Alien Pastures

My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

Tag: plasma5 (Page 14 of 15)

KDE-5_15.09 – september release for Slackware-current

September 3, 2015 / / 86 Comments

powerpenguin Today my son had his first day at school – he was not happy for some reason… can you imagine! I let him watch the second episode of Fear the Walking Dead to show what a really bad day at school  looks like 😉 Still, a very appropriate moment to write the next blog post about Plasma 5, because I wrote the previous one on his first day of summer holidays.

I want to announce the (first) September release of the Plasma 5 desktop KDE for slackware-current: KDE 5_15.09. The main components for this release are Frameworks 5.13.0, Plasma 5.4.0 and Applications 15.08.0. This has been a huge change compared to the previous batch, thanks to the feature updates in Plasma and Applications. Read the whole article please.

Attention: BETA alert!

This is an intrusive update, even if you currently have my KDE 5_15.07 packages installed and you are liking that release. Consider this to be beta-quality because there may be some usability issues – and read the “BUILD NOTES” section in the README very carefully before you decide to upgrade. If you were already complaining about the earlier Plasma 5 releases, then I do not consider you my target audience for this one. I do not need complaints and whining, I need people who are willing to take a deep dive and help me get this beast healthy again so that together we can ensure a future for Plasma 5 on Slackware. Much as you would like to just download my packages and live a happy life, this can not be a one-man show. This upgrade almost killed my willingness to provide an advanced bleeding edge KDE.

Because I have to say, all in all I am pretty unhappy with the effort which was required to get this latest batch of updates to compile and work together. And even then, with a finished set of packages, there are a few annoying issues for which I have no explanation nor do I have a solution because I do not know whether they are caused by Plasma 5 or by the recent slackware-current updates.

I need testers to iron out some annoying regressions!

Annoyance #1: Logging out is delayed

  • Try to open the Plasma Kicker startmenu and move your mouse over the “Leave” tab. It will then take a minute to display the tab’s content, and in the meantime, the Plasma workspace is frozen. Any open application windows are still responsive and you can work with them.
  • Try to use the logout/shutdown widget in the system tray if you added that. Clicking the widget will also cause a one to tw minute delay before the logoff dialog appears.
  • Try logging out from the commandline using this qdbus commmand in an X term:
    $ qdbus org.kde.ksmserver /KSMServer logout 0 0 0
    You will notice that this command just sits there for the same one to two minutes, and then it kicks into action and you’ll be logged off. Something is amiss with the communication over dbus. Ideas anyone?

Annoyance #2: Powersaving (could be slackware-current issue)

  • Whenever the power saver kicks in and I am not paying attention, the screen of my Lenovo T400 laptop (Intel graphics) turns black and will not revive. I have to Ctrl-Alt-F1 to get to my Linux console, press the backlight button until I can read again what’s on screen, and then back to X using Alt-F7.

Annoyance #3: WTF?

  • In my 32-bit virtual machine I cannot even login, because there is a flood of re-spawning screensaver processes that prevent access. This can be caused by something in the virtual machine, but I did not do extensive troubleshooting.

When I encountered this third “annoyance” I almost gave up on Plasma 5 entirely. What.The.Fuck? I kept trying to kill the screensaver processes but they just re-spawned with a new process-id. I vented my frustration in the Slackware core group, and it was Heinz Wiesinger (ppr:kut) who convinced me that it is important now more than ever to release the build scripts and packages and get people to test and fix these pesky bugs. So, despite the bad feelings I have about this update, I’ve released it anyway and the packages are available in my repository. Or will be soon.

What’s new in KDE 5_15.09?

Enough complaining, let’s check out the new stuff.

  • Qt5 has been updated to 5.5.0.
  • Slackware’s ConsoleKit (unmaintained) gets replaced by ConsoleKit2 (well-maintained fork) which could open up a path to a systemd-free Slackware that is compatible to a large extent with systemd requirements.
  • I added LoginKit also for that purpose. LoginKit in its present form does not do much (if anything at all) but I want to have it in for those who want to play test this.
  • Several of the other deps were added, updated, rebuilt or removed as well:
    • LibRaw (update for the Slackware package),
    • PyQt5 (updated),
    • qca-qt5 (patched),
    • grantlee (update for the Slackware package)
    • lmdb (new)
    • grantlee-qt5 (renamed to grantlee thereby replacing the Slackware version)
  • Removed from the “deps” because we can use the original Slackware packages now are: PyQt, sip and libepoxy.
  • Frameworks 5.13.0 is an enhancement release, lots of fixes are documented on https://www.kde.org/announcements/kde-frameworks-5.13.0.php
  • Plasma 5.4.0 is a feature release, you can read all the details in https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.4.0.php . Important is that the krunner has a command history again, and lots of new icons were added for non-Plasma5 applications, which helps to give the Plasma 5 desktop a uniform look and feel; Not so important for Slackware is the Wayland Tech Preview and some system tool improvements using PAM (kwallet-pam) or pulseaudio (audio volume applet).
  • Applications 15.08.0 is bringing more KF5 ports: 107 applications in total. Most noticeable are the KF5 ports of Dolphin (the file manager), KDEPIM (the Kontact Suite as it is called now) and Ark (archive tool). I am a bit worried about the Kontact port to the KDE Frameworks 5. Lots of struggles were discussed in the mailing lists and the resulting KF5 based Kontact Suite is still considered BETA quality.
  • The move to KF5 exposed several older KDE4 based applications that have a dependency on the KDE4 based PIM libraries.
    Therefore I had to add a compatibility layer of packages containing that KDE4 code: akonadi4 and kdepimlibs4 (similar to what I had to do earlier with libkmahjongg4, libkdegames4, konsolepart4 and katepart4).

Installing or upgrading Frameworks 5, Plasma 5 and Applications

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” “plasma”, “plasma-extra” and “applications”.

Upgrading to this KDE 5 is not difficult, especially if you already are running KDE 5_15.07. 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.

Note:

If you are using slackpkg+, have already moved to KDE 5_15.07 and are adventurous, you can try upgrading using the following set of commands. This should work but feel free to send me improved instructions if needed (assuming in this example that you tagged my KDE 5 repository with the name “ktown_testing” in the configuration file “/etc/slackpkg/slackpkgplus.conf“):
# slackpkg update
# slackpkg install ktown_testing (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_testing (upgrade all existing packages to their latest versions)
# slackpkg upgrade-all (upgrade the remaining dependencies that were part of my repo previously)
# slackpkg remove ConsoleKit (because we will now use ConsoleKit2 as a drop-in replacement)
# slackpkg remove grantlee-qt5 (upgraded grantlee takes over)
# slackpkg remove kgamma (no longer part of KDE Applications)
# slackpkg remove pairs(no longer part of KDE Applications)

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 that I do not want to repeat here, but 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 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 “testing” repository):

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/ 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

KDE 5_15.05 packages are available for slackware-current

May 26, 2015 / / 29 Comments

qt-kde-620x350I am trying to keep up with a monthly release of KDE 5 (Plasma5) packages for Slackware-current. So far, so good, and every month I have been able to make a significant difference. Today the KDE developers released an update to Plasma 5 while earlier this month you could have noticed updates for Frameworks and Applications. Time for some new packages for Slackware land!

Therefore, you can now download my May release of KDE 5_15.05. Components are Frameworks 5.10.0, Plasma 5.3.1 and Applications 15.04.1 which includes the latest updates of the KDE 4 Long Term Support (LTS) packages kdelibs, kdepimlibs, kdepim, kdepim-runtime and kde-workplace.

What’s new in KDE 5_15.05?

The highlights of 5_15.05 (May release) are:

  • KDE Frameworks have been updated to 5.10.0 (maintenance release, no new frameworks)
  • KDE Plasma has been updated to 5.3.1 (also a maintenance release)
  • KDE Applications have been updated to 15.04.1 (yet another maintenance release)
  • KDE Extragear is still empty (this started with my KDE 5_15.04 release): you must grab the extragear packages (calligra, k3b, kdev-python, kdevelop, kdevelop-php, kdevelop-php-docs, kdevplatform, kio-mtp, kwebkitpart, oxygen-gtk2, oxygen-gtk3, partitionmanager, skanlite) from regular slackware-current itself.
  • No new or udated “deps” packages this time, but one has been removed. I got rid of the “qt-gstreamer0” package because I believe there is nothing that uses it. Also, the package content was conflicting with the “qt-gstreamer” package. So after you have removed qt-gstreamer0 be sure to reinstall qt-gstreamer.
  • I have added several policy files to the “powerdevil” package which bring back the Shutdown/Reboot and Suspend/Hibernate options in Plasma 5. Thanks to luis (suspend/hibernate) and manciuleas (restart/shutdown) who came up with the solution in a discussion following an older post.

Installing or upgrading Frameworks 5, Plasma 5 and Applications

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” (currently empty), “frameworks” “plasma”, “plasma-extra” and “applications”.

Upgrading to this KDE 5 is not difficult this time, especially if you already are running KDE 5_15.04. You will have to remove old KDE packages manually. If you do not have KDE installed at all, you will have to install some of Slackware’s own KDE 4 packages manually.

Note:

If you are using slackpkg+, have already moved to KDE 5_15.01 or newer and are adventurous, you can try upgrading using the following set of commands. This should work but feel free to send me improved instructions if needed (assuming in this example that you tagged my KDE 5 repository “ktown_testing”):
# slackpkg update
# slackpkg install ktown_testing (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_testing (upgrade all existing packages to their latest versions)
# slackpkg upgrade-all (upgrade the remaining dependencies that were part of my repo previously)
# removepkg sddm-theme-breeze (gone after KDE 5_15.01)
# removepkg libmm-qt5 (gone after KDE 5_15.03)
# removepkg qt-gstreamer0 (gone after KDE 5_15.04)
# slackpkg reinstall qt-gstreamer (ensure that none of the overlapping files of qt-gstreamer0 are left)

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!

My observations after upgrading

Again, some peculiarities I ran across when starting the freshly upgraded desktop that I want to share with you (there are some more observations in my previous KDE post):

  • At first the desktop would not even start and all kinds of Frameworks related programs were crashing. Re-installing all packages solved that. Something got corrupted the first time? No way to find out.
  •  I switched from wmsystemtray to trayer-srg as the solution for supporting old-style Xembed tray icons like Dropbox with the commandline “trayer –edge bottom –widthtype request –align right –distance 30 &” which places it lower right, directly above the Plasma taskbar. However – and I don’t recall what I did – on all subsequent logins, trayer would start before the rest of the desktop. As a result of that, trayer would cover the full task bar area. The task bar, including the KDE menu, were made inaccessible and invisible. At first I thought “yet another crash of plasmashell” and restarting plasmashell would indeed fix the issue. It was only later that I found out that they were all running, but trayer was in the way of the task bar. So I created a “trayer.desktop” file in ~/.config/autostart where Plasma5 looks for applications it has to start automatically when you login – and it will start these applications after the full desktop environment has loaded. That fixed it. By the way, the file has to end with “.desktop” or else it will be ignored. Inside it should look something like this:
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Exec=trayer --edge bottom --widthtype request --align right --distance 30
Terminal=false
Hidden=false
NoDisplay=false
Name=Trayer

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/ 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

Updated KDE 5 packages for Slackware (release 5_15.02_02)

February 27, 2015 / / 19 Comments

qt-kde-620x350Earlier this week I grabbed the new Plasma source tarballs and used them to update my ‘ktown’ package set for KDE 5. I tagged that update “5_15.02_02” to indicate that this is my second release in Feb 2015.

Highlights

Some more highlights of this incremental release are:

  • Plasma has been upgraded to 5.2.1, this is a bugfix release. No new functionality or packages.
  • The deps/libssh package has been re-added. I used it for my KDE 4.14.x packages because the newer version (compared to Slackware’s version of the package) allows the sftp kioslave to be compiled in kde-runtime.
  • The kde/applications/kde-runtime package has been recompiled against the newer libssh package.
  • And kde/frameworks/kglobalaccel was also rebuilt. The kglobalaccel5 deamon moved from plasma-workspace-5.2.0 into kglabalaccel-5.7.0, but when I built kglobalaccel with plasma-workspace-5.2.0 present it picked up a dependency on that package’s libkdeinit5_kglobalaccel5.so library. When I upgraded to Plasma 5.2.1, that library was suddenly gone and kglobalaccel5 would no longer start.

Installing or upgrading to KDE 5

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” “plasma”,  “plasma-extra” and “applications”.

Upgrading from Slackware’s KDE 4 to this KDE 5 is non-trivial. You will have to remove old KDE packages manually. If you do not have KDE installed at all, you will have to install some of Slackware’s own KDE 4 packages manually. If you are upgrading from KDE 5_15.02 then it’s an easy and painless upgrade, in particular when using slackpkg+.

If you are completely new to KDE 5 for Slackware, I urge you to also read my previous posts about KDE 5_15.01 and KDE 5_15.02 in its entirety, as well as the follow-up article about  the changes in system tray support in the Plasma 5 desktop which is mandatory reading material as well if you are using Dropbox, Skype and other non-Plasma 5 software that wants to dock an icon in the system tray.

Using the KDE Frameworks 5 separately

Someone mentioned in a comment to an earlier blog post that LxQt 0.9 uses some of the KDE Frameworks, now that they have migrated from Qt 4 to Qt 5.

To accommodate Slackware users who want to run that version LxQt I have added repository definition files to the frameworks package directories, so that you can use the Frameworks package repository even if you do not want to install KDE 5.

Use either one of these URL’s in your package management tool such as slackpkg+ for the Frameworks repository:

Where to get the new packages for KDE 5

Download locations are listed below (you will find the sources in ./source/5/ and packages in /current/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

KDE 5_15.02 release for Slackware-current

February 18, 2015 / / 50 Comments

qt-kde-620x350I have released an incremental upgrade to my ‘ktown’ package set for KDE 5 aka Plasma 5. I have decided on a version tag for my packages, consisting of MajorRelease_Year.Month. Therefore, this package set carries version 5_15.02.

The KDE 5_15.02 increment contains the KDE Frameworks 5.7.0, Plasma 5.2.0 and Applications 14.12.2. Also present is a bunch of the “good old” KDE 4: most of kdebase, kdebindings and all those “extragear” packages like k3b and kdevelop which were missing in my 5_15.01 release.

This blog post will re-iterate some text of my previous Plasma 5 post, which I also encourage you to read, because it offers a lot more detail on the migration from KDE 4 to Plasma 5.

These KDE 5 packages of mine are going to be your only KDE desktop. There is no choosing between KDE 4 and Plasma 5 – KDE 4 will be mostly replaced. The “kde-workspace” package which provided the well-known KDE 4 workspace has been stripped down to the bare minimum, and has been replaced by “plasma-workspace”. The KDM graphical login manager has been retired and replaced with SDDM. While you will be presented with a pretty Plasma 5 workspace, most of the KDE applications you’ll be using are the familiar KDE 4 versions (with updates and bugfixes), nicely blending in to the new Breeze theme.

The highlights of this incremental release are:

  • KDE Frameworks have been updated to 5.7.0
  • KDE Applications have been updated to 14.12.2 (bugfix release, no new KF5 ports)
  • For two applications, kate and konsole, that have already been ported to KF5 (KDE Frameworks 5) it became apparent that the KDE 4 embeddable component (or “part” in KDE terminology) was still needed. So, a katepart4 package has been added so that kdevelop works again, and konsolepart4 was added to bring back the embedded terminal in dolphin. These two packages don’t share any files with their KF5 alternates.
  • The kde-workspace package has been re-added after stripping it so it no longer shares any files with plasma-workspace. The package is still needed by kget and kdeartwork.
  • The sddm-theme-breeze package has been removed because the Breeze theme files are actually part of the plasma-workspace package now… and the sddm-theme-breeze package was mostly empty already in the KDE 5_15.01 release.
  • In Applications 14.12.2, to date the only KF5 ports are still kate, konsole, analitza, gwenview, kalgebra, kanagram, khangman, kig, parley, kapptemplate and okteta. Apart from bugfixes to these and the KDE 4 based applications, the Applications 14.12.2 collection also contains updates for kde-workspace, kdelibs, kdepimlibs, kdepim and kdepim-runtime.

Testing Repository URL

I still consider KDE 4.14.3 the “latest stable” version for Slackware-current, and therefore the repository URLs http://taper.alienbase.nl/mirrors/alien-kde/current/latest/x86_64/ (for 64-bit) and http://taper.alienbase.nl/mirrors/alien-kde/current/latest/x86/ (for 32-bit) will keep pointing to KDE 4.14.3. You can use this repository URL for slackpkg+ or slapt-get or whatever package manager you use.

The URL http://taper.alienbase.nl/mirrors/alien-kde/current/testing/x86_64/ (for 64-bit) and http://taper.alienbase.nl/mirrors/alien-kde/current/testing/x86/ (for 32-bit) is pointing to my KDE 5 testing ground. I consider Plasma 5.2.0 a “testing” release, with potential to be your next stable desktop, but with some caveats and reservations. The URL itself will remain permanent, even when the versions of the software components get updated. Currently “testing” points to version “5” in the repository because versions of Frameworks, Plasma and Applications are not co-ordinated and package updates may appear in the next months for these sub-sets. The “5” is a good middle ground. You should use this “testing” URL when you configure slackpkg+ or slapt-get if you want to upgrade to Plasma 5.

You must use only one of these URLs!

Enabling SDDM in runlevel 4 instead of KDM

Runlevel 4

If you want to see the new graphical session (login) manager SDDM in action, add the following lines to the Slackware file “/etc/rc.d/rc.4” right after the line: echo “Starting up X11 session manager…”

# — 8< ————————————–
if [ -x /usr/bin/sddm ]; then
exec /usr/bin/sddm
fi
# — 8< ————————————–

… and then switch to runlevel 4 by typing at the command prompt (as root):

# init 4

Select “Plasma” from the SDDM session dropdown. Alternatively, if you prefer good old runlevel 3, you can type this at the command prompt (logged in under your own regular user account):

$ xwmconfig

… and select “xinitrc.plasma” as your default window manager for X11. Then run:

$ startx

To enter your desktop session.

Installing or upgrading Frameworks 5, Plasma 5 and Applications

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” “plasma”,  “plasma-extra” and “applications”.

Upgrading to this KDE 5 is non-trivial. You will have to remove old KDE packages manually. If you do not have KDE installed at all, you will have to install some of Slackware’s own KDE 4 packages manually. I can not guarantee that there will be no deal-breakers for you (missing functionality or persistent crashes).

Note:

If you are using slackpkg+, have already moved to KDE 5_15.01 and are adventurous, you can try upgrading using these four commands, this seemed to work (assuming in this example that you tagged my KDE 5 repository “ktown_testing”):
# slackpkg update
# slackpkg install ktown_testing
# slackpkg upgrade ktown_testing
# removepkg sddm-theme-breeze

If you are completely new to KDE 5 for Slackware, I urge you to also read my previous post about KDE 5_15.01 in its entirety. There was a follow-up article about the changes in system tray support in the Plasma 5 desktop which is mandatory reading material as well if you are using Dropbox, Skype and other non-Plasma 5 software that wants to dock an icon in the system tray.

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/ 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!

Notes

  • First, read all of the Notes at the end of the previous KDE 5 article, they still apply.
  • If you want your shutdown/reboot options back:
    • Solution: a simple patch which removes the use of “kwrapper5” to start the KDE services will bring back both options. Kwrapper is meant to speed up the start of the Desktop Workspace and be a bit friendlier on resource usage but if you really do need shutdown and reboot options present, then apply the following patch to “/usr/bin/startkde”:
      --- /usr/bin/startkde.orig     Notes  2015-01-31 18:09:25.744173291 +0000
+++ /usr/bin/startkde    2015-01-31 17:49:18.938578280 +0000
@@ -380,7 +380,7 @@
 # lock now and do the rest of the KDE startup underneath the locker.
 KSMSERVEROPTIONS=""
 test -n "$dl" && KSMSERVEROPTIONS=" --lockscreen"
-kwrapper5 ksmserver $KDEWM $KSMSERVEROPTIONS
+ksmserver $KDEWM $KSMSERVEROPTIONS
 if test $? -eq 255; then
   # Startup error
   echo 'startkde: Could not start ksmserver. Check your installation.'  1>&2
  • I can not find how to bring back the “Suspend” option for my laptop. Any help on this is more than welcome!
  • Please report any other issue you encounter and I will add it here if it is serious enough.

Have fun! Eric

Support for old-school XEmbed system tray icons in Plasma 5

January 31, 2015 / / 25 Comments

Plasma 5 has abandoned the old xembed-based system tray support. I mentioned that in my announcement post for the Plasma 5 packages for Slackware-current, and also mentioned that there are solutions for that in Plasma 5. This means that a lot of applications (meaning: all non-Plasma 5 applications) will fail to display an icon in the system tray of your new Plasma 5 Workspace. No more Skype, no more Dropbox, no more Steamclient, etcetera. The applications will be running of course, but you can not interact with them through their system tray icon.

For some applications (Qt 4 and GTK+ 2 and 3 based in particular), I already added support to my set of Plasma 5 packages, but some applications still stubbornly refuse or are still unable to display a systray icon in your Plasma 5 Workspace.

For these applications, the best solution is to run an application like wmsystemtray which implements the XEmbed protocol and thereby allows applications to dock their systray icon in the wmsystemtray application’s window.

It is a bit of a clumsy solution because wmsystemtray itself is unable to dock into the Plasma 5 system tray, and therefore you will have a permanently visible window somewhere on your desktop which displays the systray icons for applications like dropbox, blueman, scim etc. But it is better than nothing at all.

Instructions about how to work with wmsystemtray so that it looks best and impacts your workspace the least, are contained in the “README.kwin” file inside the build directory in my repository, but that file is a bit hidden. Therefore, here are the instructions:

First of course, install the wmsystemtray package from my repository.

Start the application as follows. Type it in KRunner (Alt-F2) or in an X terminal:

wmsystemtray --non-wmaker --bgcolor white

The window will appear in the upper left corner of your workspace, obscuring the Plasma 5 workspace control icon. Grab the window and drag it to the upper right corner – I think it has a better placing there. The window will probably already show some applications that had been waiting all that time to show their systray icon.

Add the following content to a new file called “wmsystemtray.kwinrule” somewhere in your fiilesystem. The filename is not important, but the “.kwinrule” extension will make it easier to find later:

[Application settings for wmsystemtray] 
Description=Application settings for wmsystemtray 
desktop=-1 
desktoprule=2 
noborder=true 
noborderrule=2 
skippager=true 
skippagerrule=2 
skipswitcher=true 
skipswitcherrule=2 
skiptaskbar=true 
skiptaskbarrule=2 
type=2 
typerule=2 
wmclass=wmsystemtray0 wmsystemtray 
wmclasscomplete=true 
wmclassmatch=1

Then, open System Settings and go to”Window Management > Window Rules“. Click on the “Import” buton and point to the “wmsystemtray.kwinrule” you just created. Click “Apply” and immediately you will see the wmsystemtray window change: the border disappears and the window placeholder in the taskbar is gone too. Its place on the desktop is immutable now.

wmsystemtray

Next time you login to Plasma 5, its session manager will run the wmsystemtray again, so there is nothing more to do than the above.

Eric

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2025 Alien Pastures

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑