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Tag: current (Page 7 of 7)

Release candidate 3 for KDE 4.5

July 27, 2010 / / 24 Comments

A third and final release candidate is available now for the upcoming KDE SC 4.5. Target for the final release of KDE 4.5 is still august, 2010.

This time, the packages which I created are for Slackware-current only (32-bit as well as 64-bit). The packages are available in my ktown repository. Slackware 13.1 users who want to move to KDE 4.5 should take this opportunity to upgrade to Slackware-current now. If you want to stick with Slackware 13.1 but still want the latest stable KDE then your best shot will be my version of KDE 4.4.5 packages and dependencies that are good for Slackware 13.1 (I will keep those around for quite a while).

With regard to my new set of KDE 4.5-rc3 packages: there is one dependency which is not yet part of Slackware (libdbusmenu-qt) and a single dependency which got updated (soprano) but other than that, Slackware-current is fully up-to-date for KDE 4.5. You will find the libdbusmenu-qt and updated soprano packages in the “deps” directory.

The 4.5-rc3 packages are accompanied by a README which explains the straight-forward  installation/upgrade steps.

This will be your last chance to influence the quality and stability of this new KDE. Go and find bugs… and get them fixed  by reporting them on http://bugs.kde.org/ .

Cheers, Eric

Some goodies to play with

March 2, 2010 / / 43 Comments

Am I hearing sighs of relief yet?

Today, Pat Volkerding pushed out the work that has been accumulating for slackware-current behind the scenes during the past four weeks (make take a little while to reach the mirrors).
This triggered some updates to the multilib and KDE 4.4 packages which I maintain, so if you run Slackware64-multilib and/or KDE 4.4.0 then be sure to check for instructions further down!

With a ChangeLog entry that runs more than 500 lines, I think this is the largest single update yet. But that was for a very good reason, because there were updates to large subsystems:

  • Kernel: woohoo we have 2.6.33 now – the latest & greatest.
  • X.Org: this went up to 7.5 (X server version is now 1.7.5) – you can’t get it newer than this. There is no nouveau driver for now, but it should not be so hard to add this yourself because all its dependencies should be met by slackware-current.
  • KDE: has been updated to 4.3.5 – the latest “politically correct” version which is available… No PolicyKit for us yet.
  • The GTK ecosystem has been overhauled and slackware-current is now at gtk+2 version 2.18.7.
  • Because the upgrade of libpng was an incompatible change (I refrain from using bad language about this piece of software, but I invite you to examine the libpng.SlackBuild closely), every single package which depends on this library needed to be recompiled. D’ oh!
  • Lots of core packages were updated to their latest version as well – too many to write down here.

To get all of these updates working as a whole, took its time. I know that some of you complained that “the team is having all the fun in secret” but I assure you, you were not left out in the cold. The long silence was something that could not be avoided, as it would have been kind of stupid to write blog posts like “hey! we’re currently adding this new X.Org” in case it turned out that we could not integrate it into Slackware properly. I do think it was worth waiting for, but now is the time for the bigger test – by all of you out there.

Note for self-compiling folk:

Something you may experience when you compiled your own applications: some of them may suddenly refuse to show buttons/bitmaps. This is because the application is linked in an incompatible way with libpng… it means you will have to recompile it. For instance, I will have to update my own VLC package because the control interface is now showing empty grey squares… bummer.

Instructions for people running Slackware64 with my multilib packages and/or KDE 4.4.0 packages:

Multilib gcc/glibc packages (64-bit)

  • Due to the addition of a new kernel and the upgrade of the “png” library in slackware-current, the glibc and gcc packages had to be recompiled. My recompiled multilib versions of gcc and glibc for slackware64-current are available at the ususal place – please upgrade to these versions now: http://slackware.com/~alien/multilib/13.1/ – if you forget this and instead upgrade to Slackware’s standard gcc/glibc packages, you will still have a fully functional 64-bit Slackware… just with a non-functional 32-bit subsystem.

KDE 4.4.0 (32-bit as well as 64-bit)

  • Due to the upgrade of the “png library” I also had to recompile some of the KDE 4.4.0 packages and their dependencies. I took the opportunity to also add a couple of fixes to the KDE packages. I also removed two dependencies which are now covered by Slackware-current (deps/libv4l and deps/libxklavier).
    Here is the list of my updated packages (for both architectures, 32-bit and 64-bit):

    • deps/libiodbc
      deps/qt
      deps/virtuoso-ose
      kde/kdebase-workspace
      kde/kdelibs
      kde/kdepim
  • To upgrade, you can either download only those packages I just mentioned from http://alien.slackbook.org/ktown/4.4.0/ and use “upgradepkg” to upgrade them, or if you already have a local mirror of http://alien.slackbook.org/ktown/4.4.0/ you can refresh this mirror and upgrade according to the article I wrote earlier: http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/its-been-released-kde-sc-4-4-0/ . Please note that I did not create an “update” or “patches” directory – the new packages have just replaced the old ones (with an updated build number).

Enjoy!

Eric

Massive updates in slackware-current

March 10, 2009 / / 20 Comments

Today, Pat Volkerding published a massive amount of package updates to the slackware-current tree. The entry in the Slackware ChangeLog.txt measures more than 200 lines, and is probably the largest update to the development tree ever.

Many of the core packages have received an version upgrade, but those changes may not be immediately visible to the average end user. Some of the absolute highlights mentioned in the ChangeLog are indication of a big step forward for Slackware: a new kernel (2.6.28.7), new gcc (4.3.3), new glibc (still called 2.9 but the snapshot we use is more like 2.10), a new XFCE (4.6.0) and most importantly: KDE 3.5.10 is gone, replaced by KDE 4.2.1 (which had been living in the /testing directory for a long time).

I have been working with KDE4 releases for nearly a year now, running it as my default desktop, and 4.2.1 is stable, fast and beautiful. People who heard or read that the new KDE is bloated and slow, should try it out and decide for themselves; I think it performs better than KDE3. I also ran the new XFCE for a while and it looks sweet. Note that when you upgrade from XFCE 4.4 you may experience missing icons in the panel. This happens because the Rodent icon theme was removed from XFCE in the new release. The file CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT (located in the toplevel directory of slackware-current) explains this issue and what you can do about it.

One neat feature addition which did not make the ChangeLog, but is definitely worth mentioning: the initrd.img and usbboot.img files which contain the Slackware installer,  have also been updated for the new 2.6.28.7 kernel. As a result, you can now install Slackware to an ext4 filesystem!

If anyone out there with a Netbook (one of those Intel Atom powered, 9 or 10 inch sized laptops with long battery life) is going to install Slackware-current on it, I would like to hear your impressions. Leave a comment to this blog post.

Have fun, Eric

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