My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

Second Plasma 5 update for September

The previous update was targeted for August but due to the difficulties I had in compiling all packages, that release slipped to early September. That is why I can announce a second September release for my KDE 5 packages for Slackware. The KDE 5_15.09_02 update contains all new software: Frameworks 5.14.0, Plasma 5.4.1 and Applications 15.08.1.

I had a couple of complaints bout how my previous package set performed. The most annoying issue was the minute-long delay in displaying the “Leave” menu, and the minute-log delay in showing the Logout dialog when the Logoff widget was clicked. I found the cause. It was the LoginKit package which I had added because I hoped that it could help in keeping systemd out of Slackware. I have now removed LoginKit again, and the problem has disappeared. Anyway, ConsoleKit2 does what I hoped LoginKit would do: provide a useable systemd-logind compatible API. It looks like LoginKit will not be needed.

My other major annoyance has not been solved yet, and I am still in dubio whether this is being caused by the recent updates to slackware-current or by the recent Wayland-related code changes in KWin. The issue? Whenever the power saver kicks in and I am not paying attention, the screen of my Lenovo T400 laptop (Intel graphics) turns black. It looks like the backlight does not get turned back on when I move the mouse or press a key. I have to Ctrl-Alt-F1 to get to my Linux console, press the backlight-brightness button until I can see my screen’s content again, and then I can switch back to X using Alt-F7. Another thing: if the screenlocker started during this powersave period, the lock screen that stares me in the eye I switch back to the graphical console, is frozen. I can type my password but no visual feedback is provided, even when I press ENTER. But if I then press Alt-TAB, the screen suddenly refreshes and I see my Plasma 5 desktop in full glory. This looks like a desktop- or window refresh issue, which is why I think it may be related to KWin. I have not filed a bug report yet because I do not yet know against which component to file the bug.

Lastly, the progress bar which shows as part of the Plasma 5 startup splash screen, is not moving. Yet the desktop loads properly in the background and eventually the non-moving progress bar is replaced by the Plasma 5 desktop. Does anyone know if this progress bar is broken somehow? Does anyone know which software component draws that progress bar so that I can file a bug for this as well?

Let’s hope this will be addressed and get fixed eventually. Other than that, Plasma 5 is a fine desktop at the moment.

What’s new in KDE 5_15.09_02?

  • ConsoleKit2 (a drop-in replacement for Slackware’s unmaintained ConsoleKit) has been rebuilt with several patches provided by Robby Workman. And plasma-workspace was patched to allow the screenlocker to use the systemd-logind API provided by ConsoleKit2. No systemd needed! SDDM will again start a ConsoleKit session by adding “ck-launch-session” to the session startup (was accidentally removed previously)
  • As said earlier, I have removed the LoginKit package, it is not needed and did not play nice.
  • One addition to the “deps” is a rebuilt version of Slackware’s libproxy package. I have removed KDE 4 support from that package. The original Slackware libproxy package (with KDE 4 support) is causing crashes in Frameworks 5 (KF5) software which calls functionality in libproxy. One example is the OwnCloud client, and KDE Telepathy will also use libproxy (I am working on adding that soon)
  • I have removed the KDE 4 entry from “xwmconfig” because there is no more KDE 4 desktop session to start. Likewise, I have removed the “startkde4” script.
  • Frameworks 5.14.0 is an enhancement release, you can read the details on https://www.kde.org/announcements/kde-frameworks-5.14.0.php
  • Plasma 5.4.1 is a bugfix release, see https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.4.1.php . Nothing really stands out in the ChangeLog for this release.
  • Applications 15.08.1 was just released today. It is a bugfix release for the 107 programs which have already been ported to KF5 . Let me know what you think of the KF5 port of the Kontact Suite (KDEPIM) which was also updated… I do not use it myself.

Installing or upgrading Frameworks 5, Plasma 5 and Applications

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” “plasma”, “plasma-extra” and “applications”.

Upgrading to this KDE 5 is not difficult, especially if you already are running KDE 5_15.09. 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.

Note:

If you are using slackpkg+, have already moved to KDE 5_15.09 and are adventurous, you can try upgrading using the following set of commands. This should work but feel free to send me improved instructions if needed (assuming in this example that you tagged my KDE 5 repository with the name “ktown_testing” in the configuration file “/etc/slackpkg/slackpkgplus.conf“):
# slackpkg update
# slackpkg install ktown_testing (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_testing (upgrade all existing packages to their latest versions)
# slackpkg upgrade-all (upgrade the remaining dependencies that were part of my repo previously)
# slackpkg remove LoginKit (because I removed this package again, which was added to 5_15.09)

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 that I do not want to repeat here, but 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 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 “testing” repository):

Where to get the new packages for Plasma 5

Download locations are listed below (you will find the sources in ./source/5/ and packages in /current/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!

Have fun! Eric

40 Comments

  1. carlos moura

    Hello Eric . Well I have done experiments with their packages ” kde5 ” and installed versions 5:15:06 and 5:15:04 in the updated current slackware , are running smoothly, the progress bar is normal and everything responds well without freezing , then I believe the problems do not relate to recent updates slackware itself , perhaps lack of compatibility of these new versions of plasma5 and your news . I will install these new packages and see how it goes and then return . See you soon

  2. Eduardo

    Thank you Eric! downloading now…

  3. Eduardo

    Just upgraded to 15_09_2. So far it works good and the annoying delay is gone. Thanks Eric!

  4. rvdboom

    Yep, delay is also gone for me and everything works fine for me (I don’t use energy saving for screen on my desktop).
    Thanks a lot for these packages, Eric, and for all the work that goes with them!

  5. manciuleas

    Hi Eric,

    Thank you for this update!
    Unfortunately kdevelop does not start anymore and it’s because of missing libgrantlee_core.so.0 library. It seems that the grantlee library provided by Slackware is still needed and it was a bit premature to replace it with grantlee-qt5. Recompilation of kdevelop fails because of the same reason, so it seems that you’d have to revert to having two versions of the grantlee library.

    Regards

  6. alienbob

    Hi manciuleas,

    I may have to compile Kdevelop to work properly on Plasma 5. I will try working around the grantlee requirement but if all else fails I will see if I can add enough of the old grantlee back to make it work.

  7. Widya Walesa

    I got two kwalletd* executable and each depend on different KDE version.

    $ grep “usr/bin/kwalletd” /var/log/packages/*
    /var/log/packages/kde-runtime-15.08.1-x86_64-1alien:usr/bin/kwalletd
    /var/log/packages/kwallet-5.14.0-x86_64-1alien:usr/bin/kwalletd5

    $ ldd /usr/bin/kwalletd | grep found
    libqgpgme.so.1 => not found
    libgpgme++-pthread.so.2 => not found
    libqgpgme.so.1 => not found
    libgpgme++-pthread.so.2 => not found
    libqgpgme.so.1 => not found
    libgpgme++-pthread.so.2 => not found
    $ ldd /usr/bin/kwalletd5 | grep found

    /usr/bin/kwalletd needs libqgpgme.so.1 which is shipped with kdepimlibs-4.14.x

    /usr/bin/kwalletd5 already using KDE5.

    The problem is, owncloud still calling /usr/bin/kwalletd upon start so it fails to open my KDE5 because of the missing libraries.

  8. alienbob

    Hi Widya

    Please read https://barlog.rusu.info/valentin/blog/?p=395 for the reason why both kwalletd and kwalletd5 exist.
    To solve your issue, simply install the “kdepimlibs4” and “akonadi4” packages which I provide as part of KDE 5, to address these compatibility issues.

  9. alienbob

    manciuleas, I have just uploaded two new packages to the ‘ktown’ repository for Plasma 5: “grantlee-qt4” and “oktetapart4”.

    Both are meant for KDevelop: grantlee-qt4 fixes the missing libraries issue, and oktetapart4 contains the KPart of okteta (KDE4 version) which is required by KDevelop for integrating a HEX editor.

  10. manciuleas

    Hi Eric,

    It works now, thank you. One more thing: there’s an overlap in the baloo packages, the ‘bin’ directories contain almost the same executables. I guess that the intention is to use the ones from baloo-5, so probably you’d have to remove the executables from the baloo-4 package as with akonadi.

    Regards

  11. Owen Greaves

    I finally got around to installing, the only issue I’m getting now is….some blocks whenever I click on the menu, clock or anything – weird video thingy happening – if i open a browser I get a thin line from the tip left to bottom right about a 1/4 inch wide. If I click on the menu I get a odd triangle block about 2 inches wide, tapering to a point in the top left corner. Otherwise, even the clock sets properly now : )

  12. bratpit

    “Whenever the power saver kicks in and I am not paying attention, the screen of my Lenovo T400 laptop (Intel graphics) turns black.”
    I do not know it is the same but
    I had the similar issue on my Desktop , LXDE, intel hasswell HD graphics , but moving cursor around the screen and open any window revert back black desktop area.

    1.I revert intel driver to 2.99.917 before patches was added.
    2. In /etc/X I create file Xwraper.config and added “allowed_users=anybody” to revert full compatibility with xorg prior to 1.16. Mainly to autologin to X from runlevel 3 like I have had in xorg 1.15.

    After this everything is OK. No black Desktop.

  13. carlos moura

    Hello Eric . Really had many problems with kwin with very high consumption of CPU , plasma closing repeatedly to try to change the menu to full screen (application dashboard ) , dolphin freezing to click the right button to open the context menu until initially moved to openbox and then to compiz and then yes everything works perfectly , very fast and stable. Before getting to that I renamed all the folders that had a point before the name on my / home / carlos ( .config , .cache , .kde , etc ) everything was renovated as last attempt to come up this idea of ??changing the wm, fortunately it turned out great . I stay now with compiz . Thank you and see you soon , I am sorry for not mastering the English language , I’m using google translator.

  14. LoneStar

    Hi Eric,
    there seems to be a gpg checksum error on package kde-workspace-4.11.22-x86_64-1alien.txz

    slackpkgplus refuses to install it, a manual upgradepkg works.

  15. alienbob

    Hi LoneStar.

    Indeed! I had done a final recompilation of that package but apparently I failed to re-generate its meta-data.
    I am rebuilding the repository metadata right now and this should be fixed on the primary mirrors in 30 minutes.
    Thanks for reporting.

  16. Geremia

    I get a black screen when running “startx”. It hangs, too; I cannot kill X with Ctrl+Alt+Del or switch to another tty with Ctrl+Alt+F etc.

  17. Geremia

    I think the black screen + hang after startx may be caused by upgraded Mesa and xf86_intel packages. I remember I had to use Ponce’s custom build for my Intel graphics card. I tried downgrading the xf86_intel, but to no avail. Perhaps it’s a Mesa issue. Mesa is now v. 11, but I had 10.x before. Does that package still exist somewhere?

  18. Geremia

    It may also be an X issue. Here’s my Xorg.0.log: https://gist.github.com/71e3402291e40674975b

  19. alienbob

    Hi Geremia

    I am not sure that the X.Org log shows actual issues. What video card and what video driver are you using by the way?

    I have not yet added a “Plasma Fail-safe” session script to my packages, but perhaps it is good to have that again.
    Try this to get a Failsafe choice in your SDDM session selection dropdown:

    # vi /usr/share/xsessions/plasma-safe.desktop

    And put these contents in the above (new) file:

    # ——————————————
    [Desktop Entry]
    Encoding=UTF-8
    Type=XSession
    Exec=/usr/bin/startkde –failsafe
    TryExec=/usr/bin/startkde
    DesktopNames=KDE Fail-safe
    Name=Plasma Fail-safe
    Comment=Plasma by KDE (Fail-safe)
    X-KDE-PluginInfo-Version=5.4.1
    # ——————————————

    The failsafe session will not attempt to use hardware acceleration.

  20. Geremia

    I’m not so sure it’s a Plasma issue. I get the same problem when using startxfce4 (not startx into Plasma). I think is has something to do with DRI. I tried disabling DRI in xorg.conf, and X doesn’t finish starting, but I don’t get the hang issue. hmm

  21. Geremia

    It’s an Intel i915 card in a System76 laptop. See my comment here:

    Those with an Intel graphics card will need Ponce’s Intel driver, too:
    http://ponce.cc/slackware/testing/tmp/xf86-video-intel-20150822_a6317fc-x86_64-2.txz

    in addition to his Mesa:
    http://ponce.cc/slackware/testing/tmp/mesa-10.6.4-x86_64-1ponce.txz

  22. Geremia

    I’m not sure if that helped, but turning off DRI in the xorg.conf (cf. this) helped:

    Section “Device”
    Identifier “Intel Graphics”
    Driver “intel”
    Option “DRI” “False”
    EndSection

  23. Gérard Monpontet

    Without splash screen, start-up of plasma5 is a lot faster 😉

  24. Francesco Petronella

    There are some problems with copying and pasting images, and seems like that I’m not the only one that has them. http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/%5Bslackware64-14-1%5Dapplication-randomly-crashes-when-copying-image-4175552514/

  25. alienbob

    Hi Francesco

    That LQ post has only one person complaining about crashes when copying bitmaps, and judging by the nick that person is you?
    The LQ post also shows that you are not using my packages, and are not running Slackware-current.
    Since you are the only one with this issue, it may have been caused by your compiling KDE 5 on Slackware 14.1. Perhaps you missed one or more packages in Slackware that should have been upgraded. Perhaps it helps if you recompile/re-install all the KDE 5 packages on top of the already installed KDE 5 packages. Some packages get extra features that way.

    Note that there is a big difference between Slackware 14.1 and -current by now. I am not going to attempt to support or troubleshoot KDE 5 issues on Slackware 14.1

  26. Francesco Petronella

    Thanks for the replay alien. Yes, it’s me. I said forward in the thread that I installed a fresh installation of slackware current (iso generated with your script) and installed your packages following the README instruction. The problem is still there. In the last post of the thread another person said has that problem

  27. alienbob

    Hi Francesco

    I had not noticed the second page…
    OK, so your crashes seem toe appearing in GTK based applications. What theme engine are you using to blend GTK applications in with Plasma 5? Do you have installed QtCurve perhaps? Have you made sure to removepkg the obsolete oxygen-gtk3 package which will cause issues with the GTK3 in Slackware-current?

    Also I have a question about the “/builds/slave/m-aurora-l64-ntly-000000000000/” pathnames in your Firefox error messages. Are you using a Firefox binary which is not native to Slackware?

  28. Francesco Petronella

    In order: Breeze; No; yes; Yes, i run a self compiled version of Firefox Aurora, but the problem also appears in GIMP, that is native.

  29. alienbob

    Breeze is the theme engine for Qt based applications, but Gimp and Firefox (and Autora) are based on GTK. So which GTK theming engine are you using for blending GTK applications better with the Plasma 5 desktop?
    Perhaps you are not theming at all, but the crash messages you showed are commonly reported when using a GTK theming engine in KDE – most notoriously QtCurve.

  30. Francesco Petronella

    I don’t actually know how to verify which theme i’m using (if any)

  31. Eduardo

    Hi Eric, check this out:

    http://blog.davidedmundson.co.uk/blog/xembed_back

    Maybe you could get rid of trayer or wmsystemtray in the near future. 🙂

  32. alienbob

    Eduardo, I think I will keep a close eye on https://github.com/davidedmundson/xembed-sni-proxy then, and add a package in my next update of Plasma 5.
    Thanks for pointing me to this, I had not noticed otherwise.

  33. Gérard Monpontet

    Eric, i solved partially, the progress bar problem in the splahscreen, it work here when i start plasma with sddm,
    but no work with startx,
    it’s probably a dbus problem because i have updated
    ‘dbus’ to 1.10.0 version,with this new dbus version and with sddm progress bar work, without this new dbus version, no progress bar.

  34. Gérard Monpontet

    The progress bar work also here with startx and new dbus version,

    when i have added these lines /home/me/.xinitrc

    # launches a session dbus instance
    if [ -z “${DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS-}” ] && type dbus-launch >/dev/null; then
    eval $(dbus-launch –sh-syntax –exit-with-session)
    fi

    these lines are contained in the file:

    /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/30-dbus.sh

    (no tested with old dbus slack current package)

  35. Gérard Monpontet

    I have posted a message, on linuxquestions slackware on the tread,’desired updates to current’ for updated dbus request.

    http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/desired-updates-to-current-20150422-a-4175540375/page22.html

  36. alienbob

    We had already discussed the dbus internally. Robby Workman had not noticed the 1.10.x release and he will look into a newer package as soon as he can.

  37. Gérard Monpontet

    It is not very old, D-Bus 1.10.0 (2015-08-25) 😉

  38. alienbob

    By now you should know that Slackware is *not* about having all the latest and greatest.

  39. alienbob

    Gérard, the broken progress bar is indeed fixed with the addition of a dbus-launch call.
    I have updated my plasma-workspace and sddm-qt5 packages and can confirm that it works now.
    I am waiting for the new Applications 15.08.2 release, and once I have built packages for them (I already have Frameworks 5.15.0 and Plasma 5.4.2) I will do a public update.

  40. Gérard Monpontet

    Good, thanks, Eric.

    I have updated (Frameworks 5.15.0 and Plasma 5.4.2)

    with your KDE.SlackBuild here, and all work fine here.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

© 2024 Alien Pastures

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑