Alien Pastures

My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

Tag: kde (Page 14 of 28)

KDE 4.13.2 monthly maintenance release

June 10, 2014 / / 29 Comments

The monthly maintenance release for KDE was announced earlier today. If you are running Slackware-current, I have fresh packages for KDE 4.13.2. These packages were not tested (and not built) on Slackware 14.1 so beware if you want to try them on 14.1.

I added the promised update of the libssh package in the “deps” subdirectory. This enables the “sfp” kioslave again (the libssh in Slackware is too old).

What’s new in KDE 4.13.2 ?

Well, compared to Slackware’s own KDE, a whole lot 🙂

Compared to the previous KDE 4.13.1 packages which I released last month, not much has changed as this is just a maintenance update. I did however refresh two packages outside of the KDE core: the kdeconnect-kde package and the Calligra office suite (upgraded to 2.8.3 for which the sources were available for three weeks already). Search my older posts on KDE 4.13 if you want to know more about what the highlights of this release cycle are.

How to upgrade to KDE 4.13.2 ?

You will find all the installation/upgrade instructions that you need in the accompanying README file. That README also contains basic information for KDE recompilation using the provided SlackBuild script.

You are strongly advised to read and follow these installation/upgrade instructions!

Where to find packages for KDE 4.13.2 ?

Download locations are listed below (you will find the sources in ./source/4.13.2/ and packages in /current/4.13.2/ subdirectories). Using a mirror is preferred because you get more bandwidth from a mirror and it’s friendlier to the owners of the master server!

Have fun! Eric

KDE Frameworks 5 and Plasma Next

June 3, 2014 / / 3 Comments

qt-kde-620x350The KDE4 series is still actively developed (in August we will see the release of KDE SC 4.14) but the KDE developers have been working long and hard at the next generation desktop. I wrote some generic phrases in the past about KDE Frameworks 5 (the successor to the KDE Platform aka kdelibs) and Plasma Next (the Qt5 based successor of the Plasma Workspaces of KDE4 which uses Qt4 for its graphical splendor).

But in the next few months we will actually see the first stable release of the Frameworks and the Plasma 2. There are beta sources available now and I grabbed those in order to re-write Slackware’s KDE.SlackBuild build harness. That took a lot more effort than I anticipated but I am glad I did it in an early stage (I don’t usually concern myself with KDE beta releases). My scripts are ready and it’s mostly empty slack-desk files which need some more attention.

I won’t be sharing more than screenshots at this moment. The KDE-5 desktop is just too crash-prone in this beta stage, and I want to spare Slackware the disaster of pushing an unstable desktop. Just think of how the “big distros” handled the release of KDE 4.0 which was basically a “technology preview” but got added to distros anyway, much to the chagrin and frustration of their endusers.

Some interested parties have received a link to the new packages to try them out and give me feedback. My first attempt was missing a lot of things (missing icons, menus, application entries) but thanks to the feedback, my second compilation attempt (using the sources for Frameworks 5 Beta3, to be released tomorrow, and git snapshots of  Plasma Next) looks a lot better:

kf5_startup

KDE 5 startup (Breeze theme)

kf5_menu

The KDE 5 menu – Qt5 co-esisting with Qt4

kf5_systemsettings_compositor

The OpenGL Window Compositor has become intelligent

This is just a taste of things to come in the summer, I hope!

Eric

New: KDE 4.13.1. For Slackware-current users.

May 13, 2014 / / 19 Comments

There is an update available for people running Slackware-current. No, not Pat’s updates, although he is quite busy lately too, and I am glad of that. Today, there is a fresh push of packages into my ‘ktown‘ repository: following on the announcement of KDE SC 4.13.1!

I had added three new “dependency” packages for KDE 4.13 (xapian-core, qt-gstreamer and eigen3), and now for 4.13.1 I have refreshed one of the other ‘dependencies’ to match the version of the same package in the KDE 4.12.5 set (for Slackware 14.1). LibRaw got updated to the latest version. I am seriously pondering the update of libssh when KDE 4.13.2 becomes available in four weeks, so that the “sfp” kioslave will be built again (the libssh in Slackware is too old). In fact,  the libssh sources are already in the “source/deps” directory but I have not used them for now.

As already stated, I built these new KDE packages on Slackware-current. I have not tested them on Slackware 14.1 and will not guarantee that they are even useable on Slackware 14.1. Now that Slackware-current development seems to have picked up a serious pace, it will of course bring you fun and excitement to switch to the development version and join in the bug hunt 🙂

What’s new in KDE 4.13.1 ?

In KDE 4.13,  the semantic search program Nepomuk has been replaced by Baloo, which performs better and avoids the data duplication currently seen in KDE (copies of the same data, think of emails, get replicated between nepomuk, akonadi and virtuoso leading to large homedirectory storage needs). The best news for everyone who complained about Baloo, is that it is now possible to disable desktop search using a checkbox in the System Settings… the developer originally thought that nobody would want to not use his software… a bit naïve considering the upheavals caused by the semantic search feature in KDE in earlier days. I will leave the nepomuk package in the distribution as long as the developers will ship its sources along with the rest of the Software Compilation. I expect that that means, all remaining iterations of KDE 4.13. You can read more about what’s new in my previous blog post about KDE 4.13.

There were some more updates: I have added the same KDEvelop packages as were already  added to the KDE 4.12.5 package set. I have updated oxygen-gtk2 to 1.4.5 and libkscreen to 1.0.4, both these releases fix crashes in applications.

How to upgrade to KDE 4.13.1 ?

You will find all the installation/upgrade instructions that you need in the accompanying README file. That README also contains basic information for KDE recompilation using the provided SlackBuild script.

You are strongly advised to read and follow these installation/upgrade instructions!

Where to find packages for KDE 4.13 ?

Download locations are listed below (you will find the sources in ./source/4.13.1/ and packages in /current/4.13.1/ subdirectories). Using a mirror is preferred because you get more bandwidth from a mirror and it’s friendlier to the owners of the master server!

Have fun! Eric

KDE SC 4.12.5 for Slackware 14.1 (and -current if you want)

April 29, 2014 / / 13 Comments

What is supposed to be the last increment in the KDE 4.12 release cycle: the new KDE Software Compilation 4.12.5 was announced earlier today, again a stability updates for the Applications and Development Platform. The Plasma Workspaces version to accompany this KDE SC release is 4.11.9.

I was in a serious calamity at work and was not able to devote any attention to the release until now, late night, safely situated in the living room with the dub sounds of Bim Sherman flowing out of the speakers. I have a busy day ahead, but I prepared the packages during the weekend (thanks to early access to the sourcecode) and this article is a nice conclusion of a hectic day.

I followed up on my promise to build these packages for the final KDE  4.12, on Slackware 14.1. The packages are available in the “14.1” directory of my ‘ktown‘ repository… not in the “current” directory because I have KDE 4.13.0 available for you Slackware-current users.

Still, KDE 4.12.5 will work fine on Slackware-current if you want this, rather than the more rough & unpolished 4.13.

What’s new in my KDE 4.12.5 packages?

I updated three of the “dependency” packages: LibRaw, akonadi and soprano. I also updated Calligra to the 2.8.2 version which I had already added to my KDE 4.13.0 package set. Upon request, I have added the latest (several months old, but still) KDevelop and even added a new package: “kdev-python” which brings python language support to KDE’s integrated development environment.

I do hope that all of this will get into Slackware-current at some point, but until that time, enjoy my packages and give me feedback about their stability.

How to upgrade to KDE 4.12.5 ?

You will find all the installation/upgrade instructions that you need in the accompanying README file. That README also contains basic information for KDE recompilation using the provided SlackBuild script.

You are strongly encouraged to read and follow these installation/upgrade instructions!

Where to find packages for KDE 4.12.5 ?

Download locations are listed below (you will find the sources in ./source/4.12.5/ and packages in /14.1/4.12.5/ subdirectories). Using a mirror is preferred because you get more bandwidth from a mirror and it’s friendlier to the owners of the master server! And let me say “thank you!” to the mirror admins who provide such an appreciated service to the community.

Have fun! Eric

Rebuilt LibreOffice 4.2.3 packages fix KDE-related bug

April 21, 2014 / / 14 Comments

libreoffce_logo Today I uploaded new packages for the LibreOffice 4.2.3 . The original packages were made available a little while ago but several people (myself included) were not happy with them.

LibreOffice 4.2.3 has an issue when you are running KDE. A bug in the session-restore functionality caused the LibreOffice applications to “hang” after the window outlines had been drawn on the screen. I took a commit from the development tree and used that as a patch to recompile my libreoffice packages for Slackware 14.1 and -current.

I can confirm that the patched package solved the problem for me.

Get the new packages here (Slackware 14.1 and -current):

Eric

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