Alien Pastures

My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

Tag: kde4 (Page 1 of 4)

KDE 4.14.3 now also for Slackware 14.1

April 7, 2015 / / 29 Comments

qt-kde-620x350 I updated my ktown repository today with KDE 4.14.3 packages for Slackware 14.1. Yes that’s right, 14.1. I had promised in my previous post that I would come up with these packages after Slackware-current had been officially upgraded to KDE 4.14.3 but I was sitting on these packages and thought, what the heck. So here you have them.

The set has been spiced up with the latest Long Term Support (LTS) sources that I took from KDE Applications 14.12.3, specifically the newest versions of kde-workspace, kdelibs and kdepim. Essentially, I have used the exact same sources from which I built my KDE 4.14.3 packages for Slackware-current before.

Note that there are new packages, upgraded packages and to-be-removed packages here. Some people forget to install the new packages (in particular the new dependencies) and end up with a broken system. As usual, the README file which accompanies this release contains the detailed installation and upgrade instructions. Read these instructions carefully and your upgrade on Slackware 14.1 from either the stock KDE 4.10.5 or my own 4.13.3 will be easy and painless.

My previous article on KDE 4.14.3 plus LTS (at that time, targeting slackware-current) contains more information that you might want to read.

These are the servers that are guaranteed to have the packages right now (in 24 hours the other mirrors will likely have synced as well):

Have fun! Eric

Long Term Support (LTS) for KDE 4

March 30, 2015 / / 21 Comments

qt-kde-620x350 Some folks asked whether the new KDE4-based packages in my KDE5 repository would also apply to KDE 4.14.3. The answer: no they probably won’t, so you better not try what happens.

The updated sources that appeared with regular intervals were all part of KDE Applications, and for the past months I only focused on using those for my KDE5 repository. I did not want to forget users of KDE4 however.

Therefore I refreshed my KDE 4.14.3 repository today (packages for Slackware-current, not for 14.1) with the latest Long Term Support (LTS) sources that I took from KDE Applications 14.12.3.

KDE 4.14.3 was the last release of KDE4. It came with a promise that the developers would provide Long Term Support for this particular release.  Which is why I finally took the new sources for kdelibs, kde-workspace, kdepimlibs, kdepim and kdepim-runtime and built these on top of Slackware 4.14.3. These updated packages are available for you as per direct. As a bonus, they are accompanied by the latest Calligra office suite. There are also a couple of changes in the “deps” directory for KDE 4.14.3. You will find two all-new packages: librevenge and libodfgen, and two updates for stock Slackware packages: grantlee and libwpd. The kdepim package needed a newer grantlee, and the other three are required by the new calligra package.

Users of slackpkg+ have it easy:

# slackpkg update
# slackpkg upgrade-all
# slackpkg install deps

The moment KDE 4.14.3 gets officially added to Slackware-current, I will rebuild all of KDE 4.14.3 for Slackware 14.1 so that people with a taste for stability will have something new to chew on too.

Something funny: when I sat down to write this article, I went searching for my initial announcement on the blog of KDE 4.14.3 packages (released on 11 Nov 2014.). To my amazement, there is no such article! It seems I forgot to write a blog post about KDE 4.14.3 back in November… probably had too much to do at the time, but I can not remember. Apologies for that… I hope you have noticed that there were new packages nevertheless 😉

Have fun! Eric

KDE Software Compilation 4.9.2

October 2, 2012 / / 19 Comments

In their usual unperturbed way, the KDE developers team released the next installment in the KDE Software Compilation 4.9.

This second update, version 4.9.2, offers improved stability in many applications, among which the Kontact suite, Dolphin and Plasma. Check out the release announcement or the release notes for more in-depth information.

If you are running Slackware 14 (just released this weekend) you can get your KDE 4.9.2 packages or better, find a mirror with better download speeds – I have listed them a bit further down.

Don’t try these packages with Slackware 13.37, lots of things will not work properly. Recompiling from source using my KDE.SlackBuild framework would be preferable. Better even, use the opportunity and upgrade to Slackware 14 !

The upgrade from Slackware’s KDE 4.8.5 to the new KDE 4.9.2 should be safe and fairly trivial, As always, follow the guidelines in the README and you’ll be OK.

Highlights for the new set of Slackware packages:

  • You will find five updated dependencies compared to Slackware’s own KDE 4.8.5: akonadi, qt, shared-desktop-ontologies, soprano, virtuoso-ose. The qt package is basically the same as Slackware 14, with one exception: I applied a patch which disables TLS compression by default which should safeguard against the “CRIME” SSL attack.
  • Compared to KDE 4.8.5, there were two package removals:
    • kdemultimedia has been split up into several smaller individual packages.
    • ksecrets has been removed completely in the 4.9.x series.
  • A noteworthy feature in KDE 4.9 has been added to Okular, the document viewer in KDE. Many people will cheer: Okular is now able to save the annotations you make to PDF files.

These KDE 4.9.2 packages are available for download from my “ktown” repository and several mirrors (taper is up-to-date, the rest will get updated within 24 hours):

And to conclude this post…

A new version of LibreOffice has been available for several weeks now. I promised to have a look at the 3.6 series after Slackware 14 would have been released. Well, I am currently compiling packages for LibreOffice 3.6.1 on Slackware 13.37 in an attempt to reach as many people as possible (running Slackware 13.37 as well as 14). Keep your eyes open for my next post!

Have fun! Eric

 

KDE 4.7.4 – last of the 4.7 series

December 8, 2011 / / 55 Comments

The KDE team has already released two betas of the upcoming KDE 4.8, but I am not so much in a hurry. First things first! There is the last update in the 4.7 series, which was released earlier today. The Slackware KDE 4.7.4 packages are ready and you can grab them if you like.

For those who are trying my 4.7 packages for the first time and wonder why the hell am I offering so many packages, please read my earlier post about KDE 4.7.0 which explains more about splitting KDE for Slackware into many more (and smaller) packages.

My packages have been compiled on Slackware-current. Even though several people had reported that previous KDE 4.7 packages worked fine on Slackware 13.37, there has been an incompatible update to slackware-current recently (the glibc package). As a result, these new KDE 4.7.4 packages will only work on slackware-current (64-bit and 32-bit). If you are running Slackware 13.37, then stick to your currently installed version of KDE, or install my 4.6.5 packages (or upgrade your Slackware to -current).

Read the accompanying README file for installation and upgrade instructions!

Some of the highlights of these KDE packages:

  • Since this is the last edition of KDE 4.7, I decided to add updated versions of KDE related packages that I do not usually include: amarok, skanlite, ktorrent. I have no idea when Slackware-current will start moving again, but this set of packages allows you to have a complete, stable and up to date KDE environment for the time to come.
  • There are several updated dependencies compared to Slackware’s own KDE 4.5.5: PyQt, QScintilla, akonadi, attica, clucene, ebook-tools, hunspell, libdbusmenu-qt, phonon, polkit-qt-1, qt, raptor2, rascal, redland, shared-desktop-ontologies, sip, soprano, strigi, system-config-printer and virtuoso-ose.
  • In comparison with my previous KDE 4.7.3 the number of updated dependencies is a much smaller: attica, libktorrent, libmsn, and soprano. Note that libktorrent is now located in “deps” instead of “kde” directory because it has become a dependency for more than just ktorrent.
  • KDE dpendencies that are not part of Slackware 13.37 at all (yet): grantlee, herqq, libatasmart, libbluedevil, libssh, phonon-gstreamer, phonon-xine, sg3_utils and udisks. Note that I added phonon-gstreamer and phonon-xine only after I had already released KDE 4.7.0 packages because people reported that they no longer had sound. These two packages solve that issue.

Also worth mentioning is some stuff which is not completely new, since I added these to previous releases of KDE 4.7 already (but if you are new to KDE 4.7 this will certainly interest you):

  • You will find some additional useful new applications, which are not part of the KDE core set. They are new, compared to Slackware’s own version of KDE. I already added bluedevil to my 4.6.5 package-set. Bluedevil is the new KDE bluetooth stack with a nice GUI, based on the BlueZ libraries already present in Slackware. And with KDE 4.7.0, I included kplayer, a KDE front-end to MPlayer. With KDE 4.7.2, I added Quanta Plus, which disappeared from KDE4 because that migrated from Qt3 to Qt4. It is now being worked on again, but no longer as a standalone application – instead it is available as a plugin to the Kdevelop Platform. And with KDE 4.7.3, I added a native WICD applet for KDE, called “wicd-kde“. It can replace the GTK based “wicd-client” which is part of the wicd package.
  • I also added oxygen-gtk, which is not really an application, but a theme engine. It (optionally) makes GTK applications visually blend in with KDE’s own Oxygen theme. There is a README in its documentation directory which explains how to enable it.
  • Since KDE 4.7.2, I include a “test” directory. This directory contains Networkmanager, plus some other dependencies, that allow to create a KDE package for “networkmanagement” which is an applet plus a kcontrol (i.e. a plugin for KDE’s systemsettings). This test, which sofar has proved to be quite successful, allows you to switch from WICD to NetworkManager as your basic network management service. The applet plus kcontrol make it quite easy to configure your network in KDE (wired, wireless, vpn, dsl and mobile broadband). No new Gnome libraries had to be added for this (NM itself plus its supporting tools have no dependency on the rest of Gnome). I have added NM installation/configuration instructions to the README.

A small aside I want to mention:

There was one bug that has been plaguing me ever since KDE 4.7.0 (and I may have had this occasionally before 4.7 but I cannot remember for certain). The bug seems to be ALSA related, but unsure is whether the fault is with ALSA or with KDE. The “kde deamon (kded4)” crashes every time when I login to KDE. Surely, it will automatically restart but it is ugly. It was still there in KDE 4.7.3 and it is described in these two bug reports:

There is a workaround though. If you disable “KMixD Mixer Service (kmixd)” from being started at logon, the crash does not occur anymore and so far I have not found any lost functionality. My laptop’s hardware volume keys still work, and the KDE mixer applet is still functional. Go to System Settings > Startup and Shutdown > Service Manager, and remove the check in the checkbox for KMix Daemon.

The KDE 4.7.4 packages for Slackware-current are available for download from my “ktown” repository and several mirrors (taper will be in sync when I post this, the other mirrors will have to catch up):

Have fun! Eric

KDE updated to 4.7.3

November 2, 2011 / / 40 Comments

Another month passes, and another maintenance release of KDE.arrives, we are up to 4.7.3 now. As usual, here are my KDE 4.7.3 packages for Slackware hot on the heals of the KDE team.

For those who are trying my 4.7 packages for the first time and wonder why the hell am I offering so many packages, please read my earlier post about KDE 4.7.0 which explains more about splitting KDE for Slackware into many more (and smaller) packages.

My packages have been compiled on Slackware-current. My educated guess is that you can use them on Slackware 13.37 too (several people have reported in various places that they are running my KDE 4.7.2 on Slackware 13.37 successfully).

Still:

Read the accompanying README file for installation and upgrade instructions!

Some of the highlights of these KDE packages:

  • There are several updated dependencies compared to Slackware’s own KDE 4.5.5: PyQt, QScintilla, akonadi, attica, clucene, ebook-tools, hunspell, libdbusmenu-qt, phonon, polkit-qt-1, qt, raptor2, rascal, redland, shared-desktop-ontologies, sip, soprano, strigi, system-config-printer and virtuoso-ose.
  • In comparison with my previous KDE 4.7.2 the number of updated dependencies is a bit smaller: akonadi, grantlee, libbluedevil, libssh, phonon, shared-desktop-ontologies and upower.
  • KDE dpendencies that are not part of Slackware 13.37 at all (yet): grantlee, herqq, libatasmart, libbluedevil, libssh, phonon-gstreamer, phonon-xine, sg3_utils and udisks. Note that I added phonon-gstreamer and phonon-xine only after I had already released KDE 4.7.0 packages because people reported that they no longer had sound. These two packages solve that issue.

Not new since I added these to KDE 4.7.1 before (but if you are new to KDE 4.7 this will interest you):

  • You will find some additional useful new applications, which are not part of the KDE core set. They are new, compared to Slackware’s own version of KDE. I already added bluedevil to my 4.6.5 package-set. Bluedevil is the new KDE bluetooth stack with a nice GUI, based on the BlueZ libraries already present in Slackware. And with KDE 4.7.0, I included kplayer, a KDE front-end to MPlayer. With KDE 4.7.2, I added Quanta Plus, which disappeared from KDE4 because that migrated from Qt3 to Qt4. It is now being worked on again, but no longer as a standalone application – instead it is available as a plugin to the Kdevelop Platform. And this time, I added a native WICD applet for KDE, called “wicd-kde“. It can replace the GTK based “wicd-client” which is part of the wicd package.
  • I also added oxygen-gtk, which is not really an application, but a theme engine. It (optionally) makes GTK applications visually blend in with KDE’s own Oxygen theme. There is a README in its documentation directory which explains how to enable it.
  • And right after releasing my KDE 4.7.2 packages, I added a “test” directory. The same test directory is also present in the 4.7.3 package set. It contains Networkmanager, plus some other dependencies, that allow to create a package for “networkmanagement” which is an applet plus a kcontrol (i.e. a plugin for KDE’s systemsettings). This allows you to switch from WICD to NetworkManager as your basic network management service. The applet plus kcontrol make it dead easy to configure your network (wired, wireless, vpn, dsl and mobile broadband). No new Gnome libraries had to be added for this (NM itself plus its supporting tools have no dependency on the rest of Gnome). I have added NM installation/configuration instructions to the README.

A small aside I want to mention:

There was one bug that has been plaguing me ever since KDE 4.7.0 (and I may have had this occasionally before 4.7 but I cannot remember for certain). The bug seems to be ALSA related, but unsure is whether the fault is with ALSA or with KDE. The “kde deamon (kded4)” crashes every time when I login to KDE. Surely, it will automatically restart but it is ugly. It is still there in KDE 4.7.3 and it is described in these two bug reports:

There is a workaround though. If you disable “KMixD Mixer Service (kmixd)” from being started at logon, the crash does not occur anymore and so far I have not found any lost functionality. My laptop’s hardware volume keys still work, and the KDE mixer applet is still functional. Go to System Settings > Startup and Shutdown > Service Manager, and remove the check in the checkbox for KMix Daemon.

The KDE 4.7.3 packages for Slackware-current are available for download from my “ktown” repository and several mirrors (taper will be in sync when I post this, the other mirrors will have to catch up):

Have fun! Eric

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