch to global one kmail begins to run slightly faster (but still slow).
@Eric
Blog update seems to eat some text in the middle of my previous comment.
Indeed strigidaemon crashes after some time.
Non of the clock applets load on my (64 bit) Slackware 13.37
plasmaviewer clock complains about the plugin being unversioned
@svily0
Try installing kdeedu to fix your clock applets
@Willy Sudiarto Raharjo
Thanks a million!
Installing kdepimlibs fixed the applet. Never had any of the kdepim* packages installed before…
Excellent work Eric!
I don’t know why people keep picking on gmplayer. Sure it’s ugly, but it works and the most important part is there, mplayer. Pushing for it to be dropped from Slack (which is how I read your constant comments in this regard) as it has been from several distros will just make us have to install extra packages.
@Eric: Now I see what the modular thing is all about. I was scratching my head about how to compile kde-telepathy and easily keep up with future releases. Just adding it as a new module to your kde slackbuild scripts got it done. Thanks for this great script!
I’ve just downloaded a minimal set of packages of kde 4 from ktown using this script (made by me) http://pastebin.slackadelic.com/p/gn3u1y26.html. Yes, just the minimal, 92M… no konsole, no kate, no games, no pim, no development… no almost nothing and all i get is http://imagebin.org/166884 😉
@escaflown –
Yes it is that easy. Four steps of preparation:
(1) dump the source anywhere below the ./src directory; you can even create a subdirectory “escaflown” there to keep your stuff separated from the standard tarballs, the script will find the tarball regardless.
(2) add a line with the base name of that tarball (like “kde-telepathy”) to the module file you think fits best (one of the files below ./modules. Note that the script builds software in the same order as the names appear in those module files. If you decide to create a new module that’s fine too and then you can build that using “./KDE.SlackBuild mymodule”)
(3) If the new source needs to be a separate package, then add its name to the file “./modularize” otherwise the resulting binaries will be added to the main module.
(4) Write a slack-desc file for the new source if you intend to create a separate package for it
Then go ahead and compile! Suppose you added kde-telepathy to the “kdenetwork” module, then the build command would be:
# ./KDE.SlackBuild kdenetwork:kde-telepathy
I.e. modulename and the split-off package name separated by a colon.
Eric
I’ve problems with Amarok 2.4.3 and all software that use kipi plugins.
Amarok start but crashed immediately (i’m using ffmpeg-r22900-i486-1alien package), and software like digikam (digikam-0.10.0-i486-1alien) don’t start because of the assence of kipi-plugins, but i’ve installed libkipi-4.7.0-i486-1alien and kipi-plugins-0.3.0-i486-1alien. Exist any solution to my problems?
Installed the 4.7.0 as the README stated and when I tried to login got a segfault. I use a dual-screen configuration with some extra plasma thingies so I figured it was something with that.
After removing ~/.kde/share/config/plasma* I was able to login and had to resetup some stuff (wallpapers and panel sizes that I’ve noticed so far).
Guess this is a migrational issue.
Also, concerning the README should you *first* remove the packages and than do the upgradepkg … ?
@zeroberto (and maybe others)
“How can I permanently remove the dolphin and kmclient from the taskbar? I can remove them, but they are back on every startup?”
In ~/.kde4/share/config/plasma-desktop-appletsrc find and delete
[Containments][1][Applets][5][Configuration][Launchers]
browser=preferred://browser, , ,\s
filemanager=preferred://filemanager, , ,\s
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=123833
PS: no more captcha on the comments?
@F4bick
You should recompile Amarok after you upgraded to this KDE since all libraries has been upgraded, so by recompiling it again, it will be built against the correct library version.
Try upgrading to ffmpeg-0.6.1 built by Eric on his repository. That’s the latest version available, even though newer version upstream has been released, but it worked on most cases.
Digikam 2.0.0 is out and it’s no longer needed libkipi, since all of the dependencies are included in digiKam’s source.
Hi!
I’ve got a (maybe) noob question:
Can a Slackware-Current setup be considered like a “rolling-release” OS (e.g.: ArchLinux)? Or, when a new Slackware version is released (e.g.: from 13.1 to 13.37), there’s also a “significant switch” from “old-current” to “new-current”?…
I ask this just because it seems that a current setup is preferable when someone wants to use new packages like these (e.g.: KDE 4.7.0) pckages…
Sorry for my english…
And by the way: thanks Eric for the good work! 🙂
Hi Stewie,
You can indeed view slackware-current as a “rolling release” of sorts.
The development process of Slackware goes like this:
There is *always* a slackware-current. At some points in time (roughly every 9 months) a lot of effort is put into polishing and stabilizing slackware-current, and the resulting directory tree with all the sources and packages is then copied to a new directory tree “slackware-$NEWRELEASE”.
From that point on, the NEWRELEASE directory no longer gets new functionality, only security fixes. This causes an immediate divergence between the -current and the release directories.
The -current directory gets left alone for a few weeks (so that people can play with the new stable release and Pat gets some rest) and when the time is right, package updates will get applied again.
As a Slackware user, you can run slackware-current forever without ever stabilizing into an official release.
The only warning you’ll get from us is this:
We expect that those who run slackware-current are experienced Linux users. We expect that you are able to handle any breakage that could occur whenever some software gets a bad upgrade – the Slackware forum at http://linuxquestions.org and the ##slackware IRC channel at Freenode are sources of help in those cases.
We consider slackware-current to be a development effort and its users are essentially our beta-testers.
The upgrade process between the official releases is properly documented, and supported. Upgrading slackware-current is something that should be done with care at all times (by following the ChangeLog.txt), but if you apply updates whenever they are released, that process is easy and straight-forward.
Cheers, Eric
Hi Eric!
Don’t know why, but with your packages i can mount usb drives only in read only mode.
If I want rw mode, i have to do it with
#mount -t ntfs-3g
is that a bug or what?
@ozone89 –
I can’t believe that with stock Slackware you actually were able to mount these NTFS drives read/write in X-Window. Did you actually try?
In A KDE or other X GUI desktop which tries to automount removable devices for you, a NTFS drive can only be mounted read/write if the automounter uses ntfs-3g. You can accomplish that by creating the following symlink:
# ln -s /sbin/mount.ntfs-3g /sbin/mount.ntfs
This is an issue you will also find in other distros by the way.
Eric
Hey guys, should I first remove the old packages stated in the readme and then upgrade/install new?
@Armin
Why this question? Don’t you trust the instructions in my README? The steps are written down there.
Eric
Thanks a lot for the answer Eric!…
I don’t know if I’ve got the necessary experience to handle with an “everlasting” current setup, but I think I can run the risk and give it a try…
Just one last question: by what you said I tought that, if someone wants to avoid problems, the best moment to pass from a “stable-setup” to a “current-setup” is when a new slackware version has just been released (and freshly installed)…
Am I right?…
Thanks in advance 😀
Best regards,
Stewie
@alienbob: Ofcourse I trust you (heck, I’ve been following your KDE series for as long as I can remember). But the way I see it:
package = some files
upgrade package = replace/add files
delete package = delete files
So a better question might be: will any files installed by the new KDE series be deleted when I delete those old packages? I’m guessing not but would really like to know how can you be sure (I’m also a vanilla-newbie maintainer so appreciate knowledge).
@Armin
The “removepkg” command checks whether the files it is about to delete are also presnt in another package. If it finds that the file is part of another package that is installed on the computer, it will not remove the file, and instead emit a warning “File was found in another package. Skipping.”.
That is why it is safe to run the removepkg commands after installing the new packages.
In fact it is a “best practice” to first install new packages followed by removing obsoleted packages. Take the case of “util-linux” which got replaced by “util-linux-ng” last year (different name but identical package contents). If you would have run “removepkg util-linux” before installing the new package, your system would be dead on the spot because all your essential utilities would have been removed… you would need to boot from a Slackware install CD to fix that.
Eric
@Stewie –
Yes, the least adventurous process to jump the “slackware-current” band wagon is to install or upgrade to the latest stable release and then use slackpkg to advance to a slackware-current installation.
Skipping a stable release in an upgrade is not a good idea. It will usually cost you a lot of trouble to get your computer back in shape and stable.
Eric
@eric
look, I swear, with stock KDE I can mount NTFS drives as soon they appear on KDE Periferial Plasmoid
I don’t have automount (i hate it), but whenever i use your KDE packages, i lose the ability to mount ntfs disks in KDE
I’ll try your trick anyway, but I think you should ask Pat how he manages to do so, so that you could insert proper modification into your packages 😉
P.S.: okay, your suggestion did the trick 🙂
Sorry Eric, don’t want to be annoying… just want to be sure…
So, if I upgrade my 13.37 (stable release) to a current setup in this days, I shouldn’t face too much problems… because the important thing to avoid is an upgrade from an old release to a current setup (e.g.: from 13.1 to current, while the 13.37 has already been released)…
Did I undestand you well?…
Thanks again,
Stewie
In addition to NTFS problems.
I still have Windows 7 partitions on my laptop’s drive. In your 4.5.x and 4.6.x everything is OK but in 4.7.x I have a strange issue that made me switch back to 4.6.
The issue is:
Starting Kde takes longer than 4.6 and when I’m checking ~/.xsession-errors it stalls for about 90s and finally give kde4 UPnP device entered:
then it continues or not…(sometimes it just stops there) and the logging screen stays on with the last loading icon (desktop).
Same thing happens when starting dolphin or any program that scans devices.
Dolphin loads up, shows it’s UI, list places/devices in the left hand side panel and there is a my NTFS partition on the list. then when I try to click on anything I notice that it’s frozen. The window stays there for about 90s and returns to life with an the same error spit to console (if started from the console) – kde4 UPnP device entered:
Hi Stewie
Yes, you understood me correctly. Upgrading from one version to the next is easy and well-documented, and supported. Skipping a release (say, by going from 13.0 directly to 13.37 is not supported and therefore you have to do this manually. That does not mean it is impossible to do, it’s just more work.
Upgrading from Slackware 13.37 to -current is easy. Configure slackpkg to use one of the slackware-current mirrors (take care to pick a URL that matches your installation: 32bit or 64bit) and run “slackpkg update ; slackpkg install-new ; slackpkg upgrade-all”.
When that finishes you are running slackware-current…
Eric
@a.key
Perhaps I should remove the UPnP support which was added to KDE 4.7 (through the herqq package). I noticed the long startup times too, perhaps it is related. You can try deleting the herqq package to see if that improves things.
Eric
Hi Eric!
Essentially my fear was that making the upgrade from 13.37 to -current in these days, instead of those days when 13.37 was released, could cause some troubles… but, with your answer, you have clarified everything…
Thank you very much!… 😀
Stewie
Alien, it was not clear at my last post and I want to make it clear: thanks a lot for your excellent work. Attempting to build manually all those things I grab from you would be a lot of trouble. You add a lot to the Slackware experience.
hi,
I was about to self-update CLucene library, which in -Current is stuck at 0.9.21b, while they have moved up to 2.3.2. Reason of the update is an attempt to compile Tomahawk, the new social media player.
Checking for dependencies, I noticed the only packages depending on CLucene are soprano and kde-workspace, from KDE4.7 (for the solid daemons)
So I guess if I update this library, I will break something in KDE 🙁
In a pre-4.7 era I would have downloaded sources and slackbuilds for those 2 packages and I would have recompiled them on my own using the new library version. Is this still a valid option with 4.7 or everything has to be compiled in its proper sequence, even if the other binary packages are already present, meaning that if I want to upgrade any system library, the whole KDE has to be recompiled?
Hi LoneStar
With my modular KDE 4.7.0 you can still build a single package.
For kde-workspace which is part of kdebase (see the content of the file “4.7.0/source/kde/modules/kdebase”) you would run the following command in the kde source directory:
# ./KDE.SlackBuild kdebase:kde-workspace
Eric
Upgraded to KDE 4.7 on my Slackware 13.37 and worked like a charm.
great work Eric… you are always best..
~Navin
Hi there!
After installing KDE 4.7.0, when I run slackpkg upgrade-all, some of the updates are related to KDE 4.5.5. Is there any way to stop that from happening?
Thanks a lot.
@GreenTuxer
I’m sure there is a way to blacklist packages from being updated with slackpkg, though i have never used it myself.
Looking at man slackpkg’ i can see it mentions:
/etc/slackpkg/blacklist
Looks fairly straight forward to add packages
🙂
Just add this single line to the file “/etc/slackpkg/blacklist”:
[0-9]+alien
Then slackpkg will ignore all my packages and you will no longer get prompted to update KDE back to 4.5.5.
Eric
Hey Eric, i think you should consider adding patch in kde-workspace for launcher because it’s not working in 4.7 (have to wait for 4.7.1)
Patch is here:
http://www.santyago.pl/files/kde-workspace-4.7.0-launcher.patch
And movie how it should work:
Eric, thank You for new KDE 🙂
@amigib – i’m not experienced as many who comments here so could You tell me how to add this patch for launcher? I downloaded it and what’s next? I should put it in some configuration file (text file) or remove old one and put only patch? Thanks for help.
To be honest i have no idea how to modify Eric’s scripts for patches, so i decompressed kde-workspace, applied it by hand
patch -p1 < kde-workspace-4.7.0-launcher.patch
and recompiled, so i'm not really helpful.
But you can try my packages which are available here:
http://www.amigib.cal24.pl/linuks/kde4/
Thanks, but in fact i don’t know how to recompile by myself. I’ll try with your packages (patch -p1 command is new for me, and I don’t understand it yet – i’m still learning Slackware and Linux) because i know how to work with packages.
Hi Eric,
alright, I didn’t think that I’ll come to this point, but here I am. How do I remove KDE 4.7.0 and go back to stock KDE that comes with Slackware 13.37? I was experimenting with KDE 4.7.0, and after 24h of working it crashed (I opened too many tabs in Opera, or at least this is what I’ve been doing when the thing stopped responding). I rebooted, removed /tmp/ and /var/tmp user related KDE folders, but nothing changed. On each login kded dies, then kdeinit4, screen is garbled. I was preparing this laptop for my wife, and I guess it wasn’t a good idea to put there cutting edge KDE. If there is not a clean way to go back to the prev KDE, I’ll reinstall Slackware 13.37, but I wish I could skip this step.
Thanks!
I had these crashes myself, and I finally got rid of them the hard way – deleting my ~/.kde (thus destroying all my application settings).
Removing KDE 4.7.0 and reverting to the stock Slackware is a matter of running through my install instructions in reverse.
Alternatively ou can choose for un-blacklisting my “alien” tagged packages (that is, if you added a line for my packages to ‘/etc/slackpkg/blacklist’ before) and let slackpkg clean up for you:
# slackpkg update
# slackpkg upgrade-all
# slackpkg clean-system
Note that the last command will show you a list of all packages that are not in Slackware, you be sure to de-select all packages you WANT TO KEEP before pressing the ‘OK’.
Then, don’t forget to use installpkg for the still missing polkit-kde-1, kdebase-runtime, kdebase-workspace, kdebindings, kdeedu, and konq-plugins packages.
But even then, you have been running KDE 4.7 for a while so chances are that you will keep seeing application crashes because of incompatible configurations in your ~/.kde directory. You will probably end up deleting that directory regardless of your decision to downgrade to 4.5.5 or keep 4.7.0…
Eric
Hi amigib
You’ll have to wait for KDE 4.7.1 then. There is lots of other things that do not work right in this first 4.7 release, and I am not going to fix all of that. The 4.7.1 release is scheduled for early september. You can apply any patches yourself and rebuild the affected packages individually.
Eric
Thanks,
I am going through these steps now. Just wanted to share, that I also removed ~/.kde as well as the other two folders in /tmp and /var/tmp – but things didn’t improve at all. Probably there was something else, that caused KDE to crash so badly. I once managed to get the KDE Crash dialog long enough on screen (the crash handler crashes also and hides these windows) and from the stack trace I noticed it was something in libc (or at least it was on top of the stack). Unfortunately the window disappeared before I can investigate further. If it was my machine, I would probably experiment more, but since it’s not – my wife will have to live with KDE 4.5.5 until next stable release goes into Slackware tree. Thanks for your packages and the effort you’re putting in. You rock!
Anyone got Amarok running or just recompiling it?
While I haven’t had serious crashes like others I have had some ongoing crashing (kmix) that I decided needed solving so I had a look at qt.
Upgrading QT to 4.7.3 seems to have improved the stability of KDE somewhat, and is a fairly simple process once you fix the Slackbuild.
http://pastebin.com/ZzYbNLYZ
I was afraid that it could be a Qt problem… I keep getting the crashes too. I removed my ~/.kde directory at some point and that stopped the crashes for a few days but they are back at login (kmix, knotify). I also get crashes in kded4 but that one seems to recover all by itself.
Plus I still get Nepomuk service errors at logon but these too seem to resolve themselves because when I check a few minutes later everything is OK.
When it’s time to package KDE 4.7.1 I will also include an updated Qt4 package.
Eric
I’m trying qt 4.7.4: kmix start fine, no crash on startup..
Thanks for your KDE packages Eric,
i confirm, many small crash, are fixed, with qt-4.7.4, dolphin is faster……….
i think it’s good idea to use this new qt version.
Gérard
Roberto & gmg –
Indeed a newer version of Qt fixes a lot of the instability.
I have created a lot of updated packages for KDE 4.7.1 (which should be released soon) and Qt is one of the updated packages. I have all of them installed on y laptop with KDE 4.7.0 and it runs much better now. I will wait with releasing those updates until I have actual KDE 4.7.1 packages to share with you.
Eric
Hi,
there is an issue with virtuoso-6.1.3 and non-ASCII characters : https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=271664
I downgrade to 6.1.2 version from slackware64-current and it works fine.
Laurent
Just to clarify the bug. When I use kmail and I put the mouse on a message, I have an info bull with the message. All accents are replaced by diamond. And addition, I tag all my music with bangarang and I can’t search music like “Noir Désir”, “rock français” …
[quote]Removing KDE 4.7.0 and reverting to the stock Slackware is a matter of running through my install instructions in reverse.
Alternatively ou can choose for un-blacklisting my “alien” tagged packages (that is, if you added a line for my packages to ‘/etc/slackpkg/blacklist’ before) and let slackpkg clean up for you:
# slackpkg update
# slackpkg upgrade-all
# slackpkg clean-system
Note that the last command will show you a list of all packages that are not in Slackware, you be sure to de-select all packages you WANT TO KEEP before pressing the ‘OK’.
Then, don’t forget to use installpkg for the still missing polkit-kde-1, kdebase-runtime, kdebase-workspace, kdebindings, kdeedu, and konq-plugins packages.[/quote]
So i other words, i should do this :
On Slackware 32-bit:
# upgradepkg –reinstall –install-new x86/deps/*.t?z
# upgradepkg –reinstall –install-new x86/kde/*.t?z
# removepkg polkit-kde-1
# removepkg kdebase-runtime
# removepkg kdebase-workspace
# removepkg kdebindings
# removepkg kdeedu
# removepkg konq-plugins
from end to start? I should install konq-plugins, than kdeedu etc till polkit-kde-1(where i could find it?)? After instalation of this items what i should do with:
On Slackware 32-bit:
# upgradepkg –reinstall –install-new x86/deps/*.t?z
# upgradepkg –reinstall –install-new x86/kde/*.t?z
It’s hard for me – i’m not that experienced just like You guys 😉
@Laurent –
I have fixed the bug with virtuoso-6.1.3 and non-ASCII characters in the package set for KDE 4.7.1. Thanks for reporting.
Eric
Hi. Being my first post here, I would like to thank you for the great job you’re doing. Your site is very helpful for unskilled people like me.
My question is: how can i install kde4.7 from your packages but without upgrading my current kde 4.5. i would like to do this not as root.
Can i do this?
Cosmin
Hi Cosmin
In Slackware, you can install or upgrade packages only as the root user.
Theoretically you could try unpacking all the packages in your homedirectory and using specially crafted environment variables and library preloading you could run another version of programs than the ones which are installed on the system. But’s that in theory only, I never tried this or heard from someone who tried it.
Eric