My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

Slackware packages for KDE SC 4.6.3

KDE Software Compilation 4.6.3.

Here it is again, the monthly update to the KDE 4.6 series. Sources have been available publicly since friday, but due to Mother’s Day it took a while to upload my packages.. KDE team anounced the new release as usual.

Built on Slackware 13.37, it will work fine on -current (because at this moment, there is little difference). Exactly when KDE 4.6 will enter Slackware’s -current tree I don’t know, but I will happily keep building packages in the meantime.

If you want to try out KDE SC 4.6.3 instead of Slackware’s 4.5.5 (or my previous 4.6.2) please follow the installation/upgrade instructions in the accompanying README file!

Besides the KDE packages (in the kde/ directory) some of Slackware’s own official packages need to be upgraded, or even removed. There are also a few packages that are required by KDE 4.6.x but are not yet in Slackware. All of those packages are found in the “deps” directory. Don’t miss out on them, or you will have a less than pleasant experience.

One thing that I have added since my 4.6.2 packages is bluedevil, the new bluetooth connection manager for KDE. It integrates well with KDE (you will find a “send to bluetooth device” in Dolphin’s context menu for instance). The old “kbluetooth” application is no longer developed and the GTK application in Slackware “blueman” is not as featureful.

By the way, if you want to make your GTK applications blend better into the KDE desktop, then there is a new GTK theme engine for you – which was created by KDE’s own Oxygen artwork team. It is called “oxygen-gtk” and I have a package for it in my main SlackBuilds repository: http://slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/oxygen-gtk/ .

I installed oxygen-gtk on my laptop running KDE 4.6 and the effect it has on the looks of applications like Firefox, Gimp, Pidgin etc.. is stunning. Of course, the integration is most effective if you are using the Oxygen theme in KDE as well! After installation, be sure to copy or merge the content of the file “/usr/share/themes/oxygen-gtk/gtk-2.0/gtkrc” to your homedirectory into the file “~/.gtkrc-2.0

The KDE 4.6.3 packages for Slackware 13.37 should be available for download from my “ktown” repository by now (the Indonesian mirrors may need a bit of time to sync up):

Please note that I have removed the old 4.4.5 directory – it contained an older version of KDE4 which could be made to run on Slackware 13.0 with a bit of effort. At this moment in time, I think it is wiser to upgrade to Slackware 13.37. I removed the old stuff to free up space on my own machines.

Have fun! Eric

29 Comments

  1. Tsiolkovsky

    Thank you very much for providing the latest KDE software.

  2. zbreaker

    Thanks much Eric. You keep the good stuff coming to us. Downloading now.

  3. Willy Sudiarto Raharjo

    it’s already mirroring while i’m sleeping and it’s finished when i woke up:)

  4. ponce

    thanks a lot for this too, Eric
    🙂

    personally hoping this hal-free stuff (like Robby’s xfce) and udisks/upower get into -current soon
    😀

  5. Thomas Løcke

    Thank you _very_ much for this Eric. Now all I need is for this workday to finish, so I can get busy with KDE 4.6.3. :o)

  6. arslan

    Thanks for the http://slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/oxygen-gtk/

    The gtk applications now *do* look awesome. Thanks.

  7. David

    As usual, thank you very much for the great work!

  8. escaflown

    Thanks, Eric. I like the oxygen-gtk: it looks so nice!

  9. Savo

    The new GTK theme engine makes a massive difference it makes me wonder why it wasn’t created sooner

  10. LoneStar

    I still prefer Oxygen Molecule above oxygen-gtk, especially with firefox and thunderbird.

    Anyway, how does the bluedevil thing work? is it enough to start it? I don’t see anything happening…

  11. alienbob

    @LoneStar:
    If you installed libbluedevil from the ‘deps’ directory and bluedevil from ‘kde’ then you should see a bluetooth icon in the notification area (systray). Bluedevil uses a colourless icon similar to other native KDE4.6 applications, perhaps it is not made visible by default. Click on the triangle in the systray to view the non-visible application icons.

    I also had to rename the file “/etc/xdg/autostart/blueman.desktop” which caused the GTK based blueman application to start along with KDE.

    Eric

  12. LoneStar

    @Eric: yes, sorry, nevermind! After a reboot I had the new icon at it’s place. I’ve also been wise enough to remove the blueman.desktop file in /etc/xdg/autostart like you suggested 🙂

  13. uly

    Thank you! =)

  14. Chris Abela

    Finally wicd really looks wicked. Thanks for the oxygen-gtk package.

  15. roberto

    Hi, the system work fine except for cd writing: k3b (and other cd reader) can write to my dvd but can’t read anything.
    if i launch k3b i see the track (and i see cddb query result or cdtext if present) but when i try to read (for copy or ripping) the response is could npot open /dev/sr0

  16. roberto

    addenda: with gnome ripper (ie sound juice) work fine.

  17. Mike

    Eric does KDE 4.6.3 require an upgrade to mesa? Thanks for your work.

  18. alienbob

    @Mike –

    I am running Slackware’s mesa-7.9.2 myself here with KDE 4.6.3. Why do you think it may be necessary to upgrade?

    Eric

  19. Mike

    Hi Eric, when I upgraded I found that using Alt-Tab would crash the desktop and I would be dumped back to the console. Also when attempting to use one of the effects like show all desktops ctrl-F8 the same thing would happen. If I disabled desktop effects then Alt-Tab wouldn’t crash the desktop.

    I am using Slackware64 on a lenovo y430 laptop. The laptop has a intel dual core with intel x4500MHD graphics and 4GB of ram.

    Seems like someone else had a similar issue on the LQ forums and an upgrade to mesa solved it: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/crash-on-kde-4-6-3-when-using-alt-tab-with-box-selection-effect-on-880566/
    Thanks again for all your Slackware work, it is fantastic!

  20. escaflown

    @Eric: I noticed that the battery widget in KDE does not report the right battery status anymore. It always full even when my battery is completely dead. I upgraded to kernel 2.6.38.4 provided in testing and kde 4.6.3 at the same time. So it’s hard to say where the bug is coming from. Dmseg shows something about “Deprecated procfs I/F for battery is loaded, please retry with CONFIG_ACPI_PROCFS_POWER cleared”

  21. Mike

    Hi Eric, I upgraded mesa-7.10.2 and this solved all the crashes so it seems at least for my video card that this is a necessary upgrade. Thanks again for the packages!

  22. alienbob

    @escaflown –

    On this laptop I am typing on, which has Slackware 13.37 running KDE 4.6.3 I get correct reports from the battery widget, so yes – I would expect something has changed because of that kernel.

    Eric

  23. Mike Langdon (mlangdn)

    Thanks Eric,
    I’ve been a bit under the weather lately, so I’m a bit late saying thanks. Everything is fine here. I finally got around to a clean install of leet, instead of just upgrading at every turn. I have been running x86_64 since it first hit the public. I had a lot of cruft laying around. 🙂

  24. toto

    There is a strange thing with hunspell-1.3.1 : the library is denoted “libhunspell-1.2.so.0.0.0”.

  25. slack

    sorry, Bob to be lazy one and ask this question. I wonder if there is any bash script that could download, install and upgrade kde 4.6.5 (all in one) in slackware 13.37?

    thank you for your work

  26. alienbob

    @slack –

    By the time we _have_ a version 4.6.5 I am sure you will have written such a script for the rest of us…

    But joking aside, installing KDE 4.6.3 is not at all difficult, and you will find most of the commands that you need in the README.

    This is Slackware, where we do not grant you a chance to get lazy.

    Eric

  27. rex

    Hello bob,

    Thanks for your packages.

    In KDE 4.6.3 when I go to Actions Policy settings I cannot change anything, no matter what I do, settings always get back to default. I installed KDE following the instructions in the README in a clean slack 13.37.

    Do Actions policy settings work for you?

    Thanks,
    Rex.

  28. Brian Lawrence

    Thanks for KDE 4.6.3, Eric.
    Brian (brianL )

  29. danielo

    hey
    thanks for uploading the newest kde software. Its already up and running on my machine. but I found a bug. after actualization I lost the functionality of suspend to ram. computer dosent wake up. please help

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