Slackware64 14.2 users will have to wait another day, but I have uploaded my latest set of Plasma 5 packages for Slackware-current to the ‘ktown’ repository. KDE 5_17.06 contains: KDE Frameworks 5.35.0, Plasma 5.10.2 and Applications 17.04.2. I based this new release on Qt 5.9.0 (at least for Slackware-current… for 14.2 I will stick to Qt 5.7.1).
NOTE: I will no longer be releasing Plasma 5 packages for 32bit Slackware 14.2.
The move to Qt 5.9 meant that I had to recompile/update some of the packages in my regular repository as well, so if you look there, you will find the latest Calibre 3.1.1 which I based on Qt 5.9 as well (same story here: the Slackware 14.2 variant uses Qt 5.7.1).
What’s new in KDE 5_17.06?
- As said before, I moved to Qt version 5.9.0. This is supposed to be a LTS release (Long Term Support).
- As a result of the qt5 upgrade, lots of other packages in the ‘deps’ section were recompiled (grantlee phonon polkit-qt5-1 qca-qt5 qt-gstreamer qtav) or upgraded (OpenAL PyQt5 libdbusmenu-qt5 poppler qt5-webkit wayland).
- Plasma was updated to 5.10.2 bugfix release, see https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.10.2.php . And if you want to know more about what’s new in Plasma 5.10, read it on https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.10.0.php .
I compiled plasma-nm against openconnect so that it picks up support for it. However I did not add openconnect to the ‘deps’ section, you need to install it separately if you need it. - Frameworks 5.35.0 is a maintenance release, see https://www.kde.org/announcements/kde-frameworks-5.35.0.php .
- Applications 17.04.2 is a bugfix update for KDE Applications 17.04. See https://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-applications-17.04.2.php .
- In applications-extra the following packages were upgraded: digikam, krita, kpmcore, partitionmanager. Calligra (for slackware-current) was recompiled against the new gsl, marble and qt5 libraries.
This upgrade should be relatively straightforward if you already have Plasma 5 installed. See below for install/upgrade instructions. For users who are running slackware-current, the most crucial part is making sure that you end up with Slackware’s packages for ‘libinput‘ and ‘libwacom‘. I had those two packages in the ‘current’ section of my repository for a while (they are still part of the ‘14.2’ section) but Slackware added them to the core OS. Failing to install the correct (i.e. Slackware) packages, may render your input devices (mouse and keyboard) inoperative in X.Org.
Non-ktown packages you probably want anyway
There are a couple of *runtime* dependencies that I did not add to the ‘ktown’ repository, but you may want to consider installing them yourself because they enable functionality in Plasma 5 that you would otherwise miss:
- vlc: will give phonon another backend to select from.
- freerdp: access RDP servers through krdc.
- openconnect: provides support for Cisco’s SSL VPN
All of the above can be found in my regular package repository.
In order for kdenlive to reach its full potential, you might want to consider replacing Slackware’s ‘ffmpeg‘ package by my version with extended functionality: more supported codecs including AAC and H.264 encoders.
Multilib considerations
If you install a 32bit program on a 64bit Slackware computer with multilib and that program needs legacy system tray support, you will have to grab the 32-bit version of Slackware’s ‘libdbusmenu-qt’ and my ktown-deps package ‘sni-qt’, and run the ‘convertpkg-compat32 -i‘ command on them to create ‘compat32’ versions of these packages. Then install both ‘libdbusmenu-qt-compat32‘ and ‘sni-qt-compat32‘.
Those two are mandatory addons for displaying system tray icons of 32bit binaries in 64bit multilib Plasma5.
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_17.05_02. 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. Luckily, KDE 5 is mature enough that there’s almost nothing left from old KDE 4 that you would really want.
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_17.05_02 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” in the configuration file “/etc/slackpkg/slackpkgplus.conf“):
# slackpkg update
# slackpkg install ktown (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 (upgrade all existing packages to their latest versions)
# 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. 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 repository):
- http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/alien-kde/current/latest/x86/kde/frameworks/
- http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/alien-kde/current/latest/x86_64/kde/frameworks/
The same goes for Frameworks for Slackware 14.2 (change ‘current’ to ‘14.2’ in the above URLs).
Where to get the new packages for Plasma 5
A Plasma5 Live ISO image will follow shortly on http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/slackware-live/latest/ in case you want to try it out first (check the timestamp of the ISO on the web page).
Package download locations are listed below (you will find the sources in ./source/5/ and packages in /current/5/ and /14.2/5/ 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!
- http://alien.slackbook.org/ktown/ (the master repository, will be slow), rsync URI: rsync://alien.slackbook.org/alien/ktown/
- http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/alien-kde/ (my own mirror), rsync URI is rsync://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/alien-kde/.
- http://repo.ukdw.ac.id/alien-kde/ (willysr’s Indonesian mirror), rsync URI: rsync://repo.ukdw.ac.id/alien-kde/
- http://ftp.lip6.fr/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/people/alien-kde/ French fast mirror thanks to Tonus.
- http://slackware.uk/people/alien-kde/ (fast UK based mirror, run by Darren Austin), rsync URI: rsync://slackware.uk/people/alien-kde/
Have fun! Eric
Thank you Eric! Downloading right now.
Eric, thank you very much for the latest Calibre package. Working really nice with my old Kobo Aura HD. Best wishes!
I hope downloading everything and reinstalling it fixes what slackpkg + did to my system when I tried the upgrade that way. I have 0 functionality from any QT5 based desktop, meaning Plasma, LxQt or even Lumina. slackpkg+ HAD been working very nicely on these Plasma upgrades, and appeared to had done so this morning but….. NO. If I can find a specific bug, I’ll tell you then.
Gerald, was the qt5 package perhaps not updated to 5.9.0?
Having said that, I have not yet tested LXQT or Lumina. Perhaps they are broken after the Qt upgrade.
QT DID get downgraded to 5.9.0, which broke LxQt and Lumina. I tried recompiling them, but HEY, GCC 7 + QT 5.9.0 = BUST! I know I have your GCC 5 binaries, THANK YOU, but was hoping to get LxQT at least to rebuild on QT 5.9.0 PLASMA WON’T LOAD, DID NOT LOAD, NOT ONCE AFTER THE UPGRADE. TOTAL failure. Just hangs as soon as I punch my password into SDDM.
I’m throwing in the towel for now and back tracking to the 14.2 builds, in hope that I can at least run LxQt again using kwindowlib stuff from the 14.2 KDE Frameworks 5.34.0 binaries. If that holds up, I can live without Plasma for the summer.
Good (enough) News: The 14.2 stuff from May works perfectly, as it has since I first upgraded to it. VERY peculiar, but not entirely surprising that the new QT5 roll would cause trouble. IFF I get time, I’ll try building a fresh LxQt w GCC 7. First I’ll try against QT 5.7.1, which I need to keep a decent working env here, then maybe later on 5.9.0. Apparently there are several issues with the latest stuff from KDE which make it tough to run on this aging HP Proliant server. I’m looking to do a hardware upgrade this summer, for my Net activities anyway…. These quad core 64 bit ARM SBCs like the Pi look attractive, esp w SARPi doing well w it.
Thank You Eric, for your extensive and intensive efforts on our behalf.
Running it right now. So far it is running smoothly. Thanks again Eric!
Work fine, Eric, as usual 😉
Gerald, if I were you I would review your procedure to upgrade packages. Other people are running the new Plasma 5 on -current successfully.
But indeed, LXQT seems broken, at least the lxqt-panel does not work.
Thanks Alien for this big update.
One note regarding openconnect (a welcome addition as my work uses junos VPN). The current package comes with an error in /etc/vpnc/vpnc-script on line 131 where there is a missing space before the last closing ].
Additionally, to use openconnect with plasma-nm, one needs a NetworkManager-openconnect package (I am currently using the package from slackbuilds.org). With that combination it works a treat.
ArTourter, that missing space is my error… I will fix the openconnect package.
I will also consider adding a NetworkManager-openconnect package, would be good to include in the Slackware Live PLASMA5 ISO.
ArTourter are you sure a NetworkManager-openconnect package is needed? I can setup an openconnect based VPN in my Plasma 5 networkmanager widget without that package (can’t actually configure anything because I do not have access to an appropriate VPN server).
Hi Eric,
From what I have tried, you can configure every thing without it, but if you try to connect to anything, nothing happens (somehow on my machine at work I got an error message telling me I needed NetworkManager-openconnect, but here at home on the laptop I simply get nothing at all). either way, once nm-openconnect is installed, I can connect to the vpn.
hope this helps
Greg
ArTourter – I have uploaded a fixed openconnect package and also added NetworkManager-openconnect to my repository, thanks for your explanation about what’s needed for openconnect support.
Thank you very much Eric. Much appreciated.
Greg
Hi Eric – thanks greatly for the new packages; my gtk issues are solved!
THANK YOU for recompiling LXQT & Lumina against QT 5.9.0. I’ll try your new stuff for -current this weekend.
Gerald, unfortunately I did not have the time to also update some of the LXQT packages, so recompiling them all was the best alternative. Both LXQT and Lumina work properly now, with the latest Slackware-current and Qt 5.9.
Let me know your findings.
Hello Eric,
First of all please accept my thanks in advance for all of these hard works that you’ve done perfect,
I’m newbie, so maybe I’m wrong but I think there were something wrong with the md5 checksums of ktown repo.
For example according to http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/alien-kde/current/5/x86_64/CHECKSUMS.md5, the md5 for ./kdei/kde-l10n-fa-17.04.2-noarch-1alien.txz should be 9a2579808210e9e7982d85456b0f9fd5, but when I’ve downloaded it from http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/alien-kde/current/5/x86_64/kdei/kde-l10n-fa-17.04.2-noarch-1alien.txz and calculated the md5, I reach 828a904e87d48ef26132a218a99eb586 and this cause error on slackpkg+.
Omid, you are right. I rebuilt the *.txz packages but forgot to re-calculate the .md5 and .asc files.
Will do that now, thanks for reporting.
Hi Eric
Just to say thanks, and also to my surprise, kdesu is working again for dolphin and systemsettings5 !
tobyl
Can not launch System -> File Manager – Super User Mode:
dbus-launch dolphin %i -caption “%c” “%u”. (Unknown options: c, a, p, t, i, o, n. from the CLI)
kdesu dolphin does work. I guess this should be addressed upstream and not here.
So far so good.
ABofaT I had noticed the same. I’ll check what can be done about that menu entry.
tobyl yes I have borrowed an OpenSuse patch to make dolphin work again for the root user.
Eric, your org.kde.dolphinsu.desktop, does not work here:
it work with this:
Exec=dbus-launch dolphin -qwindowtitle “%c” “%u”
Eric,
I don’t know if you fixed it while your blog was down, but there is a md5sum error in kde-i10n-it-17.04.2-noarch-1alien.txz file.
For the rest, all fine 😉
LoneStar, a few posts earlier, Omid mentioned the same, and I have since regenerated the CHECKSUMS.md5 files which were off. Perhaps you used a mirror that was not yet re-synced.
Gérard thanks for finding the solution before I even had the chance to check the issue 🙂
Upgraded my kernel to 4.12-rc7, then upgraded Plasma, LxQt and Lumina along w Pat’s upgrades this week so my current is CURRENT, and ALL RUNS BEAUTIFULLY! Thanks again Eric, for Superb work. I just needed a new kernel, aside from the LxQt and Lumina recompilations which you did for us. Bravo.
Exec=dbus-launch dolphin -qwindowtitle “%c” “%u” works here, but still can’t edit a file: KDEInit could not launch ‘/usr/bin/kate’.
https://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2017/02/editing-files-as-root/. Oh well.
Resuming from hibernate and (occasionally) sleep goes to a black screen with no (dead usb) keyboard and mouse.
ABofaT – I only patched dolphin, not kate.
I see no reason why you can not use vim for editing files as root 🙂
Eric , i think linked /usr/bin/kdesu on the kf5 version is better now 😉
For other, if you want partitionmanager work correctly, since the menu, just rename the link /usr/bin/kdesu to kdesu4 😉
Gérard I will keep that in mind when working on the next Plasma release for Slackware…
Sure appreciate your hard work on a clean install the new policies do not allow “root” user to use kate or kwrite.
clean install.
try it again latter on . this is on current
Drakeo, like I said higher up on this page:
I only patched dolphin, not kate.
I see no reason why you can not use vim for editing files as root 🙂
Or just rebuild, kate with the patch, like me 😉
( just because i am an old user of kwrite) 😉
Thanks for the reply patched all that. Sent you a tip. buy a beer .
uploaded a video. it may be a simple quick video but lot of stuff to build and get to work. New studio is born.
Drakeo, thanks – you animate that avatar yourself?
Drakeo, Gérard,
By the way, the official recommendation (this text is output to stdout if you attempt to run kate as root so not everybody may see it) is as follows:
Hi!
Apparently the current glibc-2.25_multilib-x86_64-3alien puts some libs in /lib64/incoming :
root@coyote:/usr/src/git# ls -l /lib64/incoming/
total 4644
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 178912 juil. 1 13:07 ld-2.25.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 8096 juil. 1 13:07 libBrokenLocale-2.25.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 19336 juil. 1 13:07 libanl-2.25.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2083544 juil. 1 13:07 libc-2.25.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 196352 juil. 1 13:07 libcidn-2.25.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 44608 juil. 1 13:07 libcrypt-2.25.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 18728 juil. 1 13:07 libdl-2.25.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1194712 juil. 1 13:07 libm-2.25.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 22840 juil. 1 13:07 libmemusage.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 180584 juil. 1 13:07 libmvec-2.25.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 110072 juil. 1 13:07 libnsl-2.25.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 41696 juil. 1 13:07 libnss_compat-2.25.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 37104 juil. 1 13:07 libnss_db-2.25.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 26544 juil. 1 13:07 libnss_dns-2.25.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 55904 juil. 1 13:07 libnss_files-2.25.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 27192 juil. 1 13:07 libnss_hesiod-2.25.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 55768 juil. 1 13:07 libnss_nis-2.25.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 64640 juil. 1 13:07 libnss_nisplus-2.25.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 8344 juil. 1 13:07 libpcprofile.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 138680 juil. 1 13:07 libpthread-2.25.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 104816 juil. 1 13:07 libresolv-2.25.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 42136 juil. 1 13:07 librt-2.25.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 40448 juil. 1 13:07 libthread_db-1.0.so*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 13872 juil. 1 13:07 libutil-2.25.so*
Is this normal?
32bits equivalent are put in /usr/lib.
Yes, Eric, I had read it somewhere, but in general I never use sudo 😉
Nevermind, it’s been like this for years and I’ve not posted this on the right thread anyway…
Sorry for the noise.
just for info:
I have build all latest kde5, on qt5-5.91, no problem, juste updated xapian-core to the latest 1.4.4 version 😉
rvdboom if you have libraries in /lib64/incoming/ then you are not using the Slackware package tools to install glibc.
On my slackware64-current systems it looks like this:
The glibc package has files in a ‘lib64/incoming’ directory but the doinst.sh script moves those into the correct final destination on your computer.
Gérard I am not sure if I want to compile a new qt5-5.9.1 … takes days on my old build server, to create 64bit packages for -current and 14.2 and a 32bit package for -current.
Thanks, Eric. Something must have been wrong with the initial installation, I’ve reinstalled both glibc packages (general and solibs) and it works now.
I understand, 6 hours here, it is already long, for one package.
Eric, it seem, many kde package have exec or libexec in /usr/lib64:
plasma-worspace
kde-gtk-config
polkit-kde-kcmodules-framework
polkit-kde-framework
plasma-desktop
kwayland
powerdevil
kwin
Hi Gérard
You mean, you are seeing /usr/lib64/libexec directories? I just scanned my newest packages and there’s no such thing,
more executable are in /usr/lib64
just rsync the new package in this moment 😉
There are executable files (not libraries) in /usr/lib64 but those are not meant to be executed by the user. Arguably a good place for those could be /usr/libexec but I compared some of my packages to the Arch Linux packages (kwin, plasma-workspace) and they leave these binaries in /usr/lib as well.
Could be caused by this cmake definition in the plasma packages:
LIBEXEC_INSTALL_DIR=lib$LIBDIRSUFFIX
Ok, Eric and the script ‘startplasma’, is also in /usr/lib64, it’s normal or no ?
In openSUSE these exec are in /usr/lib64/libexec, probabbly this is no important, sorry, for the noise 😉
Hi Eric,
I know you haven’t announced it yet on your blog but I have installed your latest ktown packages. thanks for you amazing work again.
Two notes:
it seems that plasma-nm was not compiled against openconnect this time. it is missing usr/lib64/qt5/plugins/libplasmanetworkmanagement_openconnectui.so
The other issue is that I do not have the option to change sound output target for each application in the plasma applet. I can only do it by opening the mixer and do it from there. Looking at the video on the kde page it should be possible but I am not sure if it is a problem with my system or there is something wrong with the package.
ArTourter, weird. I installed openconnect before compiling the packages, on all three VMs (14.2 and -current). But at least here on slackware64-current I also do not see /usr/lib64/qt5/plugins/libplasmanetworkmanagement_openconnectui.so
The Plasma volume applet works here – I can adjust the audio separately for every application.
Finally, i have tested, i have build more plasma package without LIBEXEC_DIR option, after, the exec are in /usr/lib64/libexec,
finally, maybe it’s better to respect the standart LIBEXEC_DIR of slackware, it seem to me 😉
I think “/usr/lib64/libexec” is even worse than “/usr/lib64” for the libexec files… Slackware’s default is “/usr/libexec” and I assume you’ll get that path into the Plasma packages by defining “LIBEXEC_INSTALL_DIR=/usr/libexec” i.e. using the full path instead of relative to $PREFIX
I agree with you, Eric, maybe I have expressed myself badly 😉
Hi Alien,
Regarding the audio applet, I can adjust audio separately for each application, what I can’t do is if I click on the three lines button next to the application, choose a different playback device such as USB headphone or bluetooth headset instead of the standard onboard default devices.
I have to open the settings to be able to choose that. It didn’t use to be the case but has been for this release (plasma 5.10.2) and the new one (plasma 5.10.3).
Regarding openconnect, it is really weird, I just compiled plasma5-nm myself from your files, and although in my case I can the .so file, it still doesn’t work “missing VPN plugin”. And these are no options to create an openconnect VPN either….
I’ll keep digging.
Gérard 🙂
installing my package (rather than just copying the .so file) works. there are only 3 added files in my package compared to yours:
usr/lib64/qt5/plugins/libplasmanetworkmanagement_openconnectui.so
usr/share/kservices5/plasmanetworkmanagement_openconnect_juniperui.desktop
usr/share/kservices5/plasmanetworkmanagement_openconnectui.desktop
However, compiling it without openconnect installed gives me the same package (all the *openconnect*.mo are there but the .so and .desktop files are missing).
Hope this helps