My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

PulseAudio comes to Slackware-current Beta

pulseaudio_medHah! Got you there! Oh wait – it’s true.

Yup folks, thanks to the new bluetooth stack in slackware-current (brought to you by BlueZ 5.x) we have introduced a dependency on PulseAudio. Bluetooth audio no longer accepts ALSA as the output driver.

So, Pat has added a pulseaudio package and with it, a lot of dependency packages: ap/pamixer l/alsa-plugins l/atkmm l/cairomm l/glibmm l/gtkmm3 l/json-c l/libasyncns l/libsigc++ l/pangomm l/speexdsp xap/pavucontrol and finally xfce/xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin

Also, we have a Beta!

Wed Jan 13 00:01:23 UTC 2016
Also, enjoy a shiny new LTS 4.4.0 kernel and consider this 14.2 beta 1.

Coming back to PulseAudio: the alsa-plugins package ensures that ALSA applications can remain unaware that PulseAudio is now handling audio in- and output. A file “/etc/asound.conf” will be installed by a recompiled “alsa-libs” package. This configures Pulse as the default audio device. Please take care in case you created a “/etc/asound.conf” yourself that you have to merge yours with the freshly installed “/etc/asound.conf.new” !

Several other Slackware core packages needed a recompile against PulseAudio, but note that you may not have to. As said before, ALSA output still works transparently, it’s just that ALSA’s output is now an input for PulseAudio which in turn controls your audio hardware.

Yes, some people will be opiniated. We invited the Devil into our house and stuff. Well, PulseAudio is not maintained by Lennart anymore, and saner people took the helm. We expect no big mess as a result, just a learning curve to understand the new sound configuration. And truthfully, we were left no choice. The alternative would have been to say bye-bye to bluetooth in Slackware because already, major pieces of software are dropping or preparing to drop support the old and incompatible BlueZ 4.x API.

Note: Slackware is NOT going to add systemd. It’s too controversial and there is no need. Your sleep will be sound now.

People who installed the Jack audio connection kit should probably carefully evaluate the possible changes to their configuration. I stopped using “jackd” here  so I can not tell you at the moment.

Happy hacking! Eric

96 Comments

  1. Tonus

    Yeah great news ! Really excited to upgrade to bêta !

  2. Schmatzler

    Thanks for clearing up some confusion. If the software finally works for me, there’s no need to complain. 🙂

    Let’s see…*downloading packages*

  3. Aicop

    Pulse has a jack sink so those systems work together very well.

  4. Michael

    Quite a pity you were forced to a dependency and had limited choices. But I’m sure you made and will make the best out of it. Full Ack! :o)

  5. LoneStar

    hm..
    Reasonable explanations, but I’m still rather shocked about this 🙁

    Will it be possible to let PulseAudio be there but disable it completely? Once Plasma and the other things are compiled as pulse-enabled, will they still make a sound if asound.conf is changed for not sending output to PA?

  6. alienbob

    LoneStar, welcome to the new world.

    As usual, Arch has good documentation about this, so read PulseAudio as a minimal unintrusive dumb pipe to ALSA to find out how you can keep ALSA as the output handler and make PulseAudio a dumb input pipe for ALSA. This way, all programs which have been recompiled with PA support will still work and you can keep your default ALSA configuration unchanged.

    I call for people who want to start writing PulseAUdio and ALSA instruction article(s) in our Slackware Documentation Wiki.

  7. Helios

    Will skype work now on slackware ?

  8. alienbob

    It should, yes. You try and tell us 🙂

  9. Slackuser

    For me, skype doesn’ t work anymore. 🙁

  10. alienbob

    Slackuser if you don’t explain _how_ you are using Skype there is not much we can do for you. How did you install it? How did you configure it?

  11. Eduardo

    So far it’s working in the same way as Alsa did. In my machine (a fairly new Toshiba laptop) this means that the sound card cannot play two simultaneous sound sources. At least it is not a regression. Good work!

  12. steve

    How would one go forward to remove PA completely?
    What does need to be recompiled?
    I don’t want it in my slackware installation the bluez thing is something i will handle myself so don’t worry about that.

  13. alienbob

    steve, if you want to remove pulseaudio completely then use the ChangeLog.txt entry of “Wed Jan 13 00:01:23 UTC 2016” to see which packages were rebuilt (most were rebuilt in order to link against libpulse) or added to the distro.

  14. Slackuser

    Hi Alien,

    Sorry, i was using skype instaled from slackbuilds.org with apulse, and after last upgrade, the skype open but don’t connect anymore. So, i uninstall apulse and skype also, and now i only install skype but doesn’t work sound (Virtual Device appears on Skype Sound Settings).

    Note: the line in /usr/share/applications/skype.desktop was changed also from : Exec=apulse skype %U to Exec=skype %U.

    Thanks

  15. alienbob

    Slackuser are you running a 64bit Slackware with multilib?

  16. Slackuser

    Yes AlienBob. Slackware current 64bit + multilib.

    • Ferenc

      Hi Slackuser, do you have the 32-bit pulseaudio package installed? It is needed for skype to work.

  17. Jen

    Hrm. This change was inevitable. Fortunately there are ways to mitigate it for what I do. (Granted, I’m an edge case with the computer music stuff. I somewhat expect to have to fiddle with things to get a computer working the way I need. Slackware doesn’t usually fight you with it.)

  18. Neeraj Rajesh

    Hello

    Upgrade was fine with minor issues.

    Had to mess around with the audio a bit to get everything working.
    this worked for me “echo “options snd-hda-intel model=auto” > /etc/modprobe.d/snd-hda-intel.conf”

    Also audacious had to be reconfigured to use PulseAudio

    My screen has started flickering weirdly enough, and X server crashed once outta the blue. Dunno whats going on with that.

    Thanks for everything Eric

  19. alienbob

    On my FrankenBox I had to remove SBo builds of pulseaudio, speex, apulse and json-c and ‘alien’ builds of alsa-plugins and alsa-plugins-compat32.
    Then I ran ‘convertpkg-compat32’ on the 32bit Slackware packages for speex and pulseaudio and installed those too.
    Skyoe works. KDE sound works. VLC sound works, mplayer sound works.

  20. manciuleas

    @ alienbob
    Does that mean that that you’re going to refresh the compat32 packages soon?
    How about the glibc libraries? Your multilib build is at version 3 while the official build is 4.
    Thank you

  21. alienbob

    If I were able to clone myself, work fulltime on Slackware instead of having to earn my money on a helpdesk and have a faster build box… then you would be getting new compat32 packages and glibc updates soon.
    As it stands, there is too much to do and time is working against me.
    So, new Plasma comes first (build box is already occupied with it), then a multilib update, then a new Live Edition, and then who knows what changed in Slackware-current so I can start over.

  22. manciuleas

    Thanks for your answer. I didn’t mean to pressure you in any way.
    I can totally understand that the day has only 24 hours and that one needs to live in this world too :).
    Regarding the build box: how about asking the community to chip in 5/10/15 … USD/EUR to help you upgrade it?

    • Ryan P.C. McQuen

      Eric already has a donation banner on his site, I am going to send him a donation now with a memo labeled ‘build box’. We should all do the same, the work Eric does is indispensable for the community.

  23. Concerned Linux User

    Hello, I highly respect what you and Patrick do AlienBOB, I really do, but I’m highly disappointed in this. I know it’s not directly your fault either, you guys were forced into this like every big project, because Linux has turned into a political game instead of being a customization system (kinda like what Windows became). But this is becoming increasing difficult to deal with.

    First off, I don’t dislike PulseAudio because of Lennart, I could care less if Linus worked on it himself, no, that’s not why I hate PulseAudio. I hate PulseAudio because it’s a disgrace to the terms “audio output” and “audio input”. The quality is abysmal, the force dependencies are child’s play, the device setup/listing is laughable, and the integration of it into software is a joke. Besides the obvious things like how this pathetic system likes to crackle because no one in Linux knows how to write sound related code anymore, just take a look at how much it’s infecting in the list packages here. If I want to use something like JACK, OSS, or hell even ALSA purely, I’m gonna have to recompile hundreds of programs in the end.

    Like I said, I’m not directly blaming you guys, you are being slowly forced into this unfortunate Linux software trend. But I do fear how much longer Slackware will retain the Linux distro I go to for customization and freedom. I don’t wan to to end up like Arch were there’s “Some freedom” but you need something like a systemd noose around your neck. I know you guys aren’t planning on systemd, but these are the first steps, believe me, we’ve seen it all before sadly…

    Sincerely,
    A concerned Linux user.

  24. alienbob

    Concerned Linux User – see this as your chance to contribute to Slackware in a way that suits you better. If you think the current outlook (using PA as default sound system) is not optimal and there is a better option which still allows bluetooth audio to work, then by all means share your thoughts.

  25. Concerned Linux User

    Hello AlienBOB, thanks for the open minded reply, I am glad to see you guys are always up to listening to ideas.

    Regarding my thoughts on BlueZ audio working, this might not be the best solution, but I’ve heard apulse works well and is always being updated. Perhaps it could be used to fix the audio issues with BlueZ? See here: https://github.com/i-rinat/apulse

    Only other two options I can think of regarding BlueZ is to either A) Ask the developers why ALSA support was removed and if it could be added back (seems rather silly to be Pulse only) or to B) see if there are any groups or people adding back ALSA support for BlueZ 5 via custom patches.

    If none of these are plausible, then I hope others can share their thoughts or solutions.

    Sincerely,
    A concerned Linux user

  26. Jeff Read

    Concerned Linux User,

    PulseAudio is *the* standard Linux audio API. It provides routing and multiplexing that ALSA by itself does not, and it\’s a solution that works today, so developers have embraced it. If you don\’t like it, write something better and convince the community to get on board.

  27. E. Wayne Johnson

    I am happy to hear that skype will be up and going again.

    *
    Maybe a future update of fortune –

    “Open Source community is full of assholes,
    and I probably more than most…”
    -L. Poettering

  28. alienbob

    Jeff, ALSA is a standard audio API just like PulseAudio, None of the two are a ‘de facto’ standard.
    ALSA has definite advantages for people who want their sound unmodified and unmangled – PulseAudio does not provide that because it tends to resample between every input and output sink, introducing audio artefacts and latency.
    For audiophile users, PulseAudio is definitely not favoured over ALSA.

  29. Slackuser

    Hi Ferenc, thanks.

    After convert these packages to 32bit:

    alsa-plugins-1.1.0-i586-1.txz
    json-c-0.12-i586-1.txz
    libasyncns-0.8-i586-1.txz
    pulseaudio-7.1-i586-1.txz
    speexdsp-1.2rc3-i586-1.txz

    Now, my skype it works!!! 🙂

    Thanks everyone for help.

  30. Zack

    “For audiophile users, PulseAudio is definitely not favoured over ALSA.”

    since we are a radio station, looks like we wont be updating our slackware anytime soon, pulseaudio is an abomination

  31. alienbob

    Hi Zack. Well that would only count if you are an online radio station, streaming in a lossless audio format (FLAC for instance).

    Anyone streaming a lossy audio format (MP3, OGG) does not count as an audiophile in my eyes.

    And yet I want to propose: why not test the Slackware 14.2 once it has been released, to see if your expectations & fears about PulseAudio are confirmed or perhaps it is not as bad as you assume.

    If your radio station’s applications are compiled for ALSA and not linking to PA, then you can easily configure your computer to ignore PA alltogether. Slackware added PA but is certainly *not* dropping ALSA.

    What’s your experience with PA (and on what OS, in what year) that you came to call it an abomination?

  32. rob

    Hi, not related to audio or pulse per se, but a lot of added dependencies makes it much easier to add other programs, like inkscape, to the slackware toolbox. Inkscape would be a great addition; on a par with adobe illustrator in many respects and thus complementing gimp in being able to provide a full (i.e. vector+pixel graphics) complement of the windows/mac-only adobe suite.

  33. Pi

    I agree with rob, almost all inkscape dependencies are now present in default configuration, it would be nice to have it 🙂
    As for PA, maybe it’s not an abomination, and has some use cases, but you don’t have to be an audiophile (are there any true audiophiles on linux?) to hear the difference. Flacs on PA sound like poor mp3s, without dynamism, with poor sound separation, and mp3s sound more like organized noice than music (it’s no wonder, PA adds more distortions to already broken sound). Better sound quality was one of the reasons why I switched to Slackware 🙁 I wonder is there at least any chance to have separate install disks for packages requiring PA, and those build only with ALSA?

  34. alienbob

    Never used inkscape but it looks like lxml and numpy are the only missing dependencies now?
    Those could even be added statically into an inkscape package like I am doing for calibre’s Python dependencies.
    I’d have to think about adding this to my repository. Not likely that it ends up in Slackware itself. But feel free to mail Pat directly with your request.

  35. webster

    Hi Alien,

    I have still problem with perl. Fresh installation, current.
    ————————————————————————————————————————————
    sbotools compile example:
    Warning: the following files are missing in your kit:
    Changes
    Please inform the author.
    Generating a Unix-style Makefile
    Writing Makefile for SBO::Lib
    Writing MYMETA.yml and MYMETA.json
    cp lib/SBO/Lib.pm blib/lib/SBO/Lib.pm
    cp lib/Sort/Versions.pm blib/lib/Sort/Versions.pm
    PERL_DL_NONLAZY=1 “/usr/bin/perl5.22.0” “-MExtUtils::Command::MM” “-MTest::Harness” “-e” “undef *Test::Harness::Switches; test_harness(0, ‘blib/lib’, ‘blib/arch’)” t/*.t
    t/SBO-Lib.t … 1/1
    # Failed test ‘use SBO::Lib;’
    # at t/SBO-Lib.t line 12.
    # Tried to use ‘SBO::Lib’.
    # Error: push on reference is experimental at /tmp/SBo/sbotools-1.8/SBO-Lib/blib/lib/SBO/Lib.pm line 935.
    # Compilation failed in require at t/SBO-Lib.t line 12.
    # BEGIN failed–compilation aborted at t/SBO-Lib.t line 12.
    # Looks like you failed 1 test of 1.
    t/SBO-Lib.t … Dubious, test returned 1 (wstat 256, 0x100)
    Failed 1/1 subtests
    t/versions.t .. ok

    Test Summary Report
    ——————-
    t/SBO-Lib.t (Wstat: 256 Tests: 1 Failed: 1)
    Failed test: 1
    Non-zero exit status: 1
    Files=2, Tests=97, 0 wallclock secs ( 0.02 usr 0.00 sys + 0.08 cusr 0.00 csys = 0.10 CPU)
    Result: FAIL
    Failed 1/2 test programs. 1/97 subtests failed.
    ———————————————————————————————————————————————————————

    If roll back a perl to the perl-5.18.1-x86_64-1.txz all is ok

  36. Gérard Monpontet

    i confirme, inkscape compil now in pure slack-current install 😉

  37. ArTourter

    I doubt inkscape compiles in pure slackware-current since it needs gtkmm-2 and -current only comes with gtkmm-3. The developers have been working on the gtk3 port for a while and you can add a flag at configure time to use it but it is still very much work in progress and unstable. It also need lxml and numpy.

  38. Pi

    Lxml and numpy are required by Slackbuild, but it looks like they are only optional.

  39. Pi

    If Inkscape won’t build with gtkmm-3, then gtkmm-2 requires mm-common.

  40. fabio

    i will wait for the release, sit down, put my headphones and hear to some serious brutal metal. Then i’ll comment on PA. As a suggestion, for the ones who not use/need bluetooth there could be an option for total alsa fallback (like setup-pulseaudio –disable on Opensuse)

  41. Gérard Monpontet

    Yo have right, i have gtkmm-2.24.4 installed but no mm-common installed

  42. Jen

    And a helpful tidbit from Klaatu: https://twitter.com/notKlaatu/status/687691658280841217

  43. Jen

    Klaatu’s tidbit’s been backed up by another acquaintance in computer music: once jack starts, PA can be configured to not run, which is the preferred way of doing things, if your’e doing any kind of “serious” computer audio stuff.

  44. Craig Miles

    After the latest update to current my ktorrent broke.
    Running the command ldd /usr/bin/ktorrent | grep ‘not found’
    i get libpulse-mainloop-glib.so.0 => not found
    libpulse-simple.so.0 => not found
    libpulsecommon-7.1.so => not found
    libjson-c.so.2 => not found
    libasyncns.so.0 => not found
    Should i look for these libraries and install them ?
    Please advise.
    Craig

  45. alienbob

    Let me guess Craig.

    You have been using Skype and had to install several SBo packages to make it work: speex, json-c and pulseaudio. One or more of these packages (probably speex) has not been removed yet after Slackware-current’s pulseaudio update, causing these weird linker errors.

    Note: SBo (and my repository) called the package “speex” but in Slackware it’s called “speexdsp” hence it is trivial to overlook the fact that it’s still there.

    For the record, ktorrent works fine on my Slackware64-current.

  46. E. Wayne Johnson

    @pi: I have been using inkscape for a long time. It runs just fine and is a great tool. It’s fast and powerful, and it is a great substitute for CorelDRAW for those who hate to reboot and start Windoze to run CorelDRAW. Since I have about 25 years experience with CorelDRAW I have tried running it with Wine to not much avail. Inkscape on the other hand is no problem to compile and run in slackware64 current multilib, and it runs just fine after this upgrade to beta.

  47. alienbob

    webster, the error looks more like an issue with sbotools than with Slackware’s perl. You should contact the sbotools author for a fix against the latest perl.

  48. alienbob

    What would be the advantages of compiling inkscape against numpy and lxml? If that enables some seriously useful features, I have to use those.

  49. E. Wayne Johnson

    I have only used inkscape with all of the deps so dont know about not having them.

    I am not experiencing any troubles with audio in VLC with many different genres of music and in my pretty good headphones.

  50. Skaendo

    Although I am indifferent to having PulseAudio, Now I am getting very low pops from my speakers. It’s not something that I am concerned about ATM, just thought that I would mention it.

  51. Ricardo J. Barberis

    Yay, beta!

    FWIW, python-lxml and numpy is to support some Inkscape’s extensions, I’m not sure if they’re needed but surely would be very nice to have.

    Cheers.

  52. ponce

    I’ll leave here a little note on speex: in its most recent version the dsp component has been splitted to be used by other softwares: that’s why in SBo’s build script for 14.1 I reassembled the two (speexdsp and speex) and they were packaged together under the name speex.
    then Pat added speexdsp for pulseaudio in current so, in the current-wip git branch of SBo, I fixed the speex build script not to build the dsp library part too.

  53. ponce

    regarding inkscape, numpy and lxml are used for some graphics effects

    http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Effect_requirements

  54. digi_owl

    So yet another distro cracks under the weight of the Fedora/Freedesktop/Gnome steamroller…

  55. rob

    @digiowl
    You have to use what’s out there and the software can force you to be pragmatical (i.e. install their dependencies). As long as the nature of control is not affected, i.e. as a Slackware user you can master your installation by means of simple text files/scripts, all is fine.

    It is something completely different if you no longer can have a clue what is going on because all is morphed in one blob or due to a middle-layer of distribution-specific scripts. that prevents to understand what is going on or allow you to edit configuration files directly.

    So, I wouldn’t call it cracking…. The major thing seems to make it more easy to use jack to bypass pulse (or even put jack into the distribution as well), cause I like my music and want to get the best out of my nice headphones…

  56. LoneStar

    I think that, being forced to introduce Pulseaudio because of BlueZ, the default approach of configuring it as dumb pipe into ALSA dmix would have been preferrable, instead of introducing it as default audio server.

    Anyway, changing the default is something that doesn’t scare the average Slackware user, and this is the way I’m following when updating my systems in these days.

    Also, even if Pulse is introduced, I would still go on compiling things without Pulseaudio, and using it only when it’s needed as unavoidable dependency, as with BlueZ.

    This my 2 cents on the matter, but of course Pat has his own ideas and we will have to follow.

  57. Geremia

    Who knows about Skype; they don’t even support their Linux version anymore, do they?

    Tox works: https://tox.im/
    It’s open, P2P, and thus much, much more secure.

  58. Musician

    “PulseAudio is *the* standard Linux audio API. It provides routing and multiplexing that ALSA by itself does not, and it\’s a solution that works today, so developers have embraced it. If you don\’t like it, write something better and convince the community to get on board.”

    Hey Jeff, I won’t write anything and convince nobody. After a comfy 20 years ride I simply stopped using Linux two years ago exactly because of this attitude. There are OSes with proper audio support available (including Unix-like) and I’m using one now. You overestimate your power to force people into using inferior software. There is always a choice.

    With just a few legacy Slackware VMs left, I’m glad this issue is not going to affect me. As a music/audio guy I would been strongly opposed to this decision two years ago, but I’m just fine with CoreAudio now, which works great (and Bluetooth, too).

  59. Niki Kovacs

    These last days, I had to install two very recent Acer Aspire E17 laptops. I installed the first last week, and the second one I have right now in front of me. Slackware 14.1 won’t run on this hardware, so I went for -current. For the first, I had to manually edit /etc/modprobe.d/snd-hda-intel.conf to make sound work, whereas the second one has sound out of the box. I’m not sure if this is due to the kernel upgrade or to the introduction of PulseAudio. Right now I have a problem with Xfce’s PulseAudio plugin. When I add it to the panel, I can raise or lower the overall volume, but that’s it. I can’t open the mixer, because the plugin is looking for a nonexistent ‘pavucontrol’ command. What now?

  60. ponce

    pavucontrol has been added to current together with pulseaudio on january 13th.
    try doing a “slackpkg install slackware64” (substitute slackware64 with slackware if you are using current 32bit) to see what you are missing.

  61. Niki Kovacs

    Thanks, Matteo. My mistake. I see how that went. I edited my tagfiles and added all the new stuff from a, ap and l, but simply forgot about xap.

  62. Niki Kovacs

    I have a follow-up question for that, actually two. On the first laptop, I had a working installation of Skype with Apulse (with built-in 32-bit libs). After the transition to PulseAudio, I want to get Skype to work again. If I understand correctly, I have to build multilib packages for pulseaudio and speexdsp. Correct me if I’m wrong. I’m also a bit confused: are speexdsp and speex two separate packages? Or is that two different names for the same codec?

  63. Niki Kovacs

    Later. OK, I removed Apulse, converted the two packages and installed them. I had to fiddle a bit, because I forgot about my skype.desktop calling Skype with the ‘apulse’ command. Once I removed it, it worked like a charm. So everything’s perfect now. Cheers.

  64. Helios

    What I exprienced with pulseaudio is instability. It I start a multimedia program I have a great chance that sound is not the same as before. Maybe it is because I switch from one program to another, which changes sound configuration. Anyway it is always possible to recover a good sound by playing with options (there are a lot in vlc !) or with kmix.

  65. Arief JR

    Hi eric after upgrade slackware http://www.slackware.com/changelog/current.php?cpu=x86_64, Dropbox tray icon is ugly with KF5.
    https://www.dropbox.com/s/zd76wlatmj6w0py/Screenshot_20160117_201819.png?dl=0

    How to fix it? what causes in xembed-sni-proxy?

    Thanks

  66. Drakeo

    This is the biggest gift i could ever have. spent so long adding everything. Pat really did it right. any one want to set up a pulseaudio sink for screen recording and audio recording I have set up a tutorial and the scripts on github
    https://github.com/Drakeo/jack-pulse-sink
    add simple screen recorder and you have the ultimate machine in recording anything that is visual or audio cumming from your computer. absolutely.
    it was used in slak live on youtube. Been used for few years rock solid since pulse audio 6.8.
    woot woot.

  67. Ricardo J. Barberis

    +1 Ryan, I was about to say that if Eric, Pat or another Slacware core developer needs to raise money for a new build-box they might put an indiegogo campaign or something like that.

    A lot of us will be more than happy to chip in.

  68. alienbob

    Hi guys

    Our Internet modem broke, so we have not had Internet for two days. This means that the slackdocs mailing lists are offline as well.

    I hope to get a new modem today or tomorrow. In the meantime, I have to be at work in order to reply here…

    Also it is impossible to upload the new Plasma 5 or Live ISO images as a result.

  69. alienbob

    Arief,

    Try removing the xembed-sni-proxy package.
    From the README:

    Support for legacy Xembed protocol is back and my “xembed-sni-proxy” package
    which I added a few releases earlier, is gone again from my repository
    because its code is now part of Plasma itself.

  70. alienbob

    Thanks for any and all donations guys. Build box running 24/7 eats electricity too so I am happy with all I receive.
    However, I will not actively start campaigning for money, it’s not that bad as long as I have a day-time job. The donation banner is all I am going to show, which makes it a voluntary effort instead of making everyone feel uncomfortable.

  71. Michelino

    Same problem here with dropbox after -current upgrade, no icon at all!

    Already removed your xembed-sni-proxy package (before upgrade).

    Any tip?

  72. IAMREAL

    Thank you God, no fool backdoor (systemd) in Slackware.

    Long live, Slackware.

  73. Arief JR

    Eric,

    xembed-sni-proxy already removed, before upgrade. sorry misprint, i think xembed-sni-proxy.

  74. Arief JR

    Michelino,

    Same problem, but dropbox background on tray icon is ugly. this dropbox background be transparent

  75. alienbob

    The problem with the ugly Dropbox icon in KDE4 is caused by the fact that Dropbox is programmed using Qt5 these days, and KDE4 is of course using Qt4. In my Plasma 5 environment, the systray icon looks prefectly fine.
    The cause of the issue lies in the private copy of the OpenGL library which is stored by Dropbox in your ${HOME}/.dropbox-dist/ directory. The private copy does not play nice with the proprietary GL implementations of ATI/AMD and NVIDIA. You will probably have one of these two binary drivers installed if your Dropbox icon looks ugly.

    The fix (at least until Dropbox refreshes itself to a new version) is to remove that private copy and create a symlink to the system library.
    Stop dropbox and then:

    $ cd ~/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.*
    $ mv -i libGL.so.1{,.ORIG}
    $ ln -s /usr/lib64/libGL.so.1

    (of course if you run a 32bit Slackware, that last command should have “lib” instead of “lib64”).
    When you restart Dropbox now, it will show up with a nice transparent icon.

  76. Arief JR

    ~/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx on my $HOME directory does not exist, but dropbox place in /opt/dropbox/dropbox-lnx.

    Thanks before for your help!

    i was follow your instruction, with cd /opt/dropbox/dropbox-lnx*
    and $ mv -i libGL.so.1{,.ORIG}
    $ ln -s /usr/lib64/libGL.so.1

    and dropbox on tray icon nothing, still same above problem.

  77. alienbob

    Well, “/opt/dropbox/” ? Then you are not using my “dropbox-client” package which downloads the daemon to ${HOME}/.dropbox-dist/ – I’ll make a guess that you use the “dropbox” script from slackbuilds.org.

    You did stop dropbox before and restart dropbox after making the symlink?

  78. Ferenc

    Hi Eric,
    Do you have any advice on skype systray icon?
    Under KDE5 it does not show up. Is there any 32-bit package i should install to have it displayed?

  79. Renato

    Hi Alien,

    I can´t open okular in 14.2 beta 1. I think the okular need kde4libs 4.14.15.

    Thanks bro!!

  80. Michelino

    Hi Eric,
    it’s not my case.

    I’ve your Plasma5 environment, your dropbox client and an Intel “skylake” GPU, so, in addition to your suggest, I’ve replayed also private “libX11-xcb.so.1” and “libdrm.so.2”.
    At the and, this workaround did the trick and everything works smoothly:

    $ cd ~/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.*
    $ mv -i libGL.so.1{,.ORIG}
    $ ln -s /usr/lib64/libGL.so.1
    $ mv -i libX11-xcb.so.1{,.ORIG}
    $ ln -s /usr/lib64/libX11-xcb.so.1.0.0 libX11-xcb.so.1
    $ mv -i libdrm.so.2{,.ORIG}
    $ ln -s /usr/lib64/libdrm.so.2.4.0 libdrm.so.2
    $ dropbox stop
    $ dropbox start

  81. rvdboom

    Ferenc -> Well, this comment may not be very useful, but Skype appears to me in the systray with the latest current and AlienBob’s latest KDE5 packages. I do not have any other tray installed. It doesn’t require apulse anymore.

  82. Arief JR

    yeah, i stop dropbox and start dropbox again.
    right, now i install dropbox from your package

    thanks eric

  83. Geremia

    I get this problem when trying to run alsamixer:

    ALSA lib dlmisc.c:254:(snd1_dlobj_cache_get) Cannot open shared library /usr/lib64/alsa-lib/libasound_module_ctl_pulse.so

  84. ponce

    Geremia, you most probably are missing Slackware’s alsa-plugins-1.1.0-x86_64-2 package.

  85. alienbob

    Renato, dolphin works fine for me on Slackware64-current. Are you running the KDE4 of Slackware-current or my Plasma 5?
    What are the errors you are encountering?

  86. Geremia

    Yes, I was missing Pulse! (! I forgot to do a #slackpkg install-new ¡)

    Is there a way to use Pulse to do audio mixing with SimpleScreenRecorder (SSR), similar to using Jack as described on this blog’s “A journey into recording sound & video in Slackware” post?

  87. Renato

    Eric, KDE4 of Slackware-current. =(
    Was using plasma5 but went back to KDE4 can you be any package in conflict ?

  88. alienbob

    Yes you will probably have a package conflict in the form of a Plasma 5 package left over that has the same name as the KDE4 version. Inspect all your ‘alien’ packages:

    $ ls /var/log/packages/*alien

  89. svily0

    Seeing this a bit too late, but… regarding the build box – just chose the hardware and ask for donation. I’m sure you will not have to wait too long.

  90. linuxrocks123

    Alienbob, you could have provided directions on exorcising pulseaudio for those of us who don\’t need Bluetooth audio.

    The following worked for me:

    cd /etc
    mv asound.conf asound.f-ck_no
    removepkg pulseaudio

  91. alienbob

    Hi linuxrocks123,

    First off: Slackware is not mine, and the decision to add PulseAudio was not mine.
    When Slackware moves in an unexpected (to some) direction, it is not my task to provide instructions to take a side road.
    I understand that some people want to stay away from PulseAudio at all cost, and that is OK by me – who am I to tell other people what they should or should not do?
    If the community comes up with solutions however, then that is a good thing. Such solutions could then be documented on docs.slackware.com for all to find and use.

  92. linuxrocks123

    Sorry, I didn\’t mean to imply it was your responsibility to provide instructions. I see now how it might have looked like criticism, and I should have phrased the comment differently. I was just trying to provide a solution that worked for me that I thought you might want to incorporate into the main article. Like, everything (except presumably Bluetooth, which I don\’t use) seems to still work when I do those commands. The only non-obvious (to me) part was having to nuke asound.conf.

    There\’s no way to create an account on docs.slackware.com that I could find. I assume you or another admin has to approve new users? If so, would you approve me? Otherwise, if I missed how to create an account, I\’m sorry, but would you let me know how?

    Thanks, and thanks for helping make Slackware awesome!

  93. alienbob

    The front page of the Wiki has a section called “edit this wiki” where the instruction can be found: “Send an email to “slackdocs-admin@alienbase.nl” if you want to request an account. The registration form has been disabled because of spam attacks!“.

    Feel free to request a Wiki account and write something nice there 🙂

  94. guille

    That is great, I think.
    Now I need to update my radio station profile which was working marvelous with ALSA and Jack.

    Regards,

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