Alien Pastures

My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

Tag: kde (Page 19 of 28)

A look on the sunny side

May 9, 2013 / / 23 Comments

2013-05-04 15.26.25

It will be obvious by now, that I work somewhat like a manic-depressive person. Bursts of frenzied activity are followed by periods of silence and withdrawal.

After I had worked like a maniac to release a usable version of my Slackware ARMv7 port (creating a git repository, cleaning up build scripts, uploading packages and setting up a local infrastructure to keep all of those easily updated) I was exhausted and my work output went down a lot. I have a day-time job and I do take that seriously… there was no energy left in the evenings to work as much on Slackware as I wanted.

Luckily, I had a short holiday scheduled and during the previous week, I have enjoyed life from the sunny side again. Spending a week in a holiday home with my family, sleeping long hours and walking through the hilly landscape of South-Limburg was something I needed to re-gain fresh energy.

And this week too has its pleasantries. Today is Ascension Day, which is a national holiday here in NL, and my employer gives us another day off tomorrow. Long weekend ahead! Time enough to enjoy my birthday (today), eating cake and warming up under the sun in my garden.

But last week I still managed to release some packages even though I did not write blog entries about it (you can always follow the RSS feed of my repository ChangeLog). New calibre, owncloud client and steamclient packages, and virtualenv which I needed in order to play a little with the Django web framework.

And I added a new version of the icedtea-web program, the webbrowser plugin for Java (works with my OpenJDK packages, either jdk or jre). This is a security update, here are the CVE entries it fixes and it is recommended that you upgrade:

  • CVE-2013-1926, RH916774: Class-loader incorrectly shared for applets with same relative-path.
  • CVE-2013-1927, RH884705: fixed gifar vulnerability
  • CVE-2012-3422, RH840592: Potential read from an uninitialized memory location
  • CVE-2012-3423, RH841345: Incorrect handling of not 0-terminated strings

Furthermore I am using my day off to build the recently released KDE 4.10.3 for Slackware 14.0. This version of KDE landed in slackware-current a few days ago but as a result of my holiday, I was not able to build packages for Slackware 14.0 sooner. Tonight I will write a separate blog post about this when the packages are ready and the repository updated.

Cheers, Eric

KDE 4.10.2 for Slackware 14

April 3, 2013 / / 6 Comments

While I am working hard on ARM packages with the goal of being able to start X.Org on the ChromeBook, the KDE developers keep strictly to their release schedule. So I had to make some time to create Slackware packages  for the fresh KDE Software Compilation 4.10.2. Released yesterday, this iteration brings “bugfixes and translation updates” and no new functionality. If you want to know more about the fixed bugs, check out the KDE bugtracker for the KDE 4.10.2 fix set.

I expect that KDE 4.10.2 will be added to Slackware-current very soon, so after a chat with Patrick I decided to stay on the path I had started on, and bring you this KDE update as a set of Slackware 14 packages.I used the KDE.SlackBuild framework of slackware-current because Pat enhanced the script somewhat after the previous release… if you are running Slackware-current it is better that you wait for the official packages.

How to upgrade to KDE 4.10.2?

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. Please note that if you are not yet running one of my KDE builds, you should upgrade from a (preferably) full installation of Slackware 14. I had some feedback from Slackware users who installed Slackware 14, excluded the whole “KDE” package series from that installation, and then installed my KDE packages on top.  That way, you will be missing a lot of packages, several of them essential to the proper functioning of KDE! If you skipped the whole KDE series and install my KDE packages, you still need to get these from a Slackware 14 package tree (the essentials are highlighted):

amarok
k3b
kaudiocreator
kdevelop-pg-qt
kplayer
ktorrent
kwebkitpart
libktorrent
networkmanagement
polkit-kde-agent-1
polkit-kde-kcmodules-1
quanta
wicd-kde

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

Download locations (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

New LibreOffice; and KDE recompiled for Slackware 14.0

March 7, 2013 / / 33 Comments

LibreOffice 4.0.1

There is a new LibreOffice 4.0.1 release.This is a bugfix and stability improvement release, with the remark that “for enterprise adoptions, though, The Document Foundation suggests the more solid and stable LibreOffice 3.6.5, backed by certified level 3 support engineers“. I have LibreOffice 3.6.5 packages still in my repository – check out the 13.37 package directory.

Still, there are a few interesting things to mention about the 4.0.1 release:

  • LibreOffice Impress Remote (an Android app) is now available on Google Play. Instructions on how to use this are available on the LibreOffice wiki.
  • The Documentation team has released an electronic guide “Getting Started with LibreOffice 4.0?, which is available in PDF and ODF formats.

You can download the new packages from my package repository . The LibreOffice 4.0.1 packages have been built on Slackware 14.0 which makes them unfit for Slackware 13.37 (you can stick with LibreOffice 3.6.5 on that platform). Of course the new packages work with slackware-current!

Remember, you can subscribe to the repository’s RSS feed if you want to be the first to know when new packages are uploaded.

 

KDE 4.10.1

 

Now that Slackware-current has an official set of KDE 4.10.1 packages, provided by Patrick Volkerding, I have rebuilt my own KDE packages (which I had built for slackware-current at first), but this second time I did it on Slackware 14.0. Users of this stable Slackware release can now enjoy the KDE upgrade as well.

I deleted the “current/4.10.1” package directory and added the rebuilt packages in “14.0/4.10.1“. Note that if you already had my KDE 4.10.0 packages installed on Slackware 14.0 and want to upgrade to 4.10.1, there are no new/updated dependencies. One notable change compared to the previous packages is the upgrade of Calligra to 2.6.1, just like Patrick did for Slackware-current.
The README has all the instructions you will need for an upgrade.

Enjoy! Eric

KDE 4.10.1, but packaged only for slackware-current

March 5, 2013 / / 25 Comments

Here it is, KDE Software Compilation 4.10.1. A few weeks ago, KDE 4.10.0 was added to Slackware-current, along with all its updated dependencies. Essentially that was the same set of packages which I had made available on my ‘ktown‘ repository earlier, Pat Volkerding simply recompiled them using the provided KDE.SlackBuild framework.

Being the first improvement release in the 4.10 series, I expect that you will have a smooth transition and less bugs than with KDE 4.10.0. If you are interested in the bugs which have been fixed, you can query the KDE bugtracker for the KDE 4.10.1 fix set.

The addition of KDE 4.10.0 to the ‘-current’ branch made me reconsider my packaging strategy. I have been compiling KDE packages on Slackware 14.0 since its release, to achieve maximal coverage (the packages could be used on -current as well as on 14.0). I feared that this time, it would cause too much confusion if I built the new KDE 4.10.1 on Slackware 14.0, because the rather large set of “deps” packages would have to be installed on Slackware 14.0 but not on Slackware-current (since ‘-current’ is already uptodate).

So, I have decided to move on and start compiling KDE packages for Slackware-current exclusively. This has always been my “ktown” strategy prior to the release of Slackware 14.0. Those of you who are running Slackware 14.0 can either stick with my KDE 4.10.0 packages or compile the new KDE 4.10.1 yourself – that is a straight-forward task, it’s just time-consuming. If there is a gap in my evening hours sometime soon, I will try to compile KDE 4.10.1 on Slackware 14.0 myself and upload them.

How to upgrade to KDE 4.10.1?

It’s really easy this time because there are no updated dependencies, and no new or abandoned KDE packages (if you are running slackware-current of course). As usual 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!

Download locations (using a mirror is preferred:

Have fun! Eric

Slackware-current adopts KDE SC 4.10

February 12, 2013 / / 15 Comments

It happened faster than I had thought, considering the slow pace at which slackware-current has been evolving these past months. But there is a massive flurry of activity and Patrick Volkerding has pushed lots of updates to the development branch of Slackware lately. Quite interesting was the addition of the elilo and gnu-efi packages of course, which indicate future support in Slackware for UEFI-based hardware (UEFI being the sucessor to the good old BIOS). Slackware already supported GPT partition tables (successor of the good old MBR) so this looks promising for buyers of “Secure Boot” computers. Don’t forget to wipe that awful Windows 8 first! It would not make any sense to keep it on a computer if you can install Slackware on it in its place.

But anyway, that was a side-step. I actually wanted to talk about the update of KDE Software Compilation. Slackware-current has now KDE SC 4.10, essentially the same packages that I am offering on my ktown repository, with the same patches and using the same KDE.SlackBuild framework, but then built on Slackware-current as opposed to my Slackware 14 based build. Hooray!

I guess some of you who are running slackware-current, have been wondering how you can most elegantly upgrade from the “alien” packages to the official Slackware KDE packages plus dependencies. Well, here is how I did it today, using slackpkg:

  1. Edit your “/etc/slackpkg/blacklist” and comment the line out that says “[0-9]+alien“. This will allow slackpkg to touch my packages (those that have the “alien” build tag) Note that this should still keep your multilib packages blacklisted, because those have a build tag that ends on “compat32” and for which you have the line “[0-9]+compat32” in the blacklist. Note that the exceptions are the multilib gcc and glibc packages!
  2. Run “slackpkg update” to refresh slackpkg’s knowledge of the Slackware version you are running
  3. Run “slackpkg install-new” to install any new packages like elilo and gnu-efi which were recently added
  4. Run “slackpkg upgrade-all”, and carefully check the list of package upgrades which slackpkg proposes. This step will upgrade KDE and iots dependencies, making the switch from my packages to the official Slackware versions. Make sure that you DE-select the gcc and glibc packages if you are running a multilib 64-bit Slackware-current!
  5. Edit “/etc/slackpkg/blacklist” again, and remove the comment in front of the line “[0-9]+alien“.
  6. Now run “slackpkg clean-system” and carefully inspect the list of packages which slackpkg offers to remove from your computer. Only leave packages selected which you want to get rid of! De-select all other packages (usually those would be 3rd-party packages you want to keep)
  7. Do a final check for remaining KDE packages you may have missed. Run the following two commands to check for left-over Slackware original KDE 4.8.5 packages and my own KDE 4.10 packages – and remove packages which you see listed: “ls /var/log/packages/*4.8.5*” and “ls /var/log/packages/*4.10.0*alien“

That’s it! Reboot the computer and enjoy KDE 4.10!

Remember, if you just upgraded to KDE 4.10 and experience weird problems in the Plasma workspace, this can be related to KDE caches of an older release. Log out of KDE, and run the following commands to get rid of old cache data – don’t worry, these directories will be automatically re-created and re-populated (The “$USER” environment variable is actually your login username):

$ rm -r /tmp/kde-$USER/
$ rm -r /tmp/ksocket-$USER/
$ rm -r /var/tmp/kdecache-$USER/

Cheers, Eric

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