Alien Pastures

My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

Tag: plasma5 (Page 10 of 15)

KDE 5_17.02 for Slackware-current is available

February 16, 2017 / / 13 Comments

I am happy to announce my February 2017 release of the ‘ktown’ packages: KDE 5_17.02. What you get in this new release is: KDE Frameworks 5.31.0, Plasma 5.9.2 and Applications 16.12.2. All built on top of Qt 5.7.1.
Soon, I will compile this version of Plasma 5 on Slackware 14.2 (only 64bit) as well, but I gave priority last few days to the new LibreOffice packages and a new PLASMA5 Live image. The packages that I am releasing today are for Slackware-current only (both 32bit and 64bit). As stated in my previous post, I will no longer be releasing Plasma 5 packages for 32bit Slackware 14.2.

What you also need to know is that I removed all packages and sources from my ‘ktown‘ repository that it still contained for Slackware 13.37 and 14.1. These were using up disk space that I needed on my ‘bear’ server. People who want the latest & greatest in KDE should upgrade to Slackware 14.2 or -current.

I also emptied the ‘testing’ area of the ‘ktown‘ repository. The packages in there were outdated and no longer gave you a working desktop environment. I plan to re-add some packages for testing there, once I have rebuilt the mesa / xorg-server / qt5 stack against Wayland so I can again check out the status on Slackware of the Wayland compositor in the Plasma Window Manager (kwin). But that is for another time.

What’s new in KDE 5_17.02?

  • Frameworks 5.31.0 is an enhancement release. See https://www.kde.org/announcements/kde-frameworks-5.31.0.php
  • Plasma 5.9.2 is the second iteration of the 5.9 series with small fixes only. See https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.9.2.php . I am not sticking with the long term support (LTS) releases of Plasma 5.8, as I think LTS should be targeting stable Slackware. If you want to know more about the long term support plans, go read: https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.8.0.php .
    This is my first release with Plasma 5.9 so it is worth mentioning some of the changes:

    • You will experience various visual and usability improvements all across the board.
    • A new network configurator was added to System Settings.
    • Global menus have finally been implemented in Plasma. This means that the application menus can be separated from the application windows: the menu can now be shown either in a Plasma widget or via a handle tucked into the window bar.
  • Applications 16.12.2 is an incremental fix-release in the 16.12 series. See https://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-applications-16.12.2.php .
  • The ‘deps’ section has four updated packages: OpenAL, libxkbcommon, phonon, wayland; and one recompiled package: qt5. I will not upgrade qt5 to 5.8.0 until the KWin developer gives it the green light.
  • Also worth mentioning: the KF5 ports of calligra, krita, ktorrent, partitionmanager, skanlite and the KDE Development Suite can be found in “kde/applications-extra” subdirectory. Packages for kjots (previously contained in KDEPIM) and kuser (which has been orphaned) have been moved into “kde/applications-extra” as well.

This upgrade should be relatively straightforward if you already have Plasma 5 installed. See below for install/upgrade instructions. For users who are running slackware-current, the most crucial part is making sure that you end up with Slackware’s packages for ‘libinput‘ and ‘libwacom‘. Failing to do so, may render your input devices (mouse and keyboard) inoperative in X.Org.

You may want to check out the new Plasma 5 before installing. For this purpose, I have generated a new Live ISO for the PLASMA5 variant based on an intermediate liveslak-1.1.6.2 release. Look for that ISO on http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/slackware-live/latest/ . The timestamp of the “slackware64-live-plasma5-current.iso” file should be Feb 26 16, 2017.

Multilib considerations

If you install a 32bit program on a 64bit Slackware computer with multilib and that program needs legacy system tray support (think of Skype for instance), you will have to grab the 32-bit version of Slackware’s ‘libdbusmenu-qt’ and my ktown-deps package ‘sni-qt’, and run the ‘convertpkg-compat32 -i‘ command on them to create ‘compat32’ versions of these packages. Then install both ‘libdbusmenu-qt-compat32‘ and ‘sni-qt-compat32‘.
Those two are mandatory addons for displaying system tray icons of 32bit binaries in 64bit multilib Plasma5.

Installing or upgrading Frameworks 5, Plasma 5 and Applications

You can skip the remainder of the article if you already have my Plasma 5 installed and are familiar with the upgrade process. Otherwise, stay with me and read the rest.

As always, the accompanying README file contains full installation & upgrade instructions. Note that the packages are available in several subdirectories below “kde”, instead of directly in “kde”. This makes it easier for me to do partial updates of packages. The subdirectories are “kde4“, “kde4-extragear“, “frameworks“, “kdepim“, “plasma“, “plasma-extra“, “applications“, “applications-extra” and “telepathy“.

Upgrading to this KDE 5 is not difficult, especially if you already are running KDE 5_17.01. You will have to remove old KDE 4 packages manually. If you do not have KDE 4 installed at all, you will have to install some of Slackware’s own KDE 4 packages manually.

What I usually do is: download all the ‘ktown’ packages for the new release to a local disk. Then run “upgrade –install-new” on all these packages. Then I check the status of my Slackware-current, upgrading the stock packages where needed. The slackpkg tool is invaluable during this process of syncing the package installation status to the releases.

Note:

If you are using slackpkg+, have already moved to KDE 5_17.01 and are adventurous, you can try upgrading using the following set of commands. This should “mostly” work but you still need to check the package lists displayed by slackpkg to verify that you are upgrading all the right packages. Feel free to send me improved instructions if needed. In below example I am assuming that you tagged my KDE 5 repository with the name “ktown” in the configuration file “/etc/slackpkg/slackpkgplus.conf“):
# slackpkg update
# slackpkg install ktown (to get the newly added packages from my repo)
# slackpkg install-new (to get the new official Slackware packages that were part of my deps previously)
# slackpkg upgrade ktown (upgrade all existing packages to their latest versions)
# slackpkg upgrade-all (upgrade the remaining dependencies that were part of my repo previously)

And doublecheck that you have not inadvertently blacklisted my packages in “/etc/slackpkg/blacklist“! Check for the existence of a line in that blacklist file that looks like “[0-9]+alien” and remove it if you find it!

Recommended reading material

There have been several posts now about KDE 5 for Slackware-current. All of them contain useful information, tips and gotchas. If you want to read them, here they are: http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/tag/kde5/

A note on Frameworks

The KDE Frameworks are extensions on top of Qt 5.x and their usability is not limited to the KDE Software Collection. There are other projects such as LXQT which rely (in part) on the KDE Frameworks, and if you are looking for a proper Frameworks repository which is compatible with Slackware package managers such as slackpkg+, then you can use these URL’s to assure yourself of the latest Frameworks packages for Slackware-current (indeed, this is a sub-tree of my KDE 5 repository):

The same goes for Frameworks for Slackware 14.2 (change ‘current’ to ‘14.2’ in the above URLs).

Where to get the new packages for Plasma 5

Download locations are listed below (you will find the sources in ./source/5/ and packages in /current/5/ and  /14.2/5/ subdirectories). If you are interested in the development of KDE 5 for Slackware, you can peek at my git repository too.

Using a mirror is preferred because you get more bandwidth from a mirror and it’s friendlier to the owners of the master server!

Have fun! Eric

Plasma 5_17.01 for Slackware

January 29, 2017 / / 53 Comments

My previous post concerned itself with the question: what do I spend my time on? Keeping Plasma 5 working on Slackware 14.2 and -current, and for 32bit as well as 64bit architectures, is simply too time-consuming for a monthly release. I asked for your opinion and I was glad for all the feedback I have received. Predominantly, people are using 64bit Slackware and I saw both the stable 14.2 and the -current development tree mentioned. It looks like a small minority of people is running Plasma 5 on 32bit Slackware – not my target of choice but everyone has his or her own reasons and I am not here to doubt those.

So, here is the first 2017 release of the ‘ktown’ packages – KDE 5_17.01. I have updated the main package sets to their latest releases: KDE Frameworks 5.30.0, Plasma 5.8.5 and Applications 16.12.1. I have also updated the Qt  package to 5.7.1.
What can you expect of this and the future releases? You can still use this latest KDE 5 on Slackware 14.2 (only 64bit) but I will be focusing more on -current. After all, the ‘ktown’ development is all about getting the latest and greatest KDE software included in Slackware-current. This is how I think I am going to handle the releases:

I am going to do my releases first for Slackware64 14.2 and -current. During the days that follow, will compile the 32bit packages for Slackware-current. I will stop releasing Plasma 5 packages for 32bit Slackware 14.2.

What’s new in KDE 5_17.01?

  • Frameworks 5.30.0 is an enhancement release and contains one new framework compared to my previous release: prison. See https://www.kde.org/announcements/kde-frameworks-5.30.0.php
  • Plasma 5.8.5 is an incremental bug fix release for the 5.8 series. See https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.8.5.php and if you want to know more about the long term support (LTS) for Plasma 5.8, go read: https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.8.0.php
  • Applications 16.12.1 contains many changes. In these 16.12.x releases, some of the big packages have been split into many smaller ones: ‘kde-baseapps’, ‘kdepim’ and ‘kdewebdev’ (and these three packages are gone now).
    Two other packages have been removed: ‘gpgmepp’ (whose functionality has been integrated into ‘gpgme’), and ‘kuser’ (for which there is no replacement and therefore I have kept it as part of applications-extra).
    Formerly part of ‘kdepim‘, the ‘kdgantt2′ program has been removed and it is replaced by a new package ‘kdiagram‘. Another new package ‘kwave‘ was added in 16.12.0 (which I never built). See https://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-applications-16.12.1.php .
  • I have removed ‘kactivities‘, ‘nepomuk‘ and ‘nepomuk-widgets‘ from the kde4 package subset. These kdelibs4-based packages are no longer used by other packages.
    I also added a package there: ‘libcddb4‘ is the old kdelibs4 based version and it is needed to keep ‘k3b‘ running. The latest libkcddb is Frameworks5 based and incompatible with k3b.
    Unfortunately ‘kdepimlibs4‘ is still required by ‘kopete‘ and ‘klinkstatus‘. I had to recompile ‘kdepimlibs4‘ to remove gpgme++ files that are now part of the ‘gpgme‘ package. If you want to repeat this at home, make sure you only have ‘akonadi4‘ installed, not the newer ‘akonadi‘ from Applications.
  • In applications-extra, I upgraded ‘calligra‘ to the recently released Frameworks5 based version; a recompilation would have been needed anyway in order to ditch ‘kactivities‘. The new ‘calligra‘ has shed some of its code and no longer contains ‘krita‘ or ‘kexi‘, they are developed independently now. ‘Flow‘ and ‘Stage‘ have also been removed from the code but here the reason is that their code is un-maintained. Therefore I have added ‘krita‘ as a new package. If anyone needs ‘kexi‘ as well, let me know so I can add it (and its dependencies) next time. Also, ‘partitionmanager‘ (along with its dependency ‘kpmcore‘)  was upgraded and is now Frameworks5 based. Note: ‘partitionmanager‘ has issues using kdesu to gain root access to the disks even though it will ask for the root password. If all actions are greyed out, start it from the commandline with “sudo -s partitionmanager”.
  • The ‘kdeconnect-framework‘ package in plasma-extra was upgraded.
  • The ‘deps’ section has two new packages (three in the Slackware 14.2 repo as you can read below): ‘libdmtx‘ and ‘qrencode‘, both of which are requirements for the new ‘kdiagram‘ package. The ‘libinput‘ package was upgraded to the same version as was recently added to slackware-current (and compiled against the new package ‘libwacom‘ just like in slackware-current). Note that libinput and libwacom are not part of the ‘deps’ for Slackware-current since these are already covered by your Slackware install.
  • The ‘qt5‘ package was upgraded to 5.7.1, and accompanying upgrades were done for ‘qt5-webkit‘, ‘sip‘ and ‘PyQt5‘. Note that qt5’s dependencies have increased again: it now requires libinput, libwacom, libxkbcommon. I did not upgrade qt5 to 5.8.0 – it is too new and currently seems to have issues with KWin.

This upgrade should be relatively straightforward if you already have Plasma 5 installed. See below for install/upgrade instructions. For users who are running slackware-current, the most crucial part is making sure that you end up with Slackware’s packages for ‘libinput‘ and ‘libwacom‘. Failing to do so, may render your input devices (mouse and keyboard) inoperative in X.Org.

You may want to check out the new Plasma 5 before installing. For this purpose, I have generated a new Live ISO for the PLASMA5 variant. Look for that ISO on http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/slackware-live/latest/ . The timestamp of the “slackware64-live-plasma5-current.iso” file should be Jan 27, 2017.

Installing or upgrading Frameworks 5, Plasma 5 and Applications

You can skip the remainder of the article if you already have my Plasma 5 installed and are familiar with the upgrade process. Otherwise, stay with me and read the rest.

As always, the accompanying README file contains full installation & upgrade instructions. Note that the packages are available in several subdirectories below “kde”, instead of directly in “kde”. This makes it easier for me to do partial updates of packages. The subdirectories are “kde4“, “kde4-extragear“, “frameworks“, “kdepim“, “plasma“, “plasma-extra“, “applications“, “applications-extra” and “telepathy“.

Upgrading to this KDE 5 is not difficult, especially if you already are running KDE 5_16.12. You will have to remove old KDE 4 packages manually. If you do not have KDE 4 installed at all, you will have to install some of Slackware’s own KDE 4 packages manually.

What I usually do is: download all the ‘ktown’ packages for the new release to a local disk. Then run “upgrade –install-new” on all these packages. Then I check the status of my Slackware-current, upgrading the stock packages where needed. The slackpkg tool is invaluable during this process of syncing the package installation status to the releases.

Note:

If you are using slackpkg+, have already moved to KDE 5_16.12 and are adventurous, you can try upgrading using the following set of commands. This should “mostly” work but you still need to check the package lists displayed by slackpkg to verify that you are upgrading all the right packages. Feel free to send me improved instructions if needed. In below example I am assuming that you tagged my KDE 5 repository with the name “ktown” in the configuration file “/etc/slackpkg/slackpkgplus.conf“):
# slackpkg update
# slackpkg install ktown (to get the newly added packages from my repo)
# slackpkg install-new (to get the new official Slackware packages that were part of my deps previously)
# slackpkg upgrade ktown (upgrade all existing packages to their latest versions)
# slackpkg upgrade-all (upgrade the remaining dependencies that were part of my repo previously)

And doublecheck that you have not inadvertently blacklisted my packages in “/etc/slackpkg/blacklist“! Check for the existence of a line in that blacklist file that looks like “[0-9]+alien” and remove it if you find it!

Recommended reading material

There have been several posts now about KDE 5 for Slackware-current. All of them contain useful information, tips and gotchas. If you want to read them, here they are: http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/tag/kde5/

A note on Frameworks

The KDE Frameworks are extensions on top of Qt 5.x and their usability is not limited to the KDE Software Collection. There are other projects such as LXQT which rely (in part) on the KDE Frameworks, and if you are looking for a proper Frameworks repository which is compatible with Slackware package managers such as slackpkg+, then you can use these URL’s to assure yourself of the latest Frameworks packages for Slackware-current (indeed, this is a sub-tree of my KDE 5 repository):

The same goes for Frameworks for Slackware 14.2 (change ‘current’ to ‘14.2’ in the above URLs).

Where to get the new packages for Plasma 5

Download locations are listed below (you will find the sources in ./source/5/ and packages in /current/5/ and  /14.2/5/ subdirectories). If you are interested in the development of KDE 5 for Slackware, you can peek at my git repository too.

Using a mirror is preferred because you get more bandwidth from a mirror and it’s friendlier to the owners of the master server!

Have fun! Eric

December packages… not Santa Claus but Plasma 5

December 10, 2016 / / 53 Comments

plasma5_startupI wanted to have the last 16.08.x release of KDE Applications available in my repository before the new 16.12.x releases start coming. There are some big changes in Applications 16.12 for which I need to time to review, plan and build packages. Therefore you will probably not see packages for Applications 16.12.0 in 2016.
So, my december release of the ‘ktown’ packages – KDE 5_16.12 – is sporting KDE Frameworks 5.28.0, Plasma 5.8.4 and Applications 16.08.3 for Slackware, built on top of Qt 5.7.0 which was recompiled with a patch which should improve stability. You can use the latest KDE 5 on Slackware 14.2 and -current.

And because there’s some people who do not read my posts all too carefully, let me again state strongly: my repository contains “latest” and “testing” releases. Currently, the “testing” release is severely outdated and will probably not work at all, or at a minimum give you headaches. The repository you are downloading from should either have “14.2/latest” (for Slackware 14.2) or “current/latest” (for Slackware -current) as part of the URL. When I have time and feel confident, I will re-visit the “testing” repository and work on the Wayland support, which is what that repository is meant for.
Be sure to check your automated package management programs for the correct repository URL!

What’s new in KDE 5_16.12?

  • Frameworks 5.28.0 is an enhancement release with one new framework, ‘syntax-highlighting‘. See https://www.kde.org/announcements/kde-frameworks-5.28.0.php
  • Plasma 5.8.4 is an incremental bug fix release for the 5.8 series. Plasma 5.8 is labeled a Long Term Support (LTS) release.
    See https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.8.4.php and if you want to know more about the LTS, go read: https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.8.0.php
  • Applications 16.08.3 is a maintenance upgrade. See https://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-applications-16.08.3.php .
  • In the ‘deps’ section, as previously stated I patched “qt5”. Also I added a “gpgme” package as an update to the stock Slackware version. It’s needed now to compile Kwallet and Telepathy.
  • Telepathy was enhanced with support for the Telegram IM protocol. Please tell me if it works for you – I could not successfully send a chat although the program registers itself with the Telegram servers properly.
  • I have removed baloo and baloo-widgets from the ‘kde4’ package subset. These two kdelibs4-based packages are no longer used by other packages.

This upgrade should be straightforward if you already have Plasma 5 installed. See below for install/upgrade instructions. And if you want to check it out before installing, I have generated a new Live ISO for the PLASMA5 variant. Look for that ISO on http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/slackware-live/latest/ soon. Check the timestamp of the “slackware64-live-plasma5-current.iso” ISO.

Installing or upgrading Frameworks 5, Plasma 5 and Applications

You can skip the remainder of the article if you already have my Plasma 5 installed and are familiar with the upgrade process. Otherwise, stay with me and read the rest.

As always, the accompanying README file contains full installation & upgrade instructions. Note that the packages are available in several subdirectories below “kde”, instead of directly in “kde”. This makes it easier for me to do partial updates of packages. The subdirectories are “kde4“, “kde4-extragear“, “frameworks“, “kdepim“, “plasma“, “plasma-extra“, “applications“, “applications-extra” and “telepathy“.

Upgrading to this KDE 5 is not difficult, especially if you already are running KDE 5_16.11. You will have to remove old KDE 4 packages manually. If you do not have KDE 4 installed at all, you will have to install some of Slackware’s own KDE 4 packages manually.

What I usually do is: download all the ‘ktown’ packages for the new release to a local disk. Then run “upgrade –install-new” on all these packages. Then I check the status of my Slackware-current, upgrading the stock packages where needed. The slackpkg tool is invaluable during this process of syncing the package installation status to the releases.

Note:

If you are using slackpkg+, have already moved to KDE 5_16.11 and are adventurous, you can try upgrading using the following set of commands. This should “mostly” work but you still need to check the package lists displayed by slackpkg to verify that you are upgrading all the right packages. Feel free to send me improved instructions if needed. In below example I am assuming that you tagged my KDE 5 repository with the name “ktown” in the configuration file “/etc/slackpkg/slackpkgplus.conf“):
# slackpkg update
# slackpkg install ktown (to get the newly added packages from my repo)
# slackpkg install-new (to get the new official Slackware packages that were part of my deps previously)
# slackpkg upgrade ktown (upgrade all existing packages to their latest versions)
# slackpkg upgrade-all (upgrade the remaining dependencies that were part of my repo previously)

And doublecheck that you have not inadvertently blacklisted my packages in “/etc/slackpkg/blacklist“! Check for the existence of a line in that blacklist file that looks like “[0-9]+alien” and remove it if you find it!

Recommended reading material

There have been several posts now about KDE 5 for Slackware-current. All of them contain useful information, tips and gotchas. If you want to read them, here they are: http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/tag/kde5/

A note on Frameworks

The KDE Frameworks are extensions on top of Qt 5.x and their usability is not limited to the KDE Software Collection. There are other projects such as LXQT which rely (in part) on the KDE Frameworks, and if you are looking for a proper Frameworks repository which is compatible with Slackware package managers such as slackpkg+, then you can use these URL’s to assure yourself of the latest Frameworks packages for Slackware-current (indeed, this is a sub-tree of my KDE 5 repository):

The same goes for Frameworks for Slackware 14.2 (change ‘current’ to ‘14.2’ in the above URLs).

Where to get the new packages for Plasma 5

Download locations are listed below (you will find the sources in ./source/5/ and packages in /current/5/ and  /14.2/5/ subdirectories). If you are interested in the development of KDE 5 for Slackware, you can peek at my git repository too.

Using a mirror is preferred because you get more bandwidth from a mirror and it’s friendlier to the owners of the master server!

Have fun! Eric

Slackware Live Edition 1.1.4 – based on slackware-current of 4 Nov 2016

November 10, 2016 / / 29 Comments

blueSW-64pxToday I conclude my packaging frenzy with a new release of ‘liveslak‘. Version 1.1.4 is ready with only some minor tweaks. Users of the “iso2usb.sh” script on non-Slackware distros should be happy that the script finds all the required programs now.
I made a set of ISO images for several variants of the 64bit version of Slackware Live Edition based on liveslak 1.1.4 and using Slackware-current dated “Fri Nov  4 03:31:38 UTC 2016”. These ISO images have been uploaded and are available on the primary server ‘bear‘. You will find ISO images for a full Slackware, Plasma5 and MATE variants and the 700MB small XFCE variant.

Here are some screenshots of the PLASMA5 variant:

plasma5_login_5.8

SDDM login screen

plasma5_login_5.8_2

The new Plasma loading animation

plasma5_login_5.8_3

Plasma 5.8.3

plasma5_login_5.8_4

The logoff/shutdown

If you already use a Slackware Live USB stick that you do not want to re-format, you should use the “-r” parameter to the “iso2usb.sh” script. The “-r” or refresh parameter allows you to refresh the liveslak files on your USB stick without touching your custom content.

To find out what’s on the ISO you downloaded, try this command:

$ isoinfo -d  -i your_downloaded.iso | egrep “Volume id|Publisher id|Data preparer id|Application id”

And if you want to know what ISO was used to create your USB stick, check the content of the /.isoversion file in the root of its Live partition (partition number 3).

New in the ISOs

The new ISOs are based on the latest slackware-current with Linux kernel 4.4.29.

The SLACKWARE variant contains exactly that: the latest slackware-current and nothing else.

The MATE variant (a Slackware OS with KDE 4 replaced by Mate) has a refreshed ‘msb‘ package content,  I synced my local ‘msb‘ mirror with the official package repository at http://slackware.uk/msb/current/ which means you get Mate 1.16, the GTK3 version.

The PLASMA5 variant (Slackware with KDE 4 replaced by Plasma 5) comes with the latest Plasma 5 release “KDE-5_16.11” as found in my ktown repository. This ISO also contains the LXQT and Lumina Desktop Environments. Both are light-weight DE’s based on Qt5 so they look nice & shiny. The Plasma 5 packages inside the ISO already satisfy most if not all of their dependencies. Let me know what you think of Lumina and LXQT!
One word of caution when using the Lumina DE:

  • The network applet is not enabled by default, and you may have to enable the network manually. I used “nmtui” in a terminal window but you can try enabling the networkmanager-applet instead. I did not find out how, yet.

 

The changes between liveslak scripts 1.1.3 and 1.1.4

The ‘1.1.4’ tag was mainly applied to accompany the release of the new ISOs.

  • iso2usb.sh: get rid of hard-coded program pathnames in favor of searching a hard-coded $PATH . This should improve the usefulness of the script on non-Slackware distros.
  • make_slackware_live.conf: make the filename ‘min.lst’ customizable for Live distro developers.
  • PLASMA5: use the ‘latest’ instead of the ‘testing’ repository.

Download the ISO images

The ISO variants of Slackware Live Edition are: SLACKWARE, XFCE, PLASMA5 and MATE. These ISO images (with MD5 checksum and GPG signature) have been uploaded to the master server (bear) and should be available on the mirror servers within the next 24 hours.

Download liveslak sources

The liveslak project can be found in my git repository: http://bear.alienbase.nl/cgit/liveslak/ . That’s all you need to create a Slackware Live ISO from scratch. Documentation for end users and for Live OS developers is available in the Slack Docs Wiki.

Have fun! Eric

Slackware Live Edition 1.1.3 based on Slackware -current 11 Aug 2016

August 22, 2016 / / 27 Comments

blueSW-64pxLast time I wrote about Slackware Live Edition was when I released the version 1.1.0 of the scripts. And that was two months ago; lots of updates have been made inbetween. Today I released version 1.1.3 of ‘liveslak’.
I made a set of ISO images (during the last couple of days actually… it is time-consuming) for the Slackware Live Edition based on liveslak 1.1.3 and using Slackware-current dated “Thu Aug 11 18:24:29 UTC 2016“. These ISO images have been uploaded and are available on the primary server ‘bear‘.

If you already use a Slackware Live USB stick that you do not want to re-format, you should use the “-r” parameter to the “iso2usb.sh” script that allows you to refresh the liveslak files on your USB stick without touching your custom content.

Remember, to find out what’s on the ISO you downloaded, try this command:

$ isoinfo -d  -i your_downloaded.iso | egrep “Volume id|Publisher id|Data preparer id|Application id”

And if you want to know what ISO was used to create your USB stick, check the content of the /.isoversion file in the root of its Live partition (partition number 3).

As usual, you will find ISO images for a full Slackware (64bit and 32bit versions), 64bit Plasma5 and MATE variants and the 700MB small XFCE variant (64bit and 32bit versions).

New in the ISOs

Most obvious of course: the ISOs are based on the latest slackware-current with Linux kernel 4.4.17. That’s exactly what you’ll get with the SLACKWARE variant.

The XFCE variant’s ISO is ever so slightly larger than the official CDROM size specification dictates, but it should still fit hopefully… I will try to remove some more unneeded stuff before the next release. As it stands, the addition of tigervnc, cups and hplip to the XFCE ISO made it necessary to apply some aggressive pruning of ISO content to be able to stay below the 703 MB limit.

The MATE variant has a refreshed ‘msb‘ package content,  I synced my local ‘msb‘ mirror with the official package repository at http://slackware.uk/msb/14.2/

The PLASMA5 variant is a bit of a special case this time. Take note of the following before you download it.

  • I added the LXQT and Lumina Desktop Environments. Both are light-weight DE’s based on Qt5 so they look nice & shiny. The Plasma 5 packages inside the ISO already satisfy most if not all of their dependencies. So now there’s two new desktop environments for you to try out. Let me know what you think of them!
    One word of caution when using the Lumina DE:

    • the network applet is not enabled by default, and you may have to enable the network manually. I used “nmtui” in a terminal window but you can try enabling the networkmanager-applet instead. I did not find out how, yet.
  • I decided to base this release of PLASMA5 Live on a new ‘testing‘ branch of my ktown repository for slackware-current. This ‘testing‘ branch is not yet public because it contains some intrusive changes. It may have an adverse effect on your Slackware desktop. Why? Because my new ‘testing’ repository will be investigating Wayland support, and this is a work in progress, i.e. stability is not guaranteed.
    I think that as long as you do not attempt to start a “Plasma (Wayland)” session but stick to the default “Plasma” session, everything will work properly. But in order to compile support for Wayland into KWin, I had to do the following and you will understand that not everybody will want to follow – so that is why I provide this on a safe Live environment only:

    • rebuild Slackware’s ‘mesa’ package with wayland support
    • rebuild Slackware’s ‘xorg-server’ package with wayland support
    • add an ‘elogind‘ package. Elogind is the systemd project’s ‘logind’, extracted out to be a standalone daemon… quite similar to the ‘eudev’ package we already have in Slackware.
    • rebuild the ‘qt5’ package to add wayland support
    • build KWin on top of this all (it requires full wayland support all the way down to X.Org and it also requires a working logind implementation) to get a functional ‘kwin_wayland‘ executable.
  • I took the opportunity to upgrade Qt to 5.7.0 and upgrade to KDE Frameworks 2.25.0, Plasma 5.7.3 and the all-new Applications 16.08.0.

I am still pondering how to maintain a separation between two ‘latest‘ and ‘testing‘ repository branches. I plan to offer ‘latest’ as a bleeding edge Plasma5 but without the intrusive stuff like rebuilt mesa and xorg but I worry about the workload when also offering a ‘testing’ package set. I may have to reconsider my monthly release schedule of the ktown updates. And the git repository will have to be branched as well (the least of my worries).

In any case, this latest Slackware PLASMA5 ISO is definitely worth checking out.
In the first place it allows you to get a look at the latest Plasma and Applications, and then there’s the Wayland support. If you are interested in getting Wayland working on Slackware I really appreciate your help!
Because (big fat warning): Wayland is not working properly yet. The “Plasma (Wayland)” session gets stuck in a black screen when started from SDDM and when you start it from the console (select the ‘xinitrc.kwayland‘ entry in ‘xwmconfig‘) it seems to run in a framebuffer at a fixed 1024×768 pixel resolution.

The changes between liveslak scripts 1.1.2 and 1.1.3

Not so much has changed actually – small fixes and enhancements. The ‘1.1.3’ tag was applied to accompany the release of the new ISOs.

  • iso2usb.sh: add safeguard against mistyping the LUKS passphrase.
  • make_slackware_live.sh: add ‘-G’ parameter to generate ISO image from pre-existing file tree.
  • liveinit: allow modules to be organized in subdirectories.
  • XFCE: add tigervnc, cups and HP printer support.

Download the ISO images

The ISO variants of Slackware Live Edition are: SLACKWARE, XFCE, PLASMA5 and MATE. These ISO images (with MD5 checksum and GPG signature) have been uploaded to the master server (bear) and should be available on the mirror servers within the next 24 hours.

Download liveslak sources

The liveslak project can be found in my git repository: http://bear.alienbase.nl/cgit/liveslak/ . That’s all you need to create a Slackware Live ISO from scratch. Documentation for end users and for Live OS developers is available in the Slack Docs Wiki.

Have fun! Eric

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