Alien Pastures

My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

Tag: kde48

KDE 4.8.4 (last in the 4.8 series)

June 8, 2012 / / 34 Comments

With a few days’ delay due to patches which were contributed at the last moment and resulting build failures (…), the KDE team announced the final increment in the 4.8 series: KDE Software Compilation 4.8.4 . I have packages for you and am announcing those for all users of Slackware-current.

The upgrade is trivial if you are already running Slackware-current. It already contains KDE 4.8.2, so the upgrade to 4.8.4 will mostly give you bug fixes and some performance enhancements. There was some talk about adding an unplanned 4.8.5 release because it will take so long until 4.9 stable but it seems that the reasons for wanting this have been addressed in the form of those patches to the 4.8.4 source tarballs which I mentioned above.

Re-compiling the 4.8.4 sources for Slackware 13.37 will not be so trivial, since you have to update quite a lot of other packages in Slackware (and install some new ones). Check out this directory with symbolic links in the slackware-current source tree. It points to all the package sources which you need if you are going to create packages for 13.37: http://slackware.osuosl.org/slackware64-current/source/kde/kde-deps-build/ . If there is enough demand, I will consider adding a “13.37 deps” directory for KDE 4.8.4 to the reposititory.

Get my KDE 4.8.4 packages for -current here:

The accompanying README file contains detailed installation/upgrade instructions.

Remember: if you rather want to try out a beta of the future 4.9 series, then I have that available too! See http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/results-of-a-few-days-of-packaging-software/ . I am running that Beta on my desktop and I have not found a single bug yet.

Have fun! Eric

KDE 4.8.3 packages

May 4, 2012 / / 34 Comments

The KDE team officially released the sources for KDE Software Compilation 4.8.3 today. I grabbed the tarballs from the packagers site a few days earlier, so that I could again have a full set of Slackware packages for you.

The upgrade will be trivial. Slackware-current was enhanced very recently with KDE 4.8.2 and all the software updates which that move required. Apart from the 4.8.3 release sources, I only had to compile a newer version of libbluedevil and bluedevil, and even those two will be updated in Slackware too, very soon (perhaps Pat already pulled the trigger).

Get my packages here; the official Slackware packages will remain at version 4.8.2, while Pat and the team concentrate on other parts of the distro.

The accompanying README file contains detailed installation/upgrade instructions. Do not fail to follow those instructions!

Have fun! Eric

KDE 4.8.2 – updated in Slackware soon (hopefully)!

April 4, 2012 / / 44 Comments

The KDE team released the next update in the KDE 4.8 cycle today. As expected it is mostly on target again.

The sources were made available to packagers some days earlier and that enabled me to update my scripts and start building on time.

I am running KDE 4.8.2 myself and so far, have not found issues. If you find any, be sure to discuss them on this blog page. I have packages ready for you to download & enjoy!

As usual, my README file contains  detailed installation/upgrade instructions. Do not fail to follow those instructions!

I have updated quite a lot of the dependencies for this release, in particular qt, libdbusmenu-qt, sg3_utils, sip, PyQt, QScintilla, shared-desktop-ontologies, raptor2, rasqal, redland, grantlee, phonon, phonon-mplayer, soprano, akonadi. I also moved libktorrent back from the “deps” directory into KDE’s “extragear” because libktorrent depends on kdelibs and therefore should be considered as being a KDE component.

 

And there may even better news in the near future. Pat Volkerding grabbed my build scripts to create official KDE 4.8.2 packages for Slackware-current which hopefully will be showing up in the repositories soon. This means that finally with the update from 4.5.5 to 4.8.2 (and skipping all the 4.6 and 4.7 releases) Slackware again would have a real “current” KDE environment by default. Let’s all hope Pat does not get distracted by the hordes of fans demanding attention!

Have fun! Eric

KDE 4.8.1 – the best DE you can get

March 7, 2012 / / 49 Comments

Today saw the announcement of a new chapter in the KDE 4.8 series. I was already very pleased with the point release 4.8.0 – it is amazing how the developers managed to keep their desktop environment stable when transitioning from 4.7 to 4.8. And the first maintenance release 4.8.1 brings us bug fixes and more.

Thanks to the fact that the KDE team makes the sources available to packagers ahead of the public announcement, I am again able to provide you with Slackware KDE 4.8.1 packages on time, and they are up for the taking!

It appears that I finally raised Patrick’s interest in the current generation of KDE. He has built his own set of packages and I received excited reports from him. That is a good sign! Perhaps there will be a nice update to slackware-current in a not-too-distant future.

Please note that my own KDE packages have been compiled on Slackware-current. There has been an incompatible update to slackware-current recently (the glibc package) which will cause run-time errors if you attempt to start these KDE programs in Slackware 13.37. If you consider using KDE 4.8.1 on one of Slackware’s earlier (stable) releases, then you have no other option than to compile packages yourself. I have written down the guidelines in another blog post..

Read the accompanying README file for installation and upgrade instructions!

You will find a lot of additional information about what the new KDE offers in comparison to the old version in Slackware, in my announcement post for KDE 4.8.0  Worth checking out if you had not read it before.

Highlight of this new set of Slackware packages:

  • I have added Calligra 2.4_rc1. Calligra is the continuation or “fork” if you wish of the old KOffice. Near the end of 2010 there was a fall-out between the developers of the various KOffice components, and the majority (everyone except the KWord developer) walked off to start the Calligra fork.  The Calligra office suite is fianlly entering Release Candidate stage, and it is stable enough to use it on a daily basis. Don’t forget to “removepkg koffice”!  Calligra’s technology is already being used on tablets: the MeeGo Office suite has Calligra at its core. There is already support for Plasma Active as well, you will find the “Active” applications in your KDE menu.

The KDE 4.8.1 packages for Slackware-current are available for download from my “ktown” repository and several mirrors (taper is in sync when I post this, the other mirrors will catch up soon):

Have fun! Eric

KDE 4.8.0 arrives

January 25, 2012 / / 97 Comments

The release schedule could have told you in advance – here we have the first installment in the KDE 4.8 series!

The Slackware KDE 4.8.0 packages are ready for your enjoyment..

A good primer on the how and why of the modularization of KDE, resulting in an abundance of smaller packages compared to the big meta packages of Slackware 13.37, please read my earlier post about KDE 4.7.0.

My packages have been compiled on Slackware-current. There has been an incompatible update to slackware-current recently (the glibc package). If you consider using KDE 4.8.0 on one of Slackware’s earlier (stable) releases, then you have no other option than to compile packages yourself. I have written down the guidelines in another blog post..

Read the accompanying README file for installation and upgrade instructions!

Some of the highlights of these KDE packages:

  • Being the first release in the KDE 4.8 series means, there will probably be some bugs to iron out. But, I really can not find anything wrong with this point zero release. It sports a new default background “Ariya” to replace “Horos” of the 4.6 and 4.7 releases. It’s nothing but straight-line geometry, giving the desktop a professional look. The desktop feels fast and snappy, partly thanks to the upgraded Qt 4.8.0 which I added as well, but also thanks to the improvements made to kwin, KDE’s window manager. Enabling the “blur” effect should no longer slow down your desktop.
  • There are a lot of updated dependencies compared to Slackware’s own KDE 4.5.5: PyQt, QScintilla, akonadi, attica, clucene, ebook-tools, hunspell, libdbusmenu-qt, libvncserver, phonon, polkit-qt-1, qt, raptor2, rascal, redland, shared-desktop-ontologies, sip, soprano, strigi, system-config-printer and virtuoso-ose. I really hope Slackware will catch up some day, as it is no fun to maintain so many packages outside of the main Slackware tree.
  • In comparison with my previous KDE 4.7.4 the number of updated dependencies is still rather big because I wanted to offer the best experience: akonadi, attica, hunspell, libatasmart, libvncserver, phonon, phonon-xine, polkit-qt-1, qt, strigi, udisks, and upower have all been brought to their most recent versions. 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, udisks and upower. 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 4.8 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-gtk2 (renamed from “oxygen-gtk” now that there is also a version supporting GTK3). It is not really an application, but a theme engine. It (optionally) makes GTK2 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 allows me to create a KDE package for “networkmanagement“. Networkmanagement is an applet plus a kcontrol (i.e. a plugin for KDE’s systemsettings). Use the packages in this “test” directory if you want 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. Note that I moved from NM 0.8 (which I had in KDE 4.7) to the newer NM 0.9 because that is what KDE currently supports best.

The KDE 4.8.0 packages for Slackware-current are available for download from my “ktown” repository and several mirrors (taper will probably be in sync when I post this, the other mirrors will have to catch up):

Have fun! Eric

© 2024 Alien Pastures

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑