After slackware-current was treated to a massive update last weekend, it could be expected that some 3rd-party software packages needed to be recompiled – especially due to linkage to gnutls but also icu4c libraries. One by one I am working on the big or complex packages in my own SlackBuild repository, and below you will find the harvest of the week gone by. Note that I am also working on a new KDE Plasma 5 set of packages which is unfortunately quite challenging due to migration of many applications from kdelibs 4 to frameworks 5… lots of compatibility issues to resolve before packages start compiling again. I would have liked to have them ready for release before the end of august but I am afraid that I may not succeed.

Anyway. On to the real news.

libreoffce_logoSurprise: I wanted to just recompile my LibreOffice 5.0.0 packages but then I checked the Document Foundation blog and found the announcement – very fresh – of version 5.0.1! I took those sources and did a trial run of a LibreOffice compilation on my OpenVZ virtual machine which I am renting from HostUS at a very reasonable price (thanks to providing them with a Slackware 14.1 installation image for OpenVZ). With a compilation time just over 5 hours instead of the 16+ hours in my QEMU virtual machine…. this VPS is a winner.

LibreOffice 5.0.1 is a bugfix release. According to the Document Foundation “LibreOffice 5.0.1 is targeted to technology enthusiasts, early adopters and power users. For more conservative users, and for enterprise deployments, TDF suggests the “still” version: LibreOffice 4.4.5“. I offer 4.4.5 packages for Slackware 14.1 by the way. They should also work on -current, but I have not yet tested. Let me know if you tried!

largeVLC

Some VLC plugins were broken due to missing system libraries after the Slackware-current update. So I have rebuilt my VLC 2.2.1 packages for Slackware-current. At the same time, I updated some of its internal libraries: libbluray, ffmpeg, libva, live555 and vdpau.

icon-tiger-vnc

The tigervnc package in Slackware-current’s “extra/” directory does not work anymore since the big update. We will have to wait until Pat finds the time and the willingness to do something about that. In the meantime, my own tigervnc packages for Slackware-current also stopped working, so I have rebuilt those and you can download the version 1.5.0 package from my repository if you were using Slackware’s package until now. This upgrade is not a bad thing anyway, the version 1.5.0 offers noticeable advantages (speed- and functionality-wise) over the old 1.1.0 in Slackware.

Get all these packages from my server or any mirror closer to you:

Note that you can use slackpkg+ to manage your 3rd party packages if those are maintained in Slackware-compatible repositories (like mine). The “slackpkgplus.conf” configuration file for slackpkg+ already has example entries for my repositories – it will be a matter of “slackpkg update && slackpkg upgrade libreoffice” to upgrade to my latest versions.

Have fun! Eric