Alien Pastures

My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

Tag: kde (Page 5 of 28)

KDE Plasma5 – Jan ’19 release for Slackware

January 16, 2019 / / 68 Comments

KDE time!
Here is your monthly refresh for the best Desktop Environment you will find for Linux. I just uploaded “KDE-5_19.01” to the ‘ktown‘ repository. As always, these packages are meant to be installed on a Slackware-current which has had its KDE4 removed first. These packages will not work on Slackware 14.2.

It looks like Slackware is not going to be blessed with Plasma5 any time soon, so I will no longer put an artificial limitation on the dependencies I think are required for a solid Plasma5 desktop experience. If Pat ever decides that Plasma5 has a place in the Slackware distro, he will have to make a judgement call on what KDE functionality can stay and what needs to go.

What’s new for January 2019

This new January 2019 release of KDE Plasma5 for Slackware contains the KDE Frameworks 5.54.0, Plasma 5.14.5 and Applications 18.12.1. All this on top of Qt 5.11.3.

Deps:
There’s a new dependency to ‘OpenAL’: ‘SDL_sound’. And I finally decided to add ‘freecell-solver’ in order to be able to compile the KDE ‘kpat’ package. The ‘freecell-solver’ package needs ‘python3-random2’, ‘perl-path-tiny’ and ‘perl-template-toolkit’ to compile, so these were also added as packages.
I added ‘drumstick’ so that I could compile the KDE ‘minuet’ package.
And finally, I upgraded ‘phonon’ and ‘phonon-vlc’ and rebuilt ‘phonon-gstreamer’.

Frameworks:
Frameworks 5.54.0 is an incremental stability release, see: https://www.kde.org/announcements/kde-frameworks-5.54.0.php

Plasma:
Plasma 5.14.5 is an incremental upgrade in the Plasma Desktop 5.14 release cycle, bringing stability and performance fixes. See https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.14.5.php . You may want to read about all the new features in Plasma 5.14 here: https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.14.0.php

Plasma-extra:
In plasma-extra I have upgraded ‘wacomtablet’.

Applications;
Applications 18.12.1 is the first stability and bugfix update for the 18.12 release cycle. I did not package 18.12.0 so this is actually the first opportunity to test the latest KDE Applications on Slackware. See https://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-applications-18.12.1.php and if you want more detail about the 18.12 cycle you should also read https://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-applications-18.12.0.php .
And since I added the required dependencies, there are two new packages in Applications: ‘kpat’ (a suite of Patience card games) and ‘minuet’ (music education using MIDI).

Applications-extra:
In applications-extra I have upgraded ‘kdevelop’, ‘kdev-php’, ‘kdev-python’, ‘kstars’ and ‘okteta’.

Go get it

Download the KDE-5_19.01 from the usual location at https://slackware.nl/alien-kde/current/latest/ . Check out the README file in the root of the repository for detailed installation or upgrade instructions.

I will upload a new Plasma5 Live ISO soon. You will find it in https://slackware.nl/slackware-live/latest/

Have fun! Eric

KDE Plasma5 for Slackware – october ’18 batch

October 16, 2018 / / 79 Comments

Today the Plasma developer team released Plasma 5.14.1 which was what I was waiting for. I was a bit hesitant to add a major new release (5.14.0) to my monthly refresh for Slackware and opted for this point release.

And now “KDE-5_18.10” has been uploaded to the ‘ktown‘ repository. Again I was able to offer a full set of updates.

What’s new

The October release of KDE Plasma5 for Slackware contains the KDE Frameworks 5.51.0, Plasma 5.14.1 and Applications 18.08.2. All this on top of Qt 5.11.2 which was updated inbetween the two monthly ‘ktown’ releases.
There were two updates in the ‘extras’ section for Applications: new versions for ‘krita’ and ‘okteta”. The ‘deps’ section saw some changes as well: ‘PyQt5’ was updated to work properly with Qt 5.11.2, a newer version of ‘sip’ had to be added for that same reason – it replaces the somewhat older Slackware package. And a new package ‘python-enum34’ package had to be added, it is a dependency for the Python2 support in PyQt5.

The incremental releases of Frameworks and Applications are focusing on bugfixing and stability improvements, but Plasma 5.14 is a bigger change compared with the 5.13 that was part of my last month’s ‘ktown’ release. Let’s repeat the highlights from the releasenotes:

  • There’s a new Display Configuration widget for screen management which is useful for presentations.
  • The Audio Volume widget now has a built in speaker test feature moved from Phonon settings.
  • The Network widget now works for SSH VPN tunnels again.
  • Switching primary monitor when plugging in or unplugging monitors is now smoother.
  • The lock screen now handles user-switching for better usability and security.
  • You can now import existing encrypted files from a Plasma Vault.
  • The Task Manager implements better compatibility with LibreOffice.
  • The System Monitor now has a ‘Tools’ menu full of launchers to handy utilities.
  • The Kickoff application menu now switches tabs instantly on hover.
  • Widget and panels get consistent icons and other user interface improvements.
  • Plasma now warns on logout when other users are logged in.
  • The Breeze widget theme has improved shadows.
  • The Global menu now supports GTK applications. This was a ‘tech preview’ in 5.13, but it now works out of the box in 5.14.

More features were added – to Plasma Discover and to the Wayland stack, both of which I skip in my ‘ktown’ releases.

Go get it

Download the KDE-5_18.10 from the usual location at https://slackware.nl/alien-kde/current/latest/ . Check out the README file in the root of the repository for detailed installation or upgrade instructions.

I will generate a new Plasma Live ISO soon. You will find it in https://slackware.nl/slackware-live/latest/

Have fun! Eric

KDE Plasma5 Sep’18 release for Slackware

September 8, 2018 / / 36 Comments

Today I uploaded my monthly update “KDE-5_18.09” to the ‘ktown‘ repository, containing latest sources from the KDE download server and built on the latest Slackware-current. I waited just long enough to have the devs refresh everything. I also grabbed the latest sources of some of the other relevant packages I have in ‘ktown’ that are not part of Applications.

What’s new

The September release of KDE Plasma5 for Slackware contains the KDE Frameworks 5.50.0 (just released today), Plasma 5.13.5 and Applications 18.08.1. All this on top of Qt 5.11.1. Many bugs fixed and stability increased with these updates, but there’s no real new functionality on board compared to last month.

My updates in the ‘extras’ section for Applications are new versions for ‘krusader’, ‘kstars’, ‘ktorrent’, ‘okteta’ and the KDE Development packages ‘kdevelop’, ‘kdev-python’ and ‘kdev-php’.

Go get it

Download the KDE-5_18.09 from the usual location at https://slackware.nl/alien-kde/current/latest/ . Check out the README file in the root of the repository for detailed installation or upgrade instructions.

Last month I did not succeed in accompanying the release with a Live ISO. That had a reason – I was working on an update to liveslak that required more testing than anticipated. This month I will generate a new Plasma Live ISO. Currently I am compiling a new VLC package to go with it. There’s already a 64bit Chromium 69 awaiting in the corner – I did not yet release that separately because I am unable to build a 32bit package for the latest Chromium. Trying to fix that had to wait for KDE and VLC. The new Plasma5 Live will have a story to it that I will post in a separate article.

KDE5 August release for Slackware with Applications 18.08

August 16, 2018 / / 24 Comments

A repetition of events… just like in July, an update in Slackware-current broke lots of 3rd party stuff. This time it was the boost package that got updated and, oh man. The most visible victims are my LibreOffice and Qbittorrent packages, but also some of the software in Plasma5 stopped working due to the library ABI update in libboost. A new LibreOffice package is coming (64bit package is ready) and Qbittorrent will be next, but first: back to the topic for this article.

Here is my monthly update of my ‘ktown’ repository, containing latest sources from the KDE download server and built on the latest Slackware-current.

What’s new

The highlight of this August release is the new Applications 18.08.0, a new quarterly update. The Plasma was updated to 5.13.4 with several important usability and stability improvements. Frameworks has been updated to 5.49.0.

Updates in the ‘extras’ section for Applications: I rebuilt ‘calligra’, ‘digikam’ and ‘krita’ because of the new boost package, and you will find new versions for ‘kstars’ and ‘okteta’.

Go get it

Download the KDE-5_18.08 from the usual location at https://slackware.nl/alien-kde/current/latest/ . Check out the README file in the root of the repository for detailed installation or upgrade instructions.

I will generate a new Plasma Live ISO when I have working LibreOffice and QBittorrent packages again. Don’t hold your breath… compiling takes time.

KDE 5_18.07 for Slackware, includes Plasma 5.13.3 and Qt 5.11.1

July 29, 2018 / / 38 Comments

Last week, Slackware-current updated its poppler package . The ‘ktown’ repository for Plasma5 contains a custom built ‘poppler’ package, one that includes Qt5 support. That means that the ‘ktown’ version needs to be kept in sync with the Slackware version to prevent breakage in your Slackware installation. Therefore I recompiled my ‘poppler’ and at the same time, I used the opportunity to grab all the latest sources from the KDE download server and built a whole new and fresh Plasma5 experience for Slackware.

Important to know is that I have bridged the ‘latest’ repository to the ‘testing’ repository. Meaning: I have said goodbye to the LTS (Long Term Support) versions of Qt5 (5.9.6) and Plasma (5.12) and will focus again on the bleeding edge of KDE’s development.
I did this after talking to Patrick to see what his ideas are about Plasma5 and whether he would adopt LTS releases of the software, or perhaps stick with the latest and greatest. Based on discussions in the LinuxQuestions.org forum it was clear that the latest Qt (5.11) combined with the latest Plasma Desktop (5.13) gets rid of bugs that have been annoying Slackware users who have been installing my ‘ktown’ packages. So that settled it, and the difference between ‘latest’ and ‘testing’ is gone again. In future I will probably use the ‘testing’ repository to test Wayland usability in Slackware, like I did in the past. For that reason, it’s best if you point your package manager (slackpkg+ comes to mind) to the ‘latest‘ URL instead of using the ‘testing‘ URL.

What’s new

If you had not yet installed the Plasma 5.13 from my ‘testing’ repository then you will see a fresh new Plasma Desktop with a lot of visual and under-the-hood changes. Read more about those in the official releasenotes. Highlights:

  • browser integration: you need to install a browser extension from the respective browser web store, and then your Firefox, Chrome or Chromium will be tighter integrated into the desktop. Plasma media playback controls will operate on browser tabs; etcetera.
  • re-designed System Settings
  • re-designed login and lock screens
  • fall-back to software rendering if the OpenGL drivers fail
  • plugging in a new monitor will cause a configuration window to popup

Apart from the new Plasma 5.13.3, the other updated components are Frameworks 5.48.0 and Applications 18.04.3. There’s also some updates in the ‘extras’ section for Applications: I rebuilt ‘calligra’ and ‘kile’ because of the newer poppler library incompatibility and updated ‘krita’ and ‘okteta’ to their latest versions.

Go get it

The KDE-5_18.07 is running smooth & stable here on the Lenovo T460 laptop, and I am interested to hear about your experiences. As always, the README file in the root of the repository will tell you all you need to know about installation or upgrade.

I have updated the ‘qt5’ package in my regular repository to 5.11.1 as well, to prevent surprises when you upgrade to the latest ‘ktown’ but stick with qt5-5.9 by accident, like I did today. That was a bit scary for a moment, seeing the new Desktop Environment break inexplicably on the laptop (I had already tested all of it in a virtual machine).

A new Plasma Live ISO is currently being generated, based on the latest slackware-current with kernel 4.14.59. I hope to upload that one later today so that you can check out the new Plasma Desktop without having to install it to your computer.

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