My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

New LibreOffice; and KDE recompiled for Slackware 14.0

LibreOffice 4.0.1

There is a new LibreOffice 4.0.1 release.This is a bugfix and stability improvement release, with the remark that “for enterprise adoptions, though, The Document Foundation suggests the more solid and stable LibreOffice 3.6.5, backed by certified level 3 support engineers“. I have LibreOffice 3.6.5 packages still in my repository – check out the 13.37 package directory.

Still, there are a few interesting things to mention about the 4.0.1 release:

  • LibreOffice Impress Remote (an Android app) is now available on Google Play. Instructions on how to use this are available on the LibreOffice wiki.
  • The Documentation team has released an electronic guide “Getting Started with LibreOffice 4.0?, which is available in PDF and ODF formats.

You can download the new packages from my package repository . The LibreOffice 4.0.1 packages have been built on Slackware 14.0 which makes them unfit for Slackware 13.37 (you can stick with LibreOffice 3.6.5 on that platform). Of course the new packages work with slackware-current!

Remember, you can subscribe to the repository’s RSS feed if you want to be the first to know when new packages are uploaded.

 

KDE 4.10.1

 

Now that Slackware-current has an official set of KDE 4.10.1 packages, provided by Patrick Volkerding, I have rebuilt my own KDE packages (which I had built for slackware-current at first), but this second time I did it on Slackware 14.0. Users of this stable Slackware release can now enjoy the KDE upgrade as well.

I deleted the “current/4.10.1” package directory and added the rebuilt packages in “14.0/4.10.1“. Note that if you already had my KDE 4.10.0 packages installed on Slackware 14.0 and want to upgrade to 4.10.1, there are no new/updated dependencies. One notable change compared to the previous packages is the upgrade of Calligra to 2.6.1, just like Patrick did for Slackware-current.
The README has all the instructions you will need for an upgrade.

Enjoy! Eric

33 Comments

  1. Steve

    Does upgrading from 4.8.5 to KDE 4.10.1 add anything useful?
    Is it worth upgrading?

  2. Willy Sudiarto Raharjo

    Is it only in my computer or does it apply to others as well that the border of the menus are somehow ‘different’ from 4.0.0. They are borderless

    also some icons do not scale very well, so it’s kinda blur. This bug happened on Windows system as well

  3. Janis

    I am happy to see the news! I tried to compile 4.10.1 myself, but run into problems – one of the key packages was not built, which rendered KDE dead, because build script installed everything during compilation.
    (in very small letters) – couldn’t it be extremely difficult to add some small tags to individual package names, kind of [base], [games], [edu], [mm] etc?

  4. alienbob

    Steve, what a strange question. You don’t _have_ to upgrade. Do it if you _want_ to.

    Eric

  5. alienbob

    Willy,

    I saw these “borderless” menus as well on LO 4.0.0. No idea if this is intentional or if this is a rendering bug when LO is used in KDE4.

    Eric

  6. Willy Sudiarto Raharjo

    The icon bug only happened on my Windows 7 system, but not in my XP system, but we don’t really care about that.

    Eric:
    Hm… if i recall, the borderless menu was introduced in 4.0.1, not in 4.0.0. They were OK in 4.0.0.

  7. p431i7o

    Off-topic question to eric. What do you think about Miguel de Icaza’s post on his blog “How I ended up with Mac”.

    I’m interested on Eric’s point of view about this,
    I know this is not the place, but I’m just curious.

  8. alienbob

    Hi p431i7o

    It is indeed off-topic for this article and therefore I will not answer here.
    But if you ask it again on my general feedback page http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/your-feedback/ I will be more than happy to give my view on Miguel’s story found at http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2013/Mar-05.html

    Cheers, Eric

  9. Jeff H

    Thank you much for taking time to build the KDE packages for Slack 14!

    o/ Bob

  10. ecoslacker

    Willy

    The borderless in LO is solved in my machine by doing:

    $ export OOO_FORCE_DESKTOP=kde
    $ loffice

    And I put the export line to be executed at startup, but I can’t remember where :). That line works even replacing kde with gnome, but the appearence is different.

  11. ecoslacker

    Hi Eric

    I had to rebuild QScintilla after upgrade to KDE 4.10.1 (BTW thanks for your packages ) because it was broken with SIP and I was unable to run some python apps.

  12. Eduardo

    Thank you Eric!

  13. chrisretusn

    I’m really getting to like KDE. I noticed a nicer smaller slimmer splash screen with LibreOffice, loading is a whole lot faster.

    Thanks!

  14. Alberto

    Hi Eric,
    thanks for compiling this KDE release on Slackware 14! 🙂

    I have one question. Once installed, I noticed some differences in some menu borders. They are ugly and I think there’s a problem in them. Here’s an album with some screenshots: http://imageshack.us/g/1/10064148/

    Do you think it’s a release bug? Is it the same problem you were talking about with Willy some posts before? (If yes, what do you mean with “LO”?)

  15. alienbob

    Alberto,

    When I write “LO” i mean “LibreOffice”.
    The bug in your screenshots is a graphics driver bug. Are you using a binary-only graphics driver like that of NVIDIA or ATI? Try re-installing the latest version.

    Eric

  16. Thiago Silvino

    Hi Eric, I did a fresh install of Slackware 14 and I used my custom tagfiles leaving the kde section out just to use the new KDE 4.10.1 packages that you compiled. In the end of the install I chose to setup my network by using NetworkManager but it didn’t work, I had to disable it and use wicd. Now by checking the contents of the Slackware ISO I can see the package kde/networkmanagement-0.9.0-x86_64-1.txz, I guess that this package is the plasmoid for the NetworkManager and it is not included in the packages that you provide. You could add a note in the post to let the users know that they still need that package from the Slackware distribution. Tks for your hard work!

  17. Thiago Silvino

    I just tested, removed wicd and installed kde/networkmanagement-0.9.0-x86_64-1.txz now the NetworkManager is working fine.

  18. Aravind

    Hi Eric, I upgraded slack64 14.0 from kde 4.8.5 to 4.10.1. After upgrade everything works smoothly except kde lock screen. ctrl+alt+L just freezes KDE. I had to kill KDE/Xwindows and restart KDE again to get in. However xlock works fine. I do not have multilib installed. Do I need to install any other packages? I have installed all in deps & kde folders from your ktown repository.

    Thanks,
    Aravind

  19. Marcel Geijsberts

    Hi Eric, I installed your 32bit set and they work fine apart for one thing: I cannot configure(disble when I type) the touchpad of my laptop. I think this is a missing component in the upgrade?

    Thank you for all your support

    Marcel,
    Nijmegen

  20. slakavod

    Russian fonts in interface LO 4 is dead!!!
    First aid- add this line in LO startup scripts:
    export OOO_FORCE_DESKTOP=kde

  21. alienbob

    Marcel, configuration of your touchpad has nothing to do with installing multilib packages. It is a function of X.Org and you have two tools (in slackware64, no multilib needed) to control the touchpad behaviour: synclient and syndaemon. Read their manual pages and pick the one you find most useful.

    Eric

  22. alienbob

    Aravind, sounds like a graphical driver incompatibility. Check if you are using the latest driver (if you have a Nvidia or Ati card) and try to disable compositing to see if that causes the lock-ups.

    Eric

  23. alienbob

    Thiago,

    I will mention in the next set of packages that you will need some of Slackware’s own KDE packages as well. I upgrade only those Slackware packages which have a newer source release. The “extragear” sources, like networkmanager and calligra, do not always receive an update by me.

    This is not usually an issue for people who upgrade, but in your case with a fresh install, it was a bit different.

    Eric

  24. Marcel Geijsberts

    Sorry Eric, I meant your KDE 4.10.1 32bits packages.
    I know about syndaemon but I thought I could configure the behavior of the touchpad within KDE also. Now I cannot find it anywhere. So perhaps it is missing from the upgrade or part of something else?

    Thanks for your quick reply

    Regards, Marcel

  25. alienbob

    Marcel, Slackware does not have KDE software which configures your touchpad. There is a tool called synaptiks which you may want to check out: http://synaptiks.readthedocs.org/ although this util does not seem to be maintained. Adding “syndaemon -d” to the autostarted programs in KDE looks easier.

    Eric

  26. LoneStar

    Hi Eric,
    even after deleting the temporary KDE directories (/tmp/ksocket, etc.etc.) my plasma desktop keeps segfaulting periodically.
    How do I find out what’s causing this? Is there a specific log file?

    thanks, Luigi

  27. alienbob

    Hi LoneStar

    If you are working in Runlevel 4 (graphical login) then the X errors will be collected in a file ${HOME}/.xsession-errors. Perhaps you can find some information there.
    Also, try to find out in what circumstances these crashes occur. Is this linked to the use of certain applications? Does it still happen if you disable compositing (key combination Alt-Shift-F12 toggles this on/off).

    Eric

  28. Paul Valley

    Hello after downloading i find that I can’t install libreoffice tried running pkgtool and i’m not sure it worked nothing shows up in the office submenu very new to slackware

  29. alienbob

    I suggest you first read the basics on Slackware package management, and then try to install and use the packages which you downloaded. It is not that hard, but if you are clueless, then first you have to work on getting clued.
    http://docs.slackware.com/slackbook:package_management?s%5B%5D=installpkg#installing_removing_and_upgrading_packages

    Eric

  30. MangoCat

    Hi,

    Trying to get some clue about Slackware package management, but not getting very far. My objective is to install LibreOffice on KDE/Slackware 14.0, what I have tried is to un-comment the taper.alienbase… line in /etc/slackpkg/mirrors and running slackpkg update, which seems to be syncing up without problem, but…. slackpkg search install or whatever for libreoffice doesn’t match the pattern….

    Any additional clue would be greatly appreciated.

  31. alienbob

    Hi MangoCat

    First of all: slackpkg does not work with 3rd party repositories like mine. It was developed to maintain Slackware using the official packages only.

    You can check out my article on slackpkg+ which is an extension module to slackpkg that enables 3rd-part rpository support in slackpkg: http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/introducing-slackpkg-an-extension-to-slackpkg-for-3rd-party-repositories/ .

    Without using slackpkg/slackpkg+ it is still not difficult to install LibreOffice.
    It is a matter of downloading the libreoffice packages you need (at least the big libreoffice package and optionally a language pack) as root into your current directory, and then using the Slackware pkgtools for the actual installation or upgrade:

    # upgradepkg –install-new libreoffice-*.txz

    Also strongly advised is that you read the docs.slackware.com link I posted, right above your own entry.

    Eric

  32. MangoCat

    Thanks for the help – I was just a little thrown because your site was listed in the slackpkg mirrors…

  33. alienbob

    Hi MangoCat

    Yes, there is a number of Slackware repository URLs in the mirrors file, like “http://taper.alienbase.nl/mirrors/slackware/slackware-14.0/” but that is a mirror for official Slackware packages. It does not contain the LibreOffice package which I have in a separate repository (also on the same server “taper.alienbase.nl”).
    The slackpkg tool only works with the Slackware mirror URLs, it does not work for repositories with 3rd party packages (like my own “http://taper.alienbase.nl/mirrors/people/alien/sbrepos/14.0/x86/”).

    Eric

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