Alien Pastures

My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

Tag: kde (Page 26 of 28)

KDE Software Compilation 4.6.4

June 10, 2011 / / 31 Comments

I may have been ranting about KDE’s future policies on source code packaging, but that does not mean I am unhappy with the software. Much to the contrary! So here it is again:

KDE team is proud to announce the release of KDE Software Compilation 4.6.4 – and I built you some nice packages for Slackware. This version of the KDE SC is probably not going to end up in Slackware in the next few days (Pat Volkerding is showing his face on the South East Linux Fest (SELF) of which Slackware is a “bronze” sponsor) so I took my chances. If you want to keep updated on the changes in these KDE packages, please subscribe to my ktown repository’s RSS feed.
You have to be running Slackware 13.37 (32bit or 64bit) or newer in order to use these packages. They were built on slackware-current. Please read the accompanying README file for installation and upgrade instructions!

This is the fourth incremental release in the 4.6 series, meaning it’s mostly bugfixes and translation enhancements. Functionally there is nothing spectacular. Nevertheless, some of the highlights of my package set:

  • Packages of the stable release 4.6.0 of kdepim and kdepim-runtime are included as well. YES! The 4.6 release of the KDEPIM suite has taken a long time to stabilize, after it had basically been re-written from scratch.
  • Updated dependencies since KDE 4.6.3 if you have that installed already: akonadi, libssh.
  • Updated dependencies with regard to the stable Slackware 13.37 are: PyQt, QScintilla, akonadi, attica, ebook-tools, hunspell, libdbusmenu-qt,sip, soprano, system-config-printer, virtuoso-ose.
  • Not part of Slackware 13.37 at all (yet): grantlee, libatasmart, libbluedevil, libssh, sg3_utils, udisks.
  • And bluedevil of course – the new KDE bluetooth stack which is based on the BlueZ libraries already present in Slackware. It got added to “kde”. It integrates a lot better into KDE than the GTK application “blueman” which is now primarily meant to be used with the non-KDE desktop environments.

The KDE 4.6.4 packages for Slackware 13.37 & current should be available for download from my “ktown” repository by now (the Indonesian mirror may need a bit of time to sync up):

Thanks to the many KDE developers, sysadmins, advocates and documentation writers, and whomever I may have forgotten. KDE is simply the best desktop environment around.

Have fun! Eric

What’s cooking?

June 3, 2011 / / 71 Comments

Hi Folks

You surely noticed a bit of silence on this blog. Well, there was not much to say – I am not the twittering kind of guy who updates his readers where he’ll go out every night… I think I can lift the lid a little anyway.

I have been working on several larger packaging projects during the past weeks. LibreOffice is the one that took most of my time unfortunately. The new release 3.4.0 has been announced today, and that means I can finally test my revised SlackBuild script when building Slackware packages for you. My old way of compiling LibreOffice no longer works! It has been “deprecated” by the developers, which is a shame because it forces me to do a lot more work. Anyway, expect packages for Slackware 13.37 sometime this weekend.

I will probably not create Slackware 13.1 packages for this new LibreOffice release. What I do consider is to build the upcoming maintenance release for LibreOffice 3.3 (which will be 3.3.3) for Slackware 13.1.

KDE. How to begin? There are some stirrings in the KDE camp.

We are nearing the end of the KDE 4.6 series. Two more updates will see the light: 4.6.4 should be available in a few days and 4.6.5 is the final update, expected in early july. But considering the fact that the previous 4.6.3 experienced delays, it may take a little longer before I can start on packaging 4.6.4.

The new series 4.7.x proves to be a bigger challenge for Slackware. We saw that the 4.6. series moved away from HAL and instead requires udisks/upower (which was the reason for sticking with 4.5.5 in Slackware 13.37). The KDE developers have now finalized their move from CVS to GIT as the source control and version management system. The result is less than optimally arranged for packagers. The old “monolithic” source tarballs are now being split into many additional tarballs for individual applications. This means we have rewrite our scripts and possibly add a lot of packages. While this may be advantageous for some other distros with dedicated packaging teams, for us Slackware people it is a time for decisions.

After talking to Pat Volkerding, I announced on the KDE packager mailing list that we are considering the same solution as was chosen for GNOME in the past: remove KDE from Slackware if it proves to become a maintenance burden. I can not yet say anything final about this. For the time being, I have decided not to create Slackware packages for the KDE Software Compilation 4.7.x.

And then VLC…I have been waiting for a 1.2 release for so long that I almost do not believe it will ever arrive. I have a SlackBuild for it, but I will likely wait a bit longer before releasing a package for ths development version of VLC media player. It appears like there is a 1.1.10 release around the corner which is what I’ll build for Slackware 13.1 as well as 13.37.

Looking ahead, I think that creating VLC versions for Android is going to be considered more important. There is a whole new audience there, and I may very well be one of its users. There is also the fact that the developer team is almost always short of smart and motivated people. This showed last year when it was almost impossible to release a MS Windows version. Jean-Baptiste Kempf feels responsible for this so he made it happen, but I doubt that it is making him very happy.

And finally, Calibre E-book Management. This piece of software is indispensible if you are in the possession of an E-reader. Calibre manages your e-book collection, converts e-books between various formats (interesting for you Kindle users out there!) and allows you to upload books to your E-reader device. Calibre usually works a lot better than the software you get with your E-reader. And  since I am buying a Sony PRS650 for my wife I needed to have a working verison of Calibre for my Slackware box.

I have a Slackware package for Calibre in my repository but I have not been able to update it for a while, because it requires python 2.7. Unfortunately, Slackware 13.37 is still at python version 2.6.6. So I spent a lot of time to find a way around this and decided to take the same approach as with VLC and FFMPEG: that is, to compile all the requirements into the package itself and not depend on Slackware. I think I have succeeded in this, and am currently testing the results. Stay tuned…

Happy hacking! Eric

Slackware packages for KDE SC 4.6.3

May 8, 2011 / / 32 Comments

KDE Software Compilation 4.6.3.

Here it is again, the monthly update to the KDE 4.6 series. Sources have been available publicly since friday, but due to Mother’s Day it took a while to upload my packages.. KDE team anounced the new release as usual.

Built on Slackware 13.37, it will work fine on -current (because at this moment, there is little difference). Exactly when KDE 4.6 will enter Slackware’s -current tree I don’t know, but I will happily keep building packages in the meantime.

If you want to try out KDE SC 4.6.3 instead of Slackware’s 4.5.5 (or my previous 4.6.2) please follow the installation/upgrade instructions in the accompanying README file!

Besides the KDE packages (in the kde/ directory) some of Slackware’s own official packages need to be upgraded, or even removed. There are also a few packages that are required by KDE 4.6.x but are not yet in Slackware. All of those packages are found in the “deps” directory. Don’t miss out on them, or you will have a less than pleasant experience.

One thing that I have added since my 4.6.2 packages is bluedevil, the new bluetooth connection manager for KDE. It integrates well with KDE (you will find a “send to bluetooth device” in Dolphin’s context menu for instance). The old “kbluetooth” application is no longer developed and the GTK application in Slackware “blueman” is not as featureful.

By the way, if you want to make your GTK applications blend better into the KDE desktop, then there is a new GTK theme engine for you – which was created by KDE’s own Oxygen artwork team. It is called “oxygen-gtk” and I have a package for it in my main SlackBuilds repository: http://slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/oxygen-gtk/ .

I installed oxygen-gtk on my laptop running KDE 4.6 and the effect it has on the looks of applications like Firefox, Gimp, Pidgin etc.. is stunning. Of course, the integration is most effective if you are using the Oxygen theme in KDE as well! After installation, be sure to copy or merge the content of the file “/usr/share/themes/oxygen-gtk/gtk-2.0/gtkrc” to your homedirectory into the file “~/.gtkrc-2.0”

The KDE 4.6.3 packages for Slackware 13.37 should be available for download from my “ktown” repository by now (the Indonesian mirrors may need a bit of time to sync up):

Please note that I have removed the old 4.4.5 directory – it contained an older version of KDE4 which could be made to run on Slackware 13.0 with a bit of effort. At this moment in time, I think it is wiser to upgrade to Slackware 13.37. I removed the old stuff to free up space on my own machines.

Have fun! Eric

Next in series: KDE 4.6.2

April 8, 2011 / / 12 Comments

KDE Software Compilation 4.6.2.

A second bugfix & translation update release for the KDE 4.6 series became available on April 6. Read all about it on the announcement page.

And since we are nearing the release of Slackware 13.37 it will be safe to say that I have uploaded “my KDE 4.6.2 packages for Slackware 13.37“. If there is no official release yet by the time you read this post, then of course you will be able to run the packages on “Slackware 13.37 Release Candidate 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716” as well – because that is what I built them on.

Be sure to follow the installation/upgrade instructions in the accompanying README file! There are a few of Slackware’s own official packages that have to be upgraded, or even removed. You can search this blog for my earlier KDE 4.6 related posts if you want to know more about its evolution. Or even better, subscribe to the blog’s RSS feed so you don’t miss out on my updates any more.

Anyway, get the packages from one of the following locations (the mirrors may need a bit of time to get re-synchronized with the master):

Things did not blow up on my laptop after installation, which was according to plan. The stability of KDE 4.6.x is increasing with every point release.

However…

I ran into one regression. There is a “bug” in KDM which prevents shutdown. You will actually end up in a tty and have to manually run “shutdown -h now”. The default shutdown command which is issued by KDM has apparently been changed to “/sbin/shutdown -p now” but the “-p” parameter is not supported on Linux. See https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=270228 for a description of this KDE 4.6.2 specific bug.

According to the bug report you can solve this by editing the file “/etc/kde/kdm/kdmrc” and changing a single line:

HaltCmd=

to:

HaltCmd="/sbin/shutdown -h now"

… but when I tested this it did not make a difference. It just looks as if KDM is not reading that custom commandline. It was well after midnight when I tried it so I gave up and went to bed. I welcome all feedback.

Have fun! Eric

KDE 4.6.1 add-on for Slackware 13.37 RC1

March 9, 2011 / / 41 Comments

Yes folks… we have a release candidate for the next stable version of Slackware. Its version mumber is going to be “13.37” as could be expected… it was too tempting not to be used, after we had “12.34567890” for a little while during an earlier development cycle…

And to accompany this event, I have also made available a new set of KDE packages. It’s KDE 4.6.1 and the packages have been built on Slackware 13.37-RC1.

KDE Software Compilation 4.6.1 sources were released a few days ago. It is the first “stabilization update” in the 4.6 series which will see steady updates until July 2011. I had to wait with my upload & announcement until the 13.37-RC1 appeared; there were some last-minute changes to the raptor/rasqal/redland packages in slackware-current because soprano would no longer compile. Be sure to upgrade to Slackware 13.37-RC1 or newer before using these KDE packages!

KDE 4.6.1 for Slackware (32bit as well as 64bit releases) can be found in my ktown repository already, http://alien.slackbook.org/ktown/4.6.1/ and soon on its mirrors (http://taper.alienbase.nl/mirrors/alien-kde/4.6.1/ and http://repo.ukdw.ac.id/alien-kde/4.6.1/ both of which have rsync access as well).

You are encouraged to (re-)visit my older post, because most of what I said for KDE 4.6.0 – about the upgrade from Slackware’s own KDE 4.5.5 – still holds true. Of course, the packages come with a detailed README which shows step-by-step what you have to do in order to upgrade to KDE 4.6.1.

Enjoy! Eric

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