Alien Pastures

My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

Tag: libreoffice (Page 6 of 20)

Updates for LibreOffice and multilib, more to come

December 22, 2017 / / 26 Comments

libreoffce_logoBecause of recent updates in slackware-current (in this case, the boost package) the LibreOffice in my own repository stopped working. Library conflict. Don’t you love the life on the bleeding edge 😉

By coïncidence, the Document Foundation had just released a new version of their LibreOffice sources, so instead of recompiling the old 5.4.3 packages I could grab the new 5.4.4 release and turn those sources into Slackware packages (Slackware 14.2 and -current). The next major release 6.0 is just around the corner but I am not going to wait for that.
You can get the new packages from my repository – like https://slackware.nl/people/alien/slackbuilds/libreoffice/ .

Also, I updated the multilib repository with the latest updates in slackware-current (the new l/Mako, a/lzlib and a/plzip are now also available in a “compat32” version).
Remember to also install the new packages, not just upgrade the existing ones! If you have a local mirror, that means using “upgradepkg –install-new” and if you use slackpkg with slackpkg+, you need to do “slackpkg update; slackpkg install multilib ; slackpkg upgrade-all”. That “slackpkg install multilib” takes care of installing any package you are still missing.

Work on a new Plasma5 package set is also well underway. The 64bit -current bit is done so I know I have my sources and scripts in order, and I am generating a new PLASMA5 Live ISO for testing. Stay tuned.

LibreOffice 5.4.3 packages available

November 12, 2017 / / 25 Comments

libreoffce_logoThe Document Foundation released the third update for LibreOffice 5.4 last week, as you can read on their blog where they write about the new LibreOffice 5.4.3 . My manic-depressive mood-swings are on the manic side at the moment so next to baking sausage rolls (brabantse worstenbroodjes for which I will publish an updated recipe on this blog soon) and a batch of sourdough bread, I finally had the energy to fix the admin interface for the SlackDocs mailing lists, wrestled myself through 14,000+ emails in my administrative mailboxes, wrote a plan to migrate my LAN services from the ageing server to the new server I bought this summer (which involves conversion of several large databases to InnoDB and loads of custom packages), plus I binge-watched almost 2 full seasons of Stranger Things in 3 days’ time. I know I will crash hard in a couple of days but I hope to have a new Plasma ‘ktown’ update before that happens.

Back to the topic: the LibreOffice 5.4 release notes contain full detail about its features:  https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/5.4. Note that the developers state that “LibreOffice 5.4.3 continues to represent the bleeding edge in term of features, and as such is targeted at technology enthusiasts and early adopters” and I think that describes us Slackware users well enough 🙂
Their advice for more conservative users is to stick to the 5.3 releases but I am no longer compiling packages for that.

 

In any case, thanks to the 16 cores on my build server it did not take all that much time to generate packages for Slackware 14.2 and -current.
When I tried the new programs on my laptop (which is running Plasma5) I noticed that the default User Interface for LibreOffice causes rendering issues. Also, my Plasma5 destop is configured to move application menus out of the application window into a button in the window’s top bar. That setting is apparently not compatible with the default User Interface and it caused the loss of the LibreOffice menu.
I could fix these issues by editing the profile script “/etc/profile.d/libreoffice.sh” and un-commenting the line “export SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gtk3” to force LibreOffice to use GTK+3 as the widget set.

The libreoffice packages for Slackware can be downloaded from any mirror like this one: http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/people/alien/slackbuilds/libreoffice/.

Have fun! Eric

LibreOffice 5.3.4 packages for -current

June 25, 2017 / / 11 Comments

libreoffce_logoWhen looking for package updates in preparation for a new Slackware Live PLASMA5 edition, I noticed that the Document Foundation had released LibreOffice 5.3.4 without updating their blog with the news – it’s only mentioned on the download page.
I have built and uploaded Slackware-current packages for libreoffice-5.3.4. If you are on Slackware 14.2 you will probably have to skip this one, as I will not have time for compiling packages the coming weeks (allocates one virtual machine for one day per build, since I can only check on progress in the evenings).
The package for -current needed to be (re-)built anyway because of the library issue with Slackware’s updated libGLEW which prevented Impress to start.

Check out the LO releasenotes if you want:  https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/5.3.

The libreoffice packages for Slackware can be downloaded from a mirror like this one: http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/people/alien/slackbuilds/libreoffice/.

Have fun! Eric

Last week’s package harvest and more

March 19, 2017 / / 14 Comments

Last week I made my build server at home churn through a lot of packages, let me summarize what became available recently in my slackbuilds repository:

  • I added ‘NetworkManager-openvpn‘ which is a plugin for NM adding support for OpenVPN connections. I needed this for myself since I recently started using the services of Private Internet Access (PIA). All I needed in addition was the ZIP file with OpenVPN configurations. If you need more instructions about how to setup the PIA VPN let me know and I will wrote some more about that. I also added this plugin to my PLASMA5 Live Edition.
  • I upgraded ‘Handbrake‘ to 1.0.3 which also fixed the libvpx library error on -current.
  • I updated the Flash Player plugins for Mozilla and Chromium browsers to 25.0.0.127 (this is a security update).
  • I updated Chromium and its Widevine plugin to 57.0.2987.98. There is a slightly newer release out already but that will have to wait a bit.
  • I updated LibreOffice to 5.3.1 (packages for -current only but I will build them for 14.2 too).

I did more than that; I also updated the front page of my ‘bear’ server with the information that you can access it over secure HTTP (https), and added a link to my post about the CACert issue with Mozilla and Google browsers. Furthermore I added more detail about the dynamically generated ISOs for Slackware-current (the installation DVD and the Live Edition).

I will spend my next post writing about the new KDE 5_17.03 edition which I uploaded to my ‘ktown’ repository, but let me mention here that I already uploaded a new PLASMA5 variant of the Slackware Live Edition which contains a “work in progress” version of this new Plasma 5 release (work in progress because I decided to add more packages later). I did not mention that in any previous post.
Along with that Plasma 5 Live ISO I also uploaded a variant containing the very fresh MATE 1.18 (thanks to Willy for providing me with the tried & tested packages). So there is enough to play with 🙂
I am actually considering a new spin of the PLASMA5 Live ISO because it allows me to offer the complete KDE-5_17.03 including the Kdenlive non-linear video editor in the Live OS, along with the latest LibreOffice.

Enough for now, check out my follow-up post for the news about my new Plasma 5 ‘ktown’ release.

Have fun! Eric

Chromium 56, LibreOffice 5.2.5

February 1, 2017 / / 21 Comments

libreoffce_logoI had rebuilt the libreoffice-5.2.4 packages for Slackware -current last week, because library updates in Slackware had broken the spreadsheet application ‘localc‘. And voila… not long afterwards the Document Foundation blog announced 5.2.5: “all users are invited to update to LibreOffice 5.2.5 from LibreOffice 5.1.6 or previous versions“. Today on the first of february, we can even witness the 5.3 release.

A list of the most significant new features of LibreOffice 5.3 has been published in a separate document (http://tdf.io/lo53features) and you are invited to watch a series of short videos (http://tdf.io/53vids) if you want to get a taste of what’s on the plate. Collaborative editing is the major highlight I guess. A detailed description of these new features is also available as a web page:  http://www.libreoffice.org/discover/new-features/.

I am definitely not building packages right away for 5.3 but I did compile packages for 5.2.5 – albeit only for Slackware -current. I may or may not create these packages for Slackware 14.2 as well and then upgrade the -current package to 5.3. Depends on the other stuff I need to do.

These libreoffice packages are huge in size so please use a mirror for download, and take into account that only the master site and ‘bear’ will have the packages during the first 24 hours.

Note: the LibreOffice browser plugin (NPAPI based) has been removed in LibreOffice 4.4.0:  https://skyfromme.wordpress.com/2014/09/25/killing-the-npapi-plugin/

chromium_iconOn another note, Chromium (and Chrome) 56 ‘stable’ was released. It’s nice to test the HTML5 feature set on a site like HTML5test and see that it is at the top of all the browsers up there (517 points, only Chrome 56 for Windows scores better because it supports speech synthesis).

Packages for Slackware 14.2 and -current are now available from my repository. No ETA for Slackware 14.1 packages, and perhaps it is time for people still using Chromium on 14.1 to upgrade to 14.2?

As always, here are some common download sites:

Have fun! Eric

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