Alien Pastures

My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

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Today, Plasma5 replaces KDE4 in Slackware

December 7, 2020 / / 47 Comments

Finally. It’s the major step towards a first Beta release of Slackware 15.0!

Pat used this past weekend to merge the ‘vtown’ packages in the Slackware-current testing area into the core distro. The result is a ChangeLog.txt entry that is 680 lines long… lots of package removals due to KDE4 having been replaced with Plasma5.

Mon Dec 7 21:49:58 UTC 2020
Goodbye vtown... we hardly knew you.
It is indeed the day of the Big Merge(tm) leaving nothing left in /testing (but
I'll try to work on that soon). In addition to merging packages from /testing,
Qt4 and related packages have gone away, along with some other libraries that
were only used by KDE4. Perhaps someone will want to take up maintenance of Qt4
(but I'm also pretty sure that SBo wouldn't touch that build script with a ten
foot pole). ConsoleKit2 is gone, replaced by elogind (which also takes over for
cgmanager and pm-utils).
Huge thanks to Eric Hameleers, Heinz Wiesinger, and Robby Workman for all the
help making this possible.
There's still more cleanup to do here, but that'll be easier with everything in
the main tree instead of maintaining side installs running the /testing
packages.
I'll look into what can be done about extra/pure-alsa-system/ soon.
Enjoy! :-)

Let’s see how quickly the remaining rough edges are smoothed out.
I don’t know when I’ll find the time to clean up the ‘ktown’ repository and generate new Slackware Live ISOs. At least, I prepared the liveslak sources already for the event. If only daytime job did not eat up all my energy. Also please tell me which packages in my repository need recompiling due to this major upgrade.

Addendum 2020-12-08 19:21 CET: How to upgrade?

Option 1:

If you never installed my ‘ktown’ Plasma5 packages before, and if you never installed the ‘vtown’ version of Plasma5 in the testing area of Slackware-current, then the upgrade is trivial if you are using slackpkg (the slackpkg+ extension is not needed):

# slackpkg update
# slackpkg install-new
# slackpkg upgrade-all
# slackpkg clean-system

The final “slackpkg clean-system” may be challenging for people who installed a lot of custom / 3rd-party packages, since those will be mixed into the output. See below for a one-liner command that will remove all packages from your system that are no longer part of Slackware since the switch from KDE4 to Plasma5.

Option 2:

If you installed Slackware’s ‘vtown’ version of Plasma5 from Slackware’s own testing area you will probably have edited “/etc/slackpkg/slackpkg.conf” to give the ‘testing’ packages priority over the regular packages. You need to revert this edit now. Meaning that this line:

PRIORITY=( testing patches %PKGMAIN extra pasture )

needs to be changed back to:

PRIORITY=( patches %PKGMAIN extra pasture testing )

If in addition you are using the slackpkg+ extension, you also need to edit “/etc/slackpkg/slackpkgplus.conf” to remove the priority for ‘testing:vtown’  by changing the PKGS_PRIORITY line. Suppose that line looks like this:

PKGS_PRIORITY=( multilib testing:vtown mylocal64 mylocal32 restricted alienbob mate )

then you only need to remove the ‘testing:vtown’ string:

PKGS_PRIORITY=( multilib mylocal64 mylocal32 restricted alienbob mate )

If you removed my ‘ktown’ repository from slackpkgplus.conf (check PKGS_PRIORITY, REPOPLUS and MIRRORPLUS statements) you can re-add it safely now. I cleaned the ‘ktown’ repository and it contains just one package now: phonon-vlc which did not get added to Slackware since that does not have vlc either.
This is all the preparation you need.
Next run the standard commands to perform a regular upgrade:

# slackpkg update
# slackpkg install-new
# slackpkg upgrade-all
# slackpkg clean-system

Again, that last command will scare some people who have a lot of 3rd-party packages installed and don’t want to check many tens of entries one by one to see what needs to be kept.

Clean-system?

The final step is to remove all packages that got removed when KDE4 gave way to Plasma5. The ChangeLog.txt entry for this “Big merge” shows all of those with the tag “Removed.” at the end of the line. So here is a single very long commandline which fetches the ChangeLog.txt from the official mirror, finds the ChangeLog entry for the “Big Merge”, locates all “Removed.” lines and extracts the package names from them. That is then fed into a “removepkg” command so that all these packages are actually removed from your computer. This is a safe move.
Here we go. As root. run a test first (the ‘warn does not actually remove anything, it just shows you what it would remove):

# wget -q -O - http://slackware.osuosl.org/slackware64-current/ChangeLog.txt | sed -n -e '/Mon Dec  7 21:49:58 UTC 2020/,/Sat Dec  5 20:36:27 UTC 2020/p' |grep 'Removed.' |cut -d: -f1 | rev |cut -d/ -f1 |cut -d- -f4- |rev |sort |xargs removepkg --warn

You will probably notice some “No such package: XXXXX. Can’t remove.” messages, those are harmless, you obviously did not have some (KDE4) packages installed anymore.

If you are confident about the command (ensure that there are TWO spaces after ‘Dec’ for instance) you run this:

# wget -q -O - http://slackware.osuosl.org/slackware64-current/ChangeLog.txt | sed -n -e '/Mon Dec  7 21:49:58 UTC 2020/,/Sat Dec  5 20:36:27 UTC 2020/p' |grep 'Removed.' |cut -d: -f1 | rev |cut -d/ -f1 |cut -d- -f4- |rev |sort |xargs removepkg

Have fun – Eric

Ktown becomes Vtown

November 5, 2020 / / 59 Comments

So it is finally happening.
On US Election Day 2020, Pat Volkerding added “vtown” into the ‘testing’ directory of Slackware-current.

The “vtown” in Slackware is essentially my ‘ktown’ repository containing KDE Plasma5 plus its dependencies, with a few exceptions, a number of my packages removed, some caveats and a couple of renamed packages.

A lot of useful information from early adopters can already be found on linuxquestions.org in the dedicated thread about vtown.

One of the benefits of this testing version of Plasma5 in Slackware is the merging of several Slackware and ktown packages.
Mostly because I needed to provide Qt5-supporting versions of existing Slackware packages, I needed different names for the ‘ktown’ versions that I was going to provide. I could not risk that people would end up with old Slackware Qt4 based packages which would break Plasma5.
So to avoid clashing with packages like “plasma-nm”, “attica”, “baloo”, “kscreen” etc… I had to use alternative package names like “plasma5-nm”, “attica-framework”, “baloo5”, “kscreen2” and several (actually, many) more.
Here is the full list of my packages that got merged back into packages with the original Slackware names:

attica-framework -> attica
baloo5 -> baloo
baloo5-widgets -> baloo-widgets
grantlee-qt4 -> grantlee
kactivities-framework -> kactivities
kfilemetadata5 -> kfilemetadata
kscreen2 -> kscreen
libdbusmenu-gtk -> libdbusmenu (dropping Qt4 support)
libdbusmenu-qt5 -> libdbusmenu-qt
libkscreen2 -> libkscreen
phonon-qt4 -> phonon (dropping Qt4 support)
plasma5-nm -> plasma-nm
polkit-kde-framework -> polkit-kde-agent-1
polkit-qt5-1 -> polkit-qt-1

There’s also some packages that are new, but given a different name than I did for ‘ktown’: my “qtav” becomes “QtAV’, “phonon-gstreamer” becomes phonon-backend-gstreamer” and “sddm-qt5” becomes “sddm”.

Here’s a list of the packages that did not make it into ‘vtown’ at all:

ddcutil (nothing uses it anymore)
drumstick (only used by vmpk now, and that is not part of Slackware)
freecell-solver (needed by kpat)
kaudiocreator (obsoleted, use k3b or soundkonverter instead)
kblog (no longer included in Applications)
kdelibs (KDE4 - no longer relevant)
klettres (future maintenance will be in ktown, no external deps)
kpat (needs freecell-solver, maybe rename to kpatience if I keep maintaining it)
ktuberling (future maintenance will be in ktown, no external deps)
kwebkitpart (lost its relevance)
labplot (future maintenance will be in ktown, no external deps)
md4c (no longer needed, was a past dep for building qt5)
perl-path-tiny (dep for freecell-solver)
perl-template-toolkit (dep for freecell-solver)
phonon-qt4-gstreamer (obsoleted)
phonon-vlc (needs VLC and I will keep maintaining this in ktown)
python3-random2 (dep for freecell-solver)
sni-qt (nice to have for Qt4 apps with systray icon? Needs libdbusmenu-qt4 which will no longer be in Slackware)
user-manager (deprecated)

Now the big question: how to upgrade?

Assuming you use slackpkg to manage Slackware updates, first edit “/etc/slackpkg/slackpkg.conf and ensure that the line:

PRIORITY=( patches %PKGMAIN extra pasture testing )

is changed to:

PRIORITY=( testing patches %PKGMAIN extra pasture )

This gives higher priority to those new ‘vtown’ packages. Then run:

slackpkg update

The next steps depend on what you currently have installed.

Upgrade from Slackware’s KDE4 to the ‘vtown’ Plasma5 in Slackware’s testing:

That should be easy. If you still have KDE4 installed, run

slackpkg remove kde
slackpkg remove ConsoleKit2
slackpkg install vtown
slackpkg upgrade vtown

I have not tested those “slackpkg install vtown; slackpkg upgrade vtown” commands so if that does nothing, then instead, you need to download the whole testing/packages/vtown directory from an internet mirror and then run:

upgradepkg --install-new --reinstall testing/packages/vtown/deps/*.t?z
upgradepkg --install-new --reinstall testing/packages/vtown/kde/*.t?z

Upgrade safely from my ‘ktown’ to the ‘vtown’ in Slackware’s testing:

That is a good question! I am still running ‘ktown’ because due a medical emergency in the family I do not have enough free time to test this properly. People asked for a blog post so that’s about all I can manage and it has eaten most of today’s free time already unfortunately. Share your experiences in the comments section below and I will update the main article with better info as it becomes available.

What I think will work is this (assuming you are also using slackpkg+ to manage your 3rd party repositories) and thanks to akimmet who posted these instructions in another blog post after having gone through the upgrade himself:

slackpkg update
slackpkg upgrade-all
slackpkg remove ktown kde kdei ConsoleKit2

Now, edit “/etc/slackpkg/slackpkgplus.conf” to remove (or de-activate) all definitions of “ktown”, and instead add “testing:vtown” to your PKGS_PRIORITY list. Then run:

slackpkg update
slackpkg install vtown
slackpkg upgrade vtown
slackpkg install LibRaw autoconf-archive exiv2 poppler

The last line will re-install the few packages that were in my ‘ktown’ but also part of Slackware core. They were upgraded by Pat in Slackware core instead of in ‘vtown’ and thus the “slackpkg remove ktown” removed those permanently.

Remember: perform this upgrade from a console in runlevel 3!
Tell me how it went! Remember, this stuff is now in Slackware ‘testing’ not because the Plasma5 software sucks and crashes but because this means a big and intrusive update to Slackware and it is best to give way to the early adopters to find the remaining kinks in the new packages.

Eric

 

Patrick, next Slackware and moving forward with KDE Plasma5

July 26, 2018 / / 25 Comments

I assume that many of you will have been reading the recent Linux Questions thread “Donating to Slackware” and in particular Patrick Volkerding’s reply where he explains that the Slackware Store (an entity independent of Slackware with which he has a business arrangement involving a percentage of sales profit and medical insurance) has not been paying him any money for the last two years and that most likely all the PayPal donations through the Store have gone into the pockets of the Store owners. Read that thread if you have not done so yet.
Basically Pat is broke. That thread lists a PayPal address which Pat eventually shared and where donations can be sent directly to him, so that he can fix his roof, his airco, his crashing server and his wife’s car. That would be a start.

That LQ thread is also perused to discuss possible ways forward for Pat (setting up a Patreon account, or a business PayPal account, etc) so that he can support his family and continue working on Slackware. To me it looks like the Store will be a thing of the past unless they change their attitude. Switching from a business model where revenue is generated from optical media sales, to a model where supporters set up a recurring payment in exchange for the prolonged existence of their favorite distro, and possibly get Pat to write up some hands-on stories as a reward, may ultimately benefit Pat, and Slackware, more than the way things are handled at the moment. If you are doubting the financial impact of a recurring payment through Patreon or PayPal, look at it this way: if you donate one euro per month, you will probably not even notice that the money is shifted out. But with 2000 people donating one euro per month, Pat would have a basic income (pre-tax) already. Not a lot, but it’s a start. The 2000 people is a rough estimate of the people who ordered a DVD or CD through the store: the owners told Pat that the earnings of the 14.2 release were 100K (and Pat got 15K out of that, go figure!). Divide that through ~50 euro per DVD, results in 2000 people. Then there’s all these people who donated money through the Store or bought shirts, caps and stickers. I think the amounts of money even a small community (like us Slackware users) can contribute should enable Pat to shed his financial worries. The fact that the Slackware Store basically has been ripping off the hand that feeds them is enraging and inexcusable.
This is all about a community standing up to provide support for what (or who) bonds us together.

Very important to take from Pat’s reply is that he’s “never really been in this for the money” but without income, Slackware’s development is ultimately affected too. I hesitated writing this article, even after Patrick’s LQ post, because it is Patrick’s life and I won’t decide for him how to live it. But I am passionate about Slackware, and care a great deal for Pat, Andrea and Briah, and wish them nothing but the best.

So, in that LQ thread and in private talks, I guess that there will be a lot of discussions as well about the shape and form of a future Slackware. Should it shrink to a “core distro” on which others can build their repositories, for instance offering Plasma5, MATE, Cinnamon desktop environments? How to integrate these external repositories so that a new install could effortlessly be expanded with extra functionality? Should Plasma5 be included? Should PAM be included? And so forth. Lots of exciting developments in stock!

As for KDE Plasma5, I talked with Pat about the way forward and what his plans are with regard to Slackware and Plasma5. Pat indicated that he would at this moment be in favor of going with the latest and greatest instead of adopting LTS (Long Term Support) releases of KDE, because of the reports from several Slackware Plasma5 users that several usability bugs have been solved in the latest releases (part of those improvements can be attributed to the newer Qt5). If Pat decides not to adopt Plasma5 into Slackware, then as long as he provides a solid base in Slackware 15.0 I can keep providing Plasma5 as an add-on through my ‘ktown’ repository. That “solid base” would at least have to be Qt5, its supporting libraries, and recompiled/upgraded phonon, poppler, harfbuzz etc packages to add Qt5 support so that I can cut my “deps” section substantially and no longer have to provide alternate versions of packages that are also part of Slackware but lack required functionality.

And that is why my next update of ‘ktown‘ will see the removal of the LTS software versions in the ‘latest‘ sub-repository and at the same time, the bleeding edge ‘testing‘ sub-repository will be promoted to the ‘latest‘. The ‘testing’ and ‘latest’ will then contain the same packages, so that everyone will upgrade to the same July ’18 packages.
I still need to start collecting the new KDE source archives, sync my virtual machines to latest -current and start compiling. Don’t expect packages before the weekend…

Eric

Tracking development of slackware in git

May 30, 2018 / / 24 Comments

Something had been nagging me for a long time, and I finally had enough of that itch and decided to deal with it.

As you know, there’s a private and a public side to Slackware’s development. The discussions and decisions are handled internally among the members of ‘the team’ and are not shared with the public at large until an update is done to the ‘slackware-current’ tree which can be found on every Internet mirror.
Thus you have access to the latest state of development always. But for some people it is a compelling idea to be able to access the development updates in a public repository like git – where you can track the changes over time.

A recent discussion on LinuxQuestions brought up the topic of SlackBuild scripts in Slackware-current. The scripts you can find in the -current directory tree on the Slackware mirrors are always the latest version. Sometimes there’s a good reason to want to go back in time and fetch an earlier version. In the thread post with the appropriate number “1337” it is ponce (Matteo Bernardini) who replies with a link to a git repository maintained by Adrien Nader which already has been tracking the development in -current for nearly 8 years!. So it’s quite a convenient way to retrieve a historical version of any script.

Me being me, it’s the existence of that repository which has been nagging me for a couple of years. Why? Because I wondered how it was done. And if I question an issue long enough, I will eventually create my own solution – as a learning exercise of course, but also to give back to the community.

And so, today arrived. I was pondering – if I were to create a git repository for tracking the developments in -current, what would I want in there? Exactly the same as Adrien’s? The answer has been “no” for a while. The most important capability that is missing from Adrien’s repo is that it contains a lot of compressed files that are impossible to read. Think of patches and doinst.sh scripts, and more. So I gave myself the task to implement a git repository with uncompressed files, as an improvement on the original effort. Also, it should track all relevant files in the complete tree, not just in the “./source/” subdirectory. In particular the documentation files (various .TXT files).

The result is a script, maintain_current_git.sh, and a repository, https://git.slackware.nl/current/ .
The repository just had its first commit. For those who want to check out a commit in order to compile a package from there, the maintain_current_git.sh script generates another script called ‘recompress.sh‘ and stores that script in the root directory of the repository. When you run this recompress script in the root directory of the repository, it will re-compress all the files that had been un-compressed before committing them to git. That way, a SlackBuild script will find the correct files and will function as intended. Note that you would still have to download the source tarballs from somewhere, because this repository of mine will only track the Slackware-specific files.

I decided that it is prudent and more respectful to not import Adrien’s work into my own repository. The two are similar but different and I think everyone of you can choose which repository suits your needs better.

I have scheduled the above script to run twice a day and update the git repository when new updates become available.
As with all my scripts, this one has a “-h” parameter to explain its usage. Let me know if it – and the git repository – are useful to you.
This particular script may be a bit messy because I have not spent a lot of time polishing it. I hope that’s OK 😉

Have fun!

VLC rebuilt for -current, Chromium and Palemoon updated

May 21, 2018 / / 14 Comments

Browser updates: both Google Chromium (66.0.3359.181) and Palemoon (27.9.2) released new versions last week which I packaged for Slackware 14.2 and -current. The Palemoon update contains CVE-tagged security fixes. You are advised to upgrade.

The VLC 3.0.2 player was broken in slackware-current after the recent update of the libidn package. I rebuilt the vlc package for -current and at the same time updated some of its internal support libraries (asdcp, dca, dsm, dvbpsi, x265). The recompile was not trivial because another recent update in -current (the openssl move to 1.1.x) caused some issues for which I had to find patches. Eventually, there’s a working VLC in the repository again.

Get the packages here:

The VLC package with AAC encoder and DVD decryption capability which therefore cannot be hosted in the US can be found in https://slackware.nl/people/alien/restricted_slackbuilds/ (rsync://slackware.nl/mirrors/people/alien/restricted_slackbuilds/) as always.

Have fun! Eric

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