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KDE 4.1 Slackware packages now in Testing

Benoit Beauchamp — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 12:16:41 +0000

Yeah, you saw this right. Patrick of Slackware fame put KDE 4.1 packages from Robby Workman and Heinz Wiesinger to the Testing branch. Thank you very much to both of you for doing the hard work. I knew that Robby has been working on KDE 4.1 packages since ~4.0.60 but that’s beside the point. I know how hard it is to track dependency requirements down. One day the packages needs Akonadi and the next day it requires boost, go figure. I tried to hunt and compile some of those packages but to tell you the truth, Robby and Heinz are much more experienced then me which doesn’t mean that I’ll stop trying. The packages dependency requirements aren’t really clear for the uninitiated. I had to figure out why X package wasn’t building like for example, it gave an error that say something along the line of akonadi library is not found. Ahhh, what is akonadi, never heard of that before. Google. Poof, there you go, it’s part of the PIM framework and not the movement for racial justice. So, for example now I started to follow the release team KDE mailing list as this makes sense, doesn’t it?

Back to KDE 4.1 Slackware packages now in Testing. Here is what Patrick had to say about this in the current changelog.

Thanks to Robby Workman and Heinz Wiesinger for all the packaging and testing help, and of course to the whole KDE community for helping to bring the Linux desktop to a whole new level of appearance and ease of use. I’ve installed this on my main email/browsing/general machine and as far as I’m concerned there’s just no looking back. It’s really a big step forward.

Again, thank you Robby and Heinz.

KDE 4.1.0 Packages For Slackware

Benoit Beauchamp — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:27:50 +0000

Finally the wait is over. KDE team have released 4.1 into the wild and let me tell you, it’s great to see it live in action. You can get the Slackware packages from Robby at the usual location here. Here is a snippet of the README which you should read as there are lots of info.

Updated Tue Jul 29 21:00:31 UTC 2008 –rworkman

These packages are for Slackware 12.1 - DO NOT bother trying them on
any earlier releases of Slackware, as they will not work.

This is kde-4.1.0, finally. It seems pretty darn good here, but I’m
still not sure if it’s ready for us yet. 4.1.1 will almost surely
be out before it’s an issue anyway.

I think if you aren’t in a production environment then I think it’s pretty stable as to what I used it for. I did see some improvements with KWin in terms of stability. I didn’t have any crash like the last version especially konsole. It was giving me a hard time prior to 4.0.92. But anyways, I think if you are a Desktop user and not too sure about living on the edge, try it. Like Robby said, they’ll come up with 4.1.1 in early September so, again, if you want a more stable version, waiting couldn’t hurt anyone but …

On a different note, I’ve been following the discussion on various list and it’s looks like 4.2 has already have a schedule plan which seems like it will get released in January 2009.

UPDATE: If you want to download the packages one by one, be my guess or you can use my script to do it for you. You can check the script there.

KDE 4.1 beta2 Packages For Slackware

Benoit Beauchamp — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 12:24:05 +0000

Well with the release of KDE 4.1 beta2, Robby Workman released new packages for Slackware kde-4.0.83. I’ve been running KDE 4.1 since version beta1 and it’s somewhat stable for desktop use. The last version had some issues with konsole but as far as I can tell right now, those are resolved or are they!? You can get the package at the usual place (here). Nothing new to report in the README but you shouldn’t shy away from it, there is plenty of information in there.

Also, if you are lazy like me .. (sometimes, i know) … , you can get my script to download all the packages for you. You can check out my script here.

Script to Get Latest KDE Packages for Slackware

Benoit Beauchamp — Thu, 29 May 2008 01:26:18 +0000

After some tinkering, I got tired of entering the Slackware packages one by one to download from kde4.rlworkman.net and because I get them all the time, I created this little script to do it for me. I thought I share it with the rest of the world in case anyone else is lazy like me for that kind of operation. As you know, they have been released quite often in the past couple of weeks. Script = Good. Manual Download = Bad. It goes without saying, use at your own expense. When you run the script, it will create a directory in /tmp that will download all the deps and all the kde packages. You can omit a few lines if you don’t want to download the dependency by putting a ‘#’ in front of the line.

Oh and by the way, the current version is 4.0.80 (beta1) as of this writing.

Here is the script after the jump.

#!/bin/bash # -------------------------- # Copyright 2008 Benoit Beauchamp # All rights reserved. # # Redistribution and use of this script, with or without modification, is # permitted provided that the following conditions are met: # # 1. Redistributions of this script must retain the above copyright # notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. # # THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR ''AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED # WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF # MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO # EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, # SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, # PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; # OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, # WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR # OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF # ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. # # Changelog: # # 0.2: 07/29/2008 # Fixed some variable and added extra # 0.1: 05/28/2008 by Benoit Beauchamp # Initial script.


NAME=KDE

VERSION=4.1.0

CWD=`pwd`

TMP=/tmp

PKG=$TMP/package-$NAME-$VERSION
rm -fr $PKG

mkdir -p $PKG

cd $PKG
#KDE

wget http://kde4.rlworkman.net/packages/kde/

mv index.html kde.list

kde=$(cat kde.list | grep tgz | grep $VERSION | awk '{ print $6 }' | cut -d'"' -f2)
#EXTRAGEAR

wget http://kde4.rlworkman.net/packages/kde/extragear

mv index.html extra.list

extra=$(cat extra.list | grep tgz | awk '{ print $6 }' | cut -d'"' -f2)
#DEPENDENCY

wget http://kde4.rlworkman.net/packages/deps/

mv index.html deps.list

deps=$(cat deps.list | grep tgz | awk '{ print $6 }' | cut -d'"' -f2)
#KDE

mkdir $PKG/kde

cd $PKG/kde
for i in $kde; do

	wget http://kde4.rlworkman.net/packages/kde/$i

done
#EXTRA

mkdir $PKG/extra

cd $PKG/extra
for i in $extra; do

	wget http://kde4.rlworkman.net/packages/kde/extragear/$i

done
#DEPENDENCY

mkdir $PKG/deps

cd $PKG/deps
for i in $deps; do

	wget http://kde4.rlworkman.net/packages/deps/$i

done

KDE 4.0.74 Packages For Slackware

Benoit Beauchamp — Thu, 22 May 2008 14:54:48 +0000

Robby updated his KDE 4 package for Slackware. New updated dep are included in the proper directory. You can find the package at the usual place located here. Here is the changelog

Updated Mon May 19 20:59:16 UTC 2008 –rworkman

These packages are for Slackware 12.1 - DO NOT bother trying them on
any earlier releases of Slackware, as they will not work.

kde-4.0.74 is not intended as a replacement for the stable kde-3.5.x
series; rather, this is a development snapshot of what will eventually
become 4.1.0. The next snapshot is expected to be beta1.

Akonadi 0.80.0 Package for Slackware

Benoit Beauchamp — Fri, 02 May 2008 19:02:05 +0000

If you want to build the latest and greatest of KDE 4.0.72 you will need to have Akonadi 0.80.0 built first as things seems to break without this package. Let me save you a lot of time by giving you an Akonadi package. It took a while for me to realize that there was a snapshot (here) of Akonadi available on the KDE mirrors in one of the support directory. I’ve basically took soprano built script from Robby Workman and modified it for Akonadi.

You can get Akonadi package here.
And the Akonadi Slackbuild script here.

Enjoy.

KDE 800??? SVN Packages for Slackware

Benoit Beauchamp — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 03:03:33 +0000

I’ve got a bunch of new packages that I created because the latest one from Robby didn’t really work out for me. Not his fault, there was a bunch of bugs (plasma, panel, kwin) that were annoying me and because I like to live on the edge, I built some of them from SVN. I downloaded Robby SlackBuild script and use them against KDE SVN so if you want to run the latest and greatest, here are some package for KDE.

kdebase-800847-svn-i486-1.tgz
kdebase-runtime-800847-svn-i486-1.tgz
kdebase-workspace-800847-svn-i486-1.tgz
kdelibs-800648-svn-i486-1.tgz
kdepimlibs-800844-svn-i486-1.tgz

Note that those packages are build against avahi and openexr as I have them on my system. Also, those are very experimental so be warn. I will not take responsibility for your mistake except if you tell me they are working ok.

Enjoy.

UPDATE: Forgot to mention that you probably need to removepkg kdebase*.tgz and then installpkg as the name of my packages aren’t kosher. I knew that but that’s just to make sure whoever installing them is aware of them being experimental. cough cough.

KDE 4.0.68 Packages For Slackware

Benoit Beauchamp — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 16:56:56 +0000

Here is some new KDE 4 goodness from robby the work man. Like he says in the changelog, those aren’t intended for a production desktop. I’m actually going back and fourth between the new and old KDE and … I think I like the old better still. Anyways, Ill check those out soon when I have time. You can change the packages as the usual location here.

Updated Mon Apr 14 23:57:55 CDT 2008

kde-4.0.68 is not intended as a replacement for the stable kde-3.5.x series;
rather, this is a development snapshot of what will eventually become 4.1.0.
Yes, I know there’s a newer 4.0.69 snapshot available, but the kdepim with
it won’t compile, so we’ll stay with 4.0.68 for now.

KDE 4.0.2 Packages For Slackware

Benoit Beauchamp — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 16:04:54 +0000

I’ve been so swamp with the upcoming production of Hamlet at pepperdine University that I haven’t seen the updated packages from Robby Workman. So if you are looking for the newest KDE packages go check them out at the usual place found right there. Now I would like to thank him because I spent a bit of time trying to just update the packages from his Slackbuilds file and let me tell you, this takes a lot of time. So Robby, thank you for spending the time to build those. I won’t call myself lazy because I did try and spend half a day on them but …

So go download them and test them out. Let me know how it all works out for you guys.

UPDATE: packages of KDE 4.0.3 for slackware are available at http://kde4.rlworkman.net/

Linux on Delta flights

Benoit Beauchamp — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 22:21:50 +0000

I was wondering what was happening when the little screen went black on my flight from LAX to ATL. It seems they were rebooting the “media” system. To my amazement, I noticed the little penguin dude! It was linux. I took a snapshot with my iPhone. I couldn’t figure out which flavor of linux but, I’m sure it’s very specific for there need. The satellite TV wasn’t working during the flight but you could buy various movies and games. I didn’t buy anything… I use my money for something better then movies and games…