Last time I wrote about Slackware Live Edition was when I released the version 1.1.0 of the scripts. And that was two months ago; lots of updates have been made inbetween. Today I released version 1.1.3 of ‘liveslak’.
I made a set of ISO images (during the last couple of days actually… it is time-consuming) for the Slackware Live Edition based on liveslak 1.1.3 and using Slackware-current dated “Thu Aug 11 18:24:29 UTC 2016“. These ISO images have been uploaded and are available on the primary server ‘bear‘.
If you already use a Slackware Live USB stick that you do not want to re-format, you should use the “-r” parameter to the “iso2usb.sh” script that allows you to refresh the liveslak files on your USB stick without touching your custom content.
Remember, to find out what’s on the ISO you downloaded, try this command:
$ isoinfo -d -i your_downloaded.iso | egrep “Volume id|Publisher id|Data preparer id|Application id”
And if you want to know what ISO was used to create your USB stick, check the content of the /.isoversion file in the root of its Live partition (partition number 3).
As usual, you will find ISO images for a full Slackware (64bit and 32bit versions), 64bit Plasma5 and MATE variants and the 700MB small XFCE variant (64bit and 32bit versions).
New in the ISOs
Most obvious of course: the ISOs are based on the latest slackware-current with Linux kernel 4.4.17. That’s exactly what you’ll get with the SLACKWARE variant.
The XFCE variant’s ISO is ever so slightly larger than the official CDROM size specification dictates, but it should still fit hopefully… I will try to remove some more unneeded stuff before the next release. As it stands, the addition of tigervnc, cups and hplip to the XFCE ISO made it necessary to apply some aggressive pruning of ISO content to be able to stay below the 703 MB limit.
The MATE variant has a refreshed ‘msb‘ package content, I synced my local ‘msb‘ mirror with the official package repository at http://slackware.uk/msb/14.2/
The PLASMA5 variant is a bit of a special case this time. Take note of the following before you download it.
- I added the LXQT and Lumina Desktop Environments. Both are light-weight DE’s based on Qt5 so they look nice & shiny. The Plasma 5 packages inside the ISO already satisfy most if not all of their dependencies. So now there’s two new desktop environments for you to try out. Let me know what you think of them!
One word of caution when using the Lumina DE:- the network applet is not enabled by default, and you may have to enable the network manually. I used “nmtui” in a terminal window but you can try enabling the networkmanager-applet instead. I did not find out how, yet.
- I decided to base this release of PLASMA5 Live on a new ‘testing‘ branch of my ktown repository for slackware-current. This ‘testing‘ branch is not yet public because it contains some intrusive changes. It may have an adverse effect on your Slackware desktop. Why? Because my new ‘testing’ repository will be investigating Wayland support, and this is a work in progress, i.e. stability is not guaranteed.
I think that as long as you do not attempt to start a “Plasma (Wayland)” session but stick to the default “Plasma” session, everything will work properly. But in order to compile support for Wayland into KWin, I had to do the following and you will understand that not everybody will want to follow – so that is why I provide this on a safe Live environment only:- rebuild Slackware’s ‘mesa’ package with wayland support
- rebuild Slackware’s ‘xorg-server’ package with wayland support
- add an ‘elogind‘ package. Elogind is the systemd project’s ‘logind’, extracted out to be a standalone daemon… quite similar to the ‘eudev’ package we already have in Slackware.
- rebuild the ‘qt5’ package to add wayland support
- build KWin on top of this all (it requires full wayland support all the way down to X.Org and it also requires a working logind implementation) to get a functional ‘kwin_wayland‘ executable.
- I took the opportunity to upgrade Qt to 5.7.0 and upgrade to KDE Frameworks 2.25.0, Plasma 5.7.3 and the all-new Applications 16.08.0.
I am still pondering how to maintain a separation between two ‘latest‘ and ‘testing‘ repository branches. I plan to offer ‘latest’ as a bleeding edge Plasma5 but without the intrusive stuff like rebuilt mesa and xorg but I worry about the workload when also offering a ‘testing’ package set. I may have to reconsider my monthly release schedule of the ktown updates. And the git repository will have to be branched as well (the least of my worries).
In any case, this latest Slackware PLASMA5 ISO is definitely worth checking out.
In the first place it allows you to get a look at the latest Plasma and Applications, and then there’s the Wayland support. If you are interested in getting Wayland working on Slackware I really appreciate your help!
Because (big fat warning): Wayland is not working properly yet. The “Plasma (Wayland)” session gets stuck in a black screen when started from SDDM and when you start it from the console (select the ‘xinitrc.kwayland‘ entry in ‘xwmconfig‘) it seems to run in a framebuffer at a fixed 1024×768 pixel resolution.
The changes between liveslak scripts 1.1.2 and 1.1.3
Not so much has changed actually – small fixes and enhancements. The ‘1.1.3’ tag was applied to accompany the release of the new ISOs.
- iso2usb.sh: add safeguard against mistyping the LUKS passphrase.
- make_slackware_live.sh: add ‘-G’ parameter to generate ISO image from pre-existing file tree.
- liveinit: allow modules to be organized in subdirectories.
- XFCE: add tigervnc, cups and HP printer support.
Download the ISO images
The ISO variants of Slackware Live Edition are: SLACKWARE, XFCE, PLASMA5 and MATE. These ISO images (with MD5 checksum and GPG signature) have been uploaded to the master server (bear) and should be available on the mirror servers within the next 24 hours.
- Primary location: http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/slackware-live/ (rsync://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/slackware-live/)
- Darren’s mirror (also fast!): http://slackware.uk/people/alien-slacklive/ (rsync://slackware.uk/people/alien-slacklive/)
- Willy’s mirror: http://repo.ukdw.ac.id/slackware-live/
- Ryan’s mirror: https://seattleslack.ryanpcmcquen.org/mirrors/slackware-live/
- Shasta’s mirror: http://ftp.slackware.pl/pub/slackware-live/ (rsync://ftp.slackware.pl/slackware-live/)
- Tonus’s mirror: http://ftp.lip6.fr/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/people/alien-slacklive/
Download liveslak sources
The liveslak project can be found in my git repository: http://bear.alienbase.nl/cgit/liveslak/ . That’s all you need to create a Slackware Live ISO from scratch. Documentation for end users and for Live OS developers is available in the Slack Docs Wiki.
Have fun! Eric
Thank you Eric.
I’ll check out Plasma5 this week and let you know.
— kjh
Great work Eric!
I even have on issiue… or it resolves one issiue. I have very old IBM ThinkPad X41 with intel915 chipset. And when I boot slackware-current (installed as 14.2 and then updated by slackpkg) I got some traces after DRM initialistaion (here is an exempt, if interested I have whole dmesg output):
===
[ 10.231432] [drm] initialized overlay support
[ 10.237326] ————[ cut here ]————
[ 10.237456] WARNING: CPU: 0 PID: 6 at drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c:12157 intel_atomic_check+0xb47/0x1000 [i915]()
[ 10.237471] WARN_ON(!connector_state->crtc)
[ 10.237476] Modules linked in:
[ 10.237484] thermal nvram snd i915(+) soundcore rfkill hwmon battery ac drm_kms_helper fjes 8250_fintek drm intel_agp i2c_algo_bit parport_pc fb_sys_fops intel_gtt syscopyarea parport sysfillrect irda sysimgblt uhci_hcd crc_ccitt i2c_c
ore video agpgart shpchp ehci_pci ehci_hcd button acpi_cpufreq tpm_tis tpm processor loop
[ 10.237550] CPU: 0 PID: 6 Comm: kworker/u2:0 Not tainted 4.4.15 #2
[ 10.237560] Hardware name: IBM 2525FAG/2525FAG, BIOS 74ET64WW (2.09 ) 12/14/2006
====
But when I boot liveslack I got nothing. And liveslack 1.1.3 is slackware-current…
I can’t figure what’s the difference – maybe something is blacklisted (but for liveslack there are the same files). Maybe it is becouse slackware-current (the whole tree) is source for liveslack? Maybe I should do clean install from slackware-current (generate ISO from files tree myself and then install from it)?
Any ideas?
Zwierz
It looks like obconf-qt which is included with lxqt packages is compiles against openbox-3.5.0, because it wont work wit openbox-3.6.1 because cant find libobrender.so.27. I see this for lxqt packages for 14.2 which were added.
Dear Eric,
I wanted to impress a mate with your wonderful work!
He is french , so i whiped out a 1.0 version of LiveSlack Plasma, and all went well, but i am unable to get the qt sign to work with the french keyboard mapping.
Sorry if i am being daft.
warm regards.
_metic
Hi _metic – what is a “qt sign” on a french keyboard?
Perhaps one of the other french people can chime in… I do not own a french keyboard and if there’s anything missing in french keyboard support I would like to know so I can fix it.
Hello,
I am still running kde4, but use qt5 in some programs. I have tried to upgrade qt5.6.1 to qt5.7.0 found in the deps/ directory. But the qt5 programs do not work, even after successful recompilation. I get the error message:
This application failed to start because it could not find or load the Qt platform plugin “xcb”
in “”.
Available platform plugins are: eglfs, linuxfb, minimal, minimalegl, offscreen, xcb.
Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.
Helios – it has often been said before on this blog and on LQ.
My qt5 package depends on libxkbcommon and on libinput. Install those two packages from my repository and your issues will be solved.
alienbob – libinput was missing. Now qt5 works. Thank you
But I think this comes with qt-5.7.0. qt-5.6.1 did work without it.
Hello Sir,
thank you for you kind response, i meant the @=at sign it is a combination of the (“Alt Gr” + 0) the zero key has three notations on it:
-top left=0
-bottom left=à
-bottom right = @.
the ‘0’ works with shift
the ‘à’ works pressed solo
but the “Alt Gr” + 0/à/@ key only produces the à when pressed.
i hope i was not too confusing.
thank you again.
_metic, we will have to wait for another french user of Slackware Live to comment.
Any chance you might include kdeconnect-kde 1.0?
steve: Answered in another article’s comment section.
Thank you Eric i found an answer i this thread.
http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/kde-4-12-3-for-slackware-current-and-14-1-plus-some-goodies/
“Next update of my Plasma5 packages, it will have a new kdeconnect package”
Hi , i try to test xfce currrent64 in virtualbox, making “efi” system.
xfce never start.
i try some things
memory 2048
cpu 2
video 128mb
3d acceleration , enbaled and disabled –> same
black screen after all system live mounted.
virtualbox is the latest in the homepage.
USUARIONUEVO, it works on a real EFI computer. It works on VMWare too. So there may be something you are missing in the VirtualBox configuration.
same virtual machine can run xubuntu 64 in uefi.
but np , only affects virtualbox.
vmware can run perfectly.
some plan to add secure boot support ?
thanks.
I would not know how to support secure boot with a standard Slackware kernel.
Hi, Eric remove, baloo-widget (4) rebuild kde-baseapps and kget, is a good idea, the baloo-widget (4) isn’t needed is no longer used by anything, now. 😉
Running PLASMA5 from DVD was great and speedy. Installed to LUKS/LVM hard drive and now working through some questions about slackpkg upgrades and multilib adds. Thanks Eric for your wonderful additions to Slackware. Cheers Brian
Hey ERIC , i found a solution for virtualbox+uefi
NEED xorg-driver-fbdev to the extra directory.
Adding this driver to the iso , the live start in virtualbox + uefi.
USUARIONUEVO so that is what I will add to the next release of the ISO, if it worked for you with xorg-driver-fbdev.
One question though: this package never went into the Slackware core because (at the time of Slackware 14.0 when it was added to Slackware) it required a xorg.conf file. How did you get it to work? Did you have to write a /etc/X11/xorg.conf file yourself?
Thanks for your feedback.
no , no need extra actions.
You can test this very easy.
Get some live iso , make default virtualbox machine x64 and activate uefi option ..try to start , never arrives to desktop.
Add fbdev is in 14.2 in extra directory , no need conf file , no need extra actions.
With fbdev desktops arrives fine.
I analize other distros like xubuntu ..that starts same with fbdev driver , virtualbox +uefi cant start with “vesa”.
BIOS –> all works well using vesa
UEFI –> no desktop , xorg error messages , add fbdev driver and all works.
I did the setup to HD and rebooted, after that I did a slackpkg update and upgrade-all. This caused plasma to break. Changing the priority for ktown above alienbob in slackpkgplus.conf and repeating the upgrade solved this issue. Looks like the old qt replaced the new qt by default otherwise. Just a heads up!