I am starting a new cycle of KDE packaging. The KDE community announced the general availability of KDE SC 4.13.0!
After creating three new “dependency” packages (xapian-core, qt-gstreamer and eigen3), I built my new KDE packages on Slackware-current. I have not tested them on Slackware 14.1 and will not guarantee that they are even useable on Slackware 14.1. If you want a taste of KDE 4.13 then please upgrade to slackware-current.
What’s new in KDE 4.13?
In KDE 4.13, major improvements are made to KDE’s Semantic Search technology, benefiting many applications. To be specific: Nepomuk has been replaced by Baloo, which performs better and avoids the data duplication currently seen in KDE (copies of the same data, think of emails, get replicated between nepomuk, akonadi and virtuoso leading to large homedirectory storage needs). A nepomuk-to-baloo migration should happen automatically when upgrading to the new KDE (according to the build log, that feature has been enabled), but I have not checked yet if that worked. Note that nepomuk is still part of the software compilation, to facilitate the migration and to allow non-KDE applications additional grace time to port their semantic search support from Nepomuk to Baloo.
KDE 4.13 can be seen as another transitional release: with Plasma Workspaces and the KDE Development Platform frozen and receiving only long term support, those teams are focusing on the transition to Frameworks 5. Still, there are interface and feature improvements to be found in several of the major applications, such as Okular (the document viewer) and Kate (the document editor) among which support for Baloo. And there is another new package: the foreign speech trainer Artikulate.
How to upgrade to KDE 4.13 ?
You will find all the installation/upgrade instructions that you need in the accompanying README file. That README also contains basic information for KDE recompilation using the provided SlackBuild script.
You are strongly advised to read and follow these installation/upgrade instructions!
Where to find packages for KDE 4.13 ?
Download locations are listed below (you will find the sources in ./source/4.13.0/ and packages in /current/4.13.0/ subdirectories). Using a mirror is preferred because you get more bandwidth from a mirror and it’s friendlier to the owners of the master server!
- http://alien.slackbook.org/ktown/ (the master repository), rsync URI: rsync://alien.slackbook.org/alien/ktown/
- http://taper.alienbase.nl/mirrors/alien-kde/ (my fast US mirror), rsync URI: rsync://taper.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://slackware.org.uk/people/alien-kde/ (fast UK based mirror, run by Darren Austin), rsync URI: rsync://slackware.org.uk/people/alien-kde/
Postscript:
In two weeks, there will be another KDE 4.12 release; the final 4.12.5. Just like the previous 4.12 iterations, I will be compiling this on Slackware 14.1 and this final time, I will also publish them in the Slackware 14.1 directory of the ‘ktown’ repository, so that people running Slackware 14.1 and using slackpkg+ will automatically pick it up and get a nice upgrade to the latest super-stable KDE platform.
Have fun! Eric
Thx, it is good that nepomuk is gone away 🙂
Thank you very much.
For the package eigen3, I have already version 3.2.1 installed. Is it necessary to change to 3.1.2 ?
Thanks Eric! Downloading now and will upgrade shortly. Been working too much and just got back from a holiday long weekend. Ready to Slack. 🙂
I was using the Lancelot launcher, but the upgrade to 4.13 seems to have spifflicated it somehow for me. When I try to add it back as a widget, I get “This object could not be created for the following reason: Could not find requested component: lancelot_launcher.” Is there any reason why this might happen? Or have I done something silly?
After upgrade, akonadi fails to start, with the following error :
Updating index failed:
Sql error: Cannot add or update a child row: a foreign key constraint fails (akonadi.#sql-9bc_3f, CONSTRAINT #sql-9bc_
3f_ibfk_1 FOREIGN KEY (parentId) REFERENCES collectiontable (id) ON DELETE CASCADE ON UPDATE CASCADE) QMYSQL: Unable
to execute query
Query: ALTER TABLE CollectionTable ADD FOREIGN KEY (parentId) REFERENCES CollectionTable(id) ON UPDATE CASCADE ON DELETE CA
SCADE
“”
Unable to initialize database.
And in the mysql.err file in .local/akonadi/…, I have errors in locking aria control file and ibdata1.
Some additional info : after deleting the ~/.local/share/akonadi directory, now “akonadictl start” tries to rebuild akonadi (which is expected) but fails with this error :
“Sql error: Cannot execute statement: impossible to write to binary log since BINLOG_FORMAT = STATEMENT and at least one table uses a storage engine limited to row-based logging. InnoDB is limited to row-logging when transaction isolation level is READ COMMITTED or READ UNCOMMITTED. QMYSQL: Unable to execute query”
This is supposed, according to this page, to be fixed by a system-level parameter in my.conf :
https://confluence.atlassian.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=251724630
A new user manages to start akonadi so I guess it’s time to go to KDE forums
OK, found the culprit : I also needed to remove the ~/.config/akonadi dir. Sorry about the noise.
Hi, after upgrading to 4.13 (from 4.12.4) okular doesn’t work. I only get “Unable to find the Okular component” message. After clicking OK blank window opens with no menu or anything. Any ideas?
Same here on Okular.
Hi Eric!
I can confirm, that KDE 4.13.0 works on Slackware64-14.1 (with all current patches) & installed multilib.
Can’t find nonworking aplication.
Thank’s for your great work.
Everything works fine. Okular is OK here.
Kde is much faster after disabling baloo, nepomuk, akonadi (I don’t need them).
RE: Gwenview doesn’t run.
Thanks for the packages. Except for Gwenview all appears to be well. When trying to run Gwenvieww it returns the following error:
“gwenview: error while loading shared libraries: libraw_r.so.9: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory”
Of course, LibRaw is installed.
I deleted ~/.kde and started fresh, including baloo, nepomuk and akonadi. Gwenview, as previously noted, is the only program I’ve found that won’t run.
So, I then removed baloo, nepomuk and akonadi and found that Dolphin has been tried to baloo and won’t run without it. I also noticed you are no longer given the option to select what you want indexed or turn off indexing completely in the system settings.
Okular works now for me, I didn’t have libkscreen installed.
Hi C.Wizard
Do you per chance have the “gcc” package installed, or not? Looking at the dependencies for LibRaw (ldd /usr/lib64/libraw_r.so.9), I noticed that it needs “gcc” because of its dependency on libgomp. This means that libgomp must be added to the “aaa_elflibs” package when LibRaw gets added to Slackware.
Eric
C.Wizard, you can now select what you _don’t_ want to have indexed. Indeed, disabling the indexer is not possible with Baloo. On the other hand it should not be needed to disable Baloo’s indexer because its indexer should not cause a performance loss.
Eric
Helios … I had intended to use eigen 3.2.1… I think I made a typo when writing the SlackBuild for it and swapped the ‘1’ and ‘2’.
Let me know if you encounter any strange things using eigen 3.2.1. Only the Kstars program requires it, and it should run with any version higher than 2.91.
Eric
Hi Rob
Since the lancelot launcher is not something I added to my package set, I will leave it up to you to discover the cause of the issue you are having. Try recompiling it.
Eric
RE: Installed gcc packages.
Here are the gcc packages I have installed:
gcc-4.8.2_multilib-x86_64-1alien
gcc-gnat-4.8.2_multilib-x86_64-1alien
gcc-objc-4.8.2_multilib-x86_64-1alien
gcc-g++-4.8.2_multilib-x86_64-1alien
gcc-go-4.8.2_multilib-x86_64-1alien
gccmakedep-1.0.2-noarch-2
gcc-gfortran-4.8.2_multilib-x86_64-1alien
gcc-java-4.8.2_multilib-x86_64-1alien
C.Wizard:
Regarding the error you get, “gwenview: error while loading shared libraries: libraw_r.so.9: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory”, what is the output of “ldd /usr/lib64/libraw_r.so.9” and “readelf -e /usr/lib64/libraw_r.so.9 | grep UND” ?
Eric
alienbob, it seems that eigen3 contains only include files, and could be used only to compile programs. So I am not even sure that it is necessary to have it to use kde.
RE: Output from ldd and readelf.
root@darkstar:~# ldd /usr/lib64/libraw_r.so.9
ldd: /usr/lib64/libraw_r.so.9: No such file or directory
root@darkstar:~# readelf -e /usr/lib64/libraw_r
readelf: Error: ‘/usr/lib64/libraw_r’: No such file
alienbob wrote:
“…you can now select what you _don’t_ want to have indexed. Indeed, disabling the indexer is not possible with Baloo. On the other hand it should not be needed to disable Baloo’s indexer because its indexer should not cause a performance loss.”
Sigh…. For sometime I have felt this was the direction the KDE developers were headed, and here we are… They have tied Dolphin to their indexer and they have removed the ability to turn off indexing.
That is a decision for the end user, not the developer, period! It is not debatable nor can there be a rational explanation. The control of the computer, in this case the GUI, should be mine, not that of some developer blinded by his enthusiasm for the, in his mind, “latest and greatest” toy to come down the road, that he is willing to force it upon everyone else.
No need to chase down the gwenview problem. As soon as I finish this post I’m going to do what I’ve been threatening to do since the release of KDE 4.0, and that is, remove KDE completely from my computers.
Thanks for all your help in the past (and Slackware wouldn’t be anywhere as good as it is today without you), but I’m done here. Time to move on.
@up It possible to turn off indexing. You just need to exclude home folder from being indexed. That’s it. Here’s what I have in baloofilerc:
[Basic Settings]
Indexing-Enabled=false
and few lines below:
exclude folders[$e]=/var/,/usr/,$HOME/
Baloo isn’t running here.
C.Wizard, I think you are confusing KDE, the desktop environment with Slackware, the OS.
Anyway, good luck with finding a distro which suits you better. But I think that you should consider what makes KDE a powerful enviroment. Tell me, if you ever come back here, what you notice during your daily routine that makes working with KDE an annoyance when Baloo is running. I do not understand your reasoning at all.
Eric
C.Wizard, you are making it very hard for me to try and help you with that output of ldd and lielf you posted. Surely you could have checked whether there was a libraw_r.so.9 _somewhere on your system. Did you install the 32-bit LibRaw package perhaps? Don’t let me draw everything out of you please.
Helios, one way to find out… “removepkg eigen3”. But you are right.
Eric
What – no support for Lancelot launcher? That’s it I’m going back to Windows! 😉
But seriously. I have the problem with Okular mentioned above, and even though libkscreen is installed it still isn’t working.
I also have the problem with Gwenview. I get the following output from “ldd /usr/lib64/libraw_r.so.9?:
linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007fffb9dff000)
libjasper.so.1 => /usr/lib64/../lib64/libjasper.so.1 (0x00007ffe49ac7000)
libjpeg.so.8 => /usr/lib64/../lib64/libjpeg.so.8 (0x00007ffe4988c000)
liblcms2.so.2 => /usr/lib64/../lib64/liblcms2.so.2 (0x00007ffe4963a000)
libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib64/../lib64/libstdc++.so.6 (0x00007ffe49338000)
libm.so.6 => /lib64/libm.so.6 (0x00007ffe48ff2000)
libc.so.6 => /lib64/libc.so.6 (0x00007ffe48c29000)
libgcc_s.so.1 => /usr/lib64/../lib64/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00007ffe48a13000)
libgomp.so.1 => /usr/lib64/../lib64/libgomp.so.1 (0x00007ffe48804000)
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007ffe49fd5000)
libpthread.so.0 => /lib64/libpthread.so.0 (0x00007ffe485e7000)
“readelf -e /usr/lib64/libraw_r.so.9 | grep UND” returns nothing at all.
Any help would be much appreciated!
Hi Rob,
That output is correct. If you still have a problem with Okular and Gwenview then your problem lies elsewhere than in missing libraries. Here both applications are working just fine, and other people also don’t seem to have issues with them.
You could try starting the programs with ‘strace’ and examine the (large) output text for possible clues:
$ strace gwenview
Eric
Ah OK thanks. Well this looks like it might have something to do with the Gwenview (and Lancelot) problem:
gwenview: error while loading shared libraries: libqjson.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
But “strace okular” doesn’t seem to show any identifiable errors. I get the ghostly grey window with no content, and strace logs mouse movements etc. as if it was a working okular window.
alienbob wrote:
“… you are making it very hard for me to try and help you with that output of ldd and lielf you posted. Surely you could have checked whether there was a libraw_r.so.9…”
You asked for the output and that was the output. Yes, I’ve searched for the file and it wasn’t found. No, the 32bit version is not installed, and, yes, I re-installed the 64bit file (upgradepkg –reinstall –install-new).
And, No, I’m not abandoning Slackware64, just dumping KDE, something I should have done years ago.
That you don’t understand and completely missed the point is not a surprise.
First and foremost, you earned my respect many years ago. As mentioned earlier, if it wasn’t for all your hard work Slackware wouldn’t be nearly as good as it has become.
So, with that in mind, with all due respect 🙂 I’m not surprised you don’t understand. Why? Because your are a raving KDE fan. 🙂 You were praising it all through the 4.0x debacle, when anyone, anyone objective, that is, would have seen what a disaster it was for many years after its release. It has only been in the last year or so that it is even worth giving it another look and only the last few releases I’ve found worth running (and I’ve downloaded an ran everyone of them for a day or two after each one is released). But, now that they are finally on the right track, they turn around and do what I thought they were going to do and have been doing over the years and, that is, tying more and more of the KDE components to their indexer. Tying their file manager, Dolphin, to the indexer was the last straw.
But, back to the point you missed. The point is, the user is the one who should make the decision as to whether or not he wants his system indexed. Performance has absolutely NOTHING to do with it. No one else should be making that decision for him. It is entirely up to the user. Not KDE or anyone else. Personal choice? Control of one’s system? Understand?
@Rob Kemp,
If you read through these forms you find many **end users** are trying to do with Linux what they could do so easily with m$-windows and spend a great deal of their time looking for ways to accomplish just that. My biggest problem is scanning with Linux. Sane/Xsane and the chip in my scanner just do not get along, so to scan quickly and with good quality it is necessary to run the HP drivers in side of Xp inside of VB. So, yes, there are times with I think it would just be easier to bite the bullet and run m$-windows, but that isn’t going to happen 🙂 (and I’m not tossing a perfectly good scanner just it isn’t compatible with Sane).
Sorry C. Wizard I thought you’d left, I hope you weren’t offended by my little pleasantry. I haven’t used Windows since 2001. And I’m a raving KDE fan too, wouldn’t run anything else on my computer. That’s one reason I was drawn to Slackware, where KDE is still given the respect it deserves and – largely thanks to Eric – is normally amazingly easy to use and upgrade. This is the first time in many years that I’ve had a significant problem with KDE, hence my showing up here cap in hand.
Oh C.Wizard, I actually do understand perfectly what you are saying.
I just think that your idea of total control over the system is somewhat different from mine.
You do not have total control over your system, even when you are running Slackware. Lots of developers have made lots of design decisions that are affecting the way you can work with your computer. Most of this is happening “under the hood” and you are happy with it.
Suppose you are not happy with the way UDEV is automatically creating all these pesky device nodes automatically? Suppose you wanted to disable UDEV and create every device node by hand – that would give you a much better control over your system. But is it worth the effort?
Likewise, the KDE indexer tries to make the information you have buried in your files easier accessible. Have you ever tried disabling “slocate”? Were you happy with the enormous effort it took afterwards to find files on your filesystem? Was it acceptable to wait for the “find” command to run its course?
The same can be said for the “semantic indexer” which does not index filenames, but file content. I don’t know how much data you have on your computer, but I have years and years of communication in emails and documents, and without a good search functionality I am lost when I have to answer many dozens of questions every day. At work, it is factors more complex even, and a content indexer is a life saver.
I do understand that this is not answering your complaint about not being able to decide for yourself to disable this functionality. But there is a cut-off point where a developer has to decide on the core functionality he wants to offer. The KDE desktop philosophy is very much interconnected with the concepts around semantic data search, retrieval and cataloguing. GNOME takes a different approach but their concepts all boil down to offering an integrated work environment. Search is an integral part of that.
Helping to maintain a distro like Slackware, is also full of decisions like these; trying to find the optimum between what the team thinks is good for Slackware versus what’s good for the users of Slackware. Ideally, those two are the same, but there are discrepancies and some decisions are made after much heated discussion.
I never really understood your continuing struggle with KDE. This is Slackware, don’t use what you don’t like and leave that stuff to the people who do like it. There’s more than enough in the way of alternatives to keep you a happy camper. You can still use the KDE applications in another desktop environment. Perhaps razor-qt would be a good alternative for you.
By the way… your remark about MS Windows being so easy for tasks that are difficult to achieve in Linux perfectly underscores my argument. The MS Windows platform is _the_ example of a computing environment where you are not in control and the developer decides how you use the software. Sometimes it _is_ better to have someone at the helm who makes the choices, instead of leaving those to the community. How’s that?
I am glad you are sticking with Slackware, fore sure. You may be grumpy at times, but so am I. Welcome to the Waldorf & Statler club 😉 Forgive me my rant at your expense.
Eric
Rob, perhaps you should run “upgradepkg –reinstall –install-new” in the “kde” and “deps” directory in an attempt to get rid of library inconsistency issues.
Also, have you tried creating a new user account and testing if the fresh account has the same issues?
Eric
Good points Eric. I had already tried the first thing, but nothing changed. Following your second suggestion, I have created a new user but the problem persists. I’m not sure what is going on with the qjson thing. I have now noticed that Dolphin is not working either and also complains about the absence of libqjson.so.0.
I’ve been running current now for about two years so it’s probably time (in my terms) that I did a fresh installation. (That’s a bit of Windows culture that I haven’t completely left behind. 😉 )
Eric,
Everything runs absolutely fine here. I upgraded KDE 4.12.4 to 4.13.0 just by installing the new packages with slackpkg+ then issuing ‘slackpkg upgrade-all’. Everything worked just perfect, out-of-the-box.
As I have told you in the past, just after slackpkg+ finishes its business and before reboot, I rsync’ed your new KDE 4.13.0 sources and issued ‘./KDE.Slackbuild kdepim:kdepim-runtime’, wait and ‘upgradepkg –reinstall kdepim-runtime-4.13.0-x86_64-1deny.txz’ to upgrade my custom kdepim-runtime with LibKGAPI support. Even that worked perfectly here.
So, thank you a lot for these new and highly polished packages for KDE 4.13.0 on Slackware.
Hello, great job as usual with the new KDE, Eric! 🙂
Seems like Baloo is making a good entrance just like Nepomuk did (I’m ironic:D )
Ever since when I first logged on my desktop system with the new KDE, an amount of baloo_file_extractor & baloo_file_cleaner processes started, hanging my hard disk working like crazy. And all other processes in “disk wait” status. It’s been going on for hours, I left it at it yesterday evening before going to bed and I found it still hanging the disk this morning. So I finally took the decision of excluding /home/lonestar from indexed folders and killed all those processes. Now the disk is working normally.
The disk is a traditiona rotative HDD.
Does this happen just to me? Do I have such an enormous home dir that takes ages to be indexed?? Nepomuk had reached a fair level of efficiency and it was not hanging my cpu or disk at all. This baloo didn’t hang my cpu but it hit hard on my disk.
I’m gonna try new KDE later on another system to see if there is same behavior.
Hi,
thanks for providing 4.13.0. I’m running this in a VM (14.1), and it seems to work fine (okular and gwenview work as well here). However, I’m glad you will also compile 4.12.5 for us, which is what I want to use on my production systems running 14.1 32 bit. Also thanks for providing hard links to the kdei directory for 32 bit, my script also benefits from it (it’s similar to slackpkg, but lacks upgrade-all, new-config and a dialog interface, other than that it has most of its features and then some …).
Anyways, thank you, Alien BOB.
lems
I have completely sisabled nepomuk/baloo/akonadi. For file searching and indexing I use recoll which works only when I want and does a very good job (it also uses xapian-core).
Just resolved my issue with Gwenview, Dolphin & Okular. I had an old SBo version of qjson installed so I ditched that and installed the one from the official repository. Even though the version numbers are the same, there must have been something in the SBo version that was incompatible with the latest KDE updates. I still haven’t got Lancelot Launcher back but I’m not crying about that.
thanks, Eric, just cosmetic, in xapian package, the man pages aren’t gzipped.
Eric, just installed your latest kde packages on my -current system. Zero issues after a few hours of “kicking the tires”. Many thanks for your selfless work for the Slackware community!
on -current system krdc can’t start rdp session (Could not start “xfreerdp”; make sure xfreerdp is properly installed.)
Installation (slapt-src –install freerdp) not solve problem (session not started)
Hi MiRacLe,
I do not know about slapt-src. All I know (not from own experience- I heard it from others) is that krdc can start a RDP session without recompilation when freerdp is installed.
Can not help you further.
Eric
(slapt-src, sbopkg… not so important – xfreerdp packaged with sbo’s freerdp.SlackBuild not worked in krdc from kde 4.13)
Previous versions of krdc not depended on freerdp – rdesktop was used for rdp-connections…
Hi Eric,
Is there any updates for KDevelop? 4.6.0 version of KDevelop is out and stated to fit for KDE 4.7 or higher. ( http://kdevelop.org/46/kdevelop-460-final-released )
Hi Grissiom
I can add KDevelop in the next iteration of KDE packages.
Eric
Hi Eric
Thanks for doing this. I’ve installed 4.13.0 twice and get the same problem; GTK apps revert to that old-style Windows ugly look. I guess some issue with oxygen-gtk compatibility? Is it something you’ve noticed? Thinking about filing a bug report with KDE, just wondering if it’s something you’d seen.
Thanks
Barry
It appears that kio_sftp is missing from this build.
Hi T.J. L
That’s correct. Slackware’s libssh package needs to be upgraded to at least version 0.6.0. Then you can rebuild the kde-runtime package.
I will see if I can get Patrick to upgrade libssh in slackware-current, else I will provide an updated libssh package when KDE 4.13.1 gets released.
Eric
Meanwhile, as a poor substitute for kio_sftp you can use fish://
Well, I’m giving KDE 4.13 another go… at least at the moment.
First thing, Gwenview doesn’t unload out of memory when you are done with it. Come to think of it, I haven’t even fired it up since rebooting the computer, yet there are nine (9) instances of it running as I type this message.
Neomonkey is running, two of those, even though it is turned off.
And, last, probably unrelated, WINE no longer unloads itself out of memory as it has always done in the past.
Hi C. Wizard
Hmm, I ran gwenview, looked at some pictures, closed the window again, and there are no gwenview processes left.
No idea what Neomonkey is, actually.
And perhaps Wine is running because you are using Pipelight? If the browser loads the plugin then Wine is started too, and the wineserver keeps running after you close the plugin window. I remember that is normal behaviour when running a standalone Windoes program in Wine too.
KDE 4.13.1 is next on my list – expect a post about that very soon. Perhaps you should test that instead of 4.13.0.
Eric
OK. Installed 4.13.1. Turned the machine off last night and just booted it up. There are still 9 instances of Gwenview running, but no nepomonkey (nepomuh-whatever).
I took a snapshot of the system monitor if you would like to see it.
Hi C. Wizard
Have you checked your saved sessions? KDE loads previous sessions automatically unless you configure it differently. See “System Settings > Startup and Shutdown” and check the “Autostart” application list. Perhaps that contains Gwenview.
Eric
Good Evening, Eric.
Yes, I thought of that and did check it. As you brought it up I just checked it again and that is not the problem.
Also, I just went through all the configuration files and deleted everything related to Gwenview and rebooted the computer.
Same problem appeared. There are 9 instances of Gwenview running.
Oh, well….. 🙂
Hi everybody!
Is anyone here using this version (KDE 4.13) on Slackware 14.1 32 bits?
Thanks!