My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

Slackware Plasma5 updates for November

I have uploaded my November ’17 set of Plasma 5 packages for Slackware 14.2 and -current. KDE 5_17.11 contains: KDE Frameworks 5.40.0, Plasma 5.11.3 and Applications 17.08.3. All based on Qt 5.9.2 for Slackware-current and Qt 5.7.1 for Slackware 14.2.
For Slackware -current there’s again a choice of ‘latest‘ and ‘testing‘ where the ‘testing’ repository contains 17 recompiled packages that provide a Wayland compositor stack. This means you have a working Plasma5 Wayland session if you use ‘testing‘ as opposed to ‘latest‘.
The ‘testing‘ repository is for… testing. Do not use those packages on a production environment unless you are familiar with Slackware, debugging graphical sessions and know your way around slackpkg/slackpkg+.
NOTE: I will no longer be releasing Plasma 5 packages for 32bit Slackware 14.2.

The Applications 17.08.3 release which is part of this November package set, will be the last that contains software based on the old kdelibs (aka KDE4). Any application which has not been ported to KDE Frameworks 5 (KF5) yet will be removed from the Applications collection. Starting with Applications 17.12.0 we should have a legacy-free Plasma5 desktop. If anything, this would be a nice moment to add Plasma5 to Slackware-current and say goodbye to KDE4. We’ll have to wait and see what Patrick thinks of this. Looking at recent updates in -current (the ‘etc‘ ‘network-scripts‘ and ‘pkgtools‘ package versions were changed from “14.2” to “15.0”) I would hazard a guess that we are past the mid-point of the current development cycle 😉
I am really looking forward to getting Plasma5 into Slackware proper. It will allow me to cut loose from the monthly time-consuming update cycles and concentrate on creating an add-on repository for Slackware’s Plasma5 – containing speech synthesis, Wayland of course, and all the esoteric stuff I added to Plasma5 over time which will be scrapped by Patrick (I am thinking of Digikam for instance).

What’s new in the November release

Nothing world-shaking this month. All KDE sofware updates are meant to improve stability and usability. I did add two packages to ‘kde/applications-extra‘ however: both kaudiocreator and kwebkitpart have KF5 ports that are about ready for production, so I thought it would be good to give them a spin on Slackware. Now there are only two packages left from Slackware’s old KDE4 that you may want to install: Amarok (for which a KF5 port is also in the works) and KPlayer (which seems dead in the water, but instead you can try QMLPlayer from the ‘qtav‘ package in my ‘ktown‘ repository).
I also updated PyQt5 in the ‘deps ‘ directory and it has picked up Python3 support (in the slackware-current package at least).

Installing or upgrading Frameworks 5, Plasma 5 and Applications

As always, the accompanying README file contains full installation & upgrade instructions. I have some further reading material in case you are interested in the Wayland functionality of the ‘testing’ repository: README.testing.

Recommended reading material

There have been several posts now about KDE 5 for Slackware-current. All of them contain useful information, tips and gotchas. If you want to read them, here they are: http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/tag/kde5/

Where to get the new packages for Plasma 5

Package download locations are listed below (you will find the sources in ./source/latest/ and packages in /current/latest/ ,  /14.2/latest/ and /current/testing/ subdirectories). Only “bear” has the packages for now, the mirrors should follow within 24 hours. If you are interested in the development of KDE 5 for Slackware, you can peek at my git repository too.

Live ISO of PLASMA5

A new Plasma5 Live ISO image will be uploaded to http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/slackware-live/latest/ later this week, in case you want to try the new Plasma5 desktop out first in a non-destructive way.

Have fun! Eric

45 Comments

  1. Radical Dreamer

    Thanks Eric! Plasma 5 & multilib updates are running great.

  2. Gérard Monpontet

    Work fine here, also 😉

  3. Phil

    Another seamless upgrade. Thanks a lot.

  4. Gérard Monpontet

    In dep maybe it’s a good idea, to update json-glib, to 1.4.2 version because it’s the version used by gnome-3.6.2 😉

  5. Gérard Monpontet

    kjot need rebuild, look here,Eric 😉

    https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?p=5783535#post5783535

  6. Radical Dreamer

    I reported a minor bug regarding Team Fortress 2/ioquake3, NVIDIA binary, and the KDE compositor: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=387191

  7. alienbob

    Gérard, a recompiled kjots package has already been uploaded to my repository.

  8. alienbob

    Radical Dreamer perhaps you can play around with some of the KWin environment variables to see if you can tweak the compositor into sanity: https://community.kde.org/KWin/Environment_Variables

    Also see https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/KDE#Graphical_related_problems for ideas.

  9. Mikei

    Thanks for this, it’s working great.

  10. Alex

    Thanks for rebuilding Kjots so quickly in response to Gerard’s comment! I use this program a lot for so many things, and I am glad that it’s working again, from within Kontact and standalone. Thanks a lot!
    And BTW: This was the only issue I ran into so far with your Plasma5 November updates. Great job!

  11. LOEdiver

    Thanks for new KDE build!

    PS. your new ffmpeg package needs to include libx265 library:
    # ldd /usr/lib64/libavcodec.so.57.107.100 | grep x265
    libx265.so.130 => not found

    Thanks.

  12. Widya Walesa

    Thanks for the update. I’m upgrading my system last night, and this is my report about KDE5 Wayland.

    I’m still confuse with kwallet5 and wayland. I had to kill it and start it again with env flags QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb /usr/bin/kwalletd5 (/usr/bin/kwalletmanager5) before I can unlock my keys. So, I think kwallet5 does not support wayland, is it correct?

    Other than that, is the systemsettings. It still makes plasma restarts when I’m opening it.

  13. Gérard Monpontet

    Yes on wayland version ‘system settings’ crash frequently plasma, but others soft make crashed plasma when exit.
    i think plasma 5 isn’t really ready for plasma now 😉

  14. alienbob

    LOEdiver I had run into the same thing, after uploading the new ffmpeg to the repository. It was past 2 AM when I did that… too sleepy to notice I guess.
    This needs to solved by statically linking libx265 but I ran into a linker error so I am still investigating.

  15. Gérard Monpontet

    Maybe the wayland version will work better with qt5-5.9.3 😉

    I’ll try to compile that tonight:

    http://download.qt.io/official_releases/qt/5.9/5.9.3/single/qt-everywhere-opensource-src-5.9.3.tar.xz.mirrorlist

  16. Brian

    Hi alienbob,

    It seems kjots need a recompile in 14.2/latest as well
    Thanks for the great work

    Brian

  17. Brian

    Hi alienbob,

    After full rsync and upgrade following the README commands, slackpkg is suggesting downgrades from 17.08.03 to 17.08.02 of the following packages in ktown repo for 14.2/latest :
    – kaccounts-integration-17.08.2-x86_64-1alien.txz
    – kaccounts-providers-17.08.2-x86_64-1alien.txz?
    – ktp-accounts-kcm-17.08.2-x86_64-1alien.txz
    – ktp-approver-17.08.2-x86_64-1alien.txz
    – ktp-auth-handler-17.08.2-x86_64-1alien.txz
    – ktp-call-ui-17.08.2-x86_64-1alien.txz
    – ktp-common-internals-17.08.2-x86_64-1alien.txz
    – ktp-contact-list-17.08.2-x86_64-1alien.txz
    – ktp-contact-runner-17.08.2-x86_64-1alien.txz
    – ktp-desktop-applets-17.08.2-x86_64-1alien.txz
    – ktp-filetransfer-handler-17.08.2-x86_64-1alien.txz
    – ktp-kded-module-17.08.2-x86_64-1alien.txz
    – ktp-send-file-17.08.2-x86_64-1alien.txz
    – ktp-text-ui-17.08.2-x86_64-1alien.txz
    – signon-kwallet-extension-17.08.2-x86_64-1alien.txz

    Brian

  18. alienbob

    Brian it seems I left the old KDE Telepathy packages in place. I will remove them from the repository.
    About kjots, that will go on the TODO. Don’t hold your breath.

  19. Eduardo

    Thank you Eric! So far it works OK.

  20. Gérard Monpontet

    I have updated qt5, but, on wayland, i have the same issues, return on xorg 😉

  21. Gérard Monpontet

    I have omit, just for info, Eric, qt5-5.9.3, compile perfectly with your SlackBuild, just i have uninstalled the old version before, in case…… 😉

    this new release work great on xorg and plasma5, for the moment.

  22. Pete Christy

    Hi Eric,
    Again, many thanks for all your hard work!

    FYI the system settings / kirigami bug mentioned here now appears in -current:

    https://alien.slackbook.org/blog/october-updates-for-the-slackware-plasma5-desktop/

    Marcelo was running 14.2, but both my -current machines have suffered the same bug following the latest update.

    The “workaround” you suggested in that thread works fine.


    Pete

  23. Gérard Monpontet

    Just for info ‘hplip’ compiled with qt5, put the hp-sysray in the right place, this make ‘sni-qt’ is definitely obsolete,
    another little cosmetic enhancement, ‘xpdf’ just rebuild with qt5 installed, adopte le look de qt5 😉

  24. Gérard Monpontet

    sorry 😉
    adopts the look of qt5

  25. alienbob

    I found out this week that xpdf had changed from the simple Xlib based version of the past, to a re-designed Qt based version. That is why I had to remove it from the XFCE Live ISO…

  26. alienbob

    About sni-qt, I don’t know of any Qt4 based applications left over, which want to create a systray notifier.
    So indeed once Pat includes Plasma5 into Slackware, he won’t have to include sni-qt.

  27. Gérard Monpontet

    Just a question, Eric do you know when Pat is going to push plasma5 into current ?

    thanks 😉

  28. alienbob

    The answer is of course: when he’s ready.

  29. Gérard Monpontet

    ok 😉

  30. Gérard Monpontet

    For info, i have build KDE Applications 17.12 RC, without problem 😉

  31. Gérard Monpontet

    Just suggestion 😉

    directory /run/user/1000 is created with user group ‘root’, maybe is better it is create with user group ‘users’

  32. alienbob

    Well, other users should never have access to your runtime session directory, therefore it is safer to give root the group ownership instead.

  33. Gérard Monpontet

    When you log in as user2, /run user1 disappears

  34. Gérard Monpontet

    On opensuse the user group is users 😉

  35. Eduardo

    Hi Eric! I have somethingh which might be seen as a bug.

    In System Settings > Applications > Default Applications > Web Browser > Open http and https URLS: when you select “in the following application”, Firefox is not listed as a browser, despite being installed. I think it should be listed there. Thanks again!

  36. alienbob

    Eduardo, indeed. This needs to be solved in the Slackware ‘mozilla-firefox’ package.
    The fix on your local computer is easy:

    $ diff  /usr/share/applications/mozilla-firefox.desktop{.orig,}
    5c5
    < Categories=Network;
    ---
    > Categories=Network;WebBrowser;
  37. Eduardo

    Worked! Thank you Eric!

  38. Eduardo

    Hi Eric. After the Wed Dec 6 14:13:48 UTC 2017 update in -current I cannot use Plasma anymore. Among the updates is icu4c and I suspect that is the culprit.

    Thanks,
    Eduardo

  39. alienbob

    Hi Eduardo

    Yes, isn’t it fun and exciting to be running Slackware-current 🙂

  40. Gérard Monpontet

    Yes, I’m recompiling qt5 at this time 😉

  41. Eduardo

    Yeah, heaps of fun 😀

  42. Gérard Monpontet

    Recompiled, that run 😉

  43. Gérard Monpontet

    kmail is broken also
    rebuild kcalcore with new libical, solve it.

  44. Gérard Monpontet

    k3b recompiled with qt5 and webkit, work now 😉

  45. alienbob

    I am getting there (64bit -current Plasma5 works here) but in case you just want it to work *now*, you can follow Pat Volkerding’s suggestion to install the older icu4c package from Slackware 14.2 on top of the newer package: https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/today%27s-current-icu4c-upgrade-broke-ktown%27s-sddm-4175619108/page2.html#post5790157
    You can then remove it later on if all is back to normal.

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