We’re at that unique time of the year that I can work on something that is not trivial and requires long-term focus to succeed.
The festive season is upon us all, which means (not counting family diners and birthday parties) that I have two weeks to revisit all those ideas and plans I cooked up in 2025 and finish as many of them as possible. Otherwise it’s simply waiting for the next Christmas holiday to continue.
So what’s brewing in December 2025? To start with, a lot of paint jobs here in the house that are waiting since May when we finished going through a home renovation.
But I am also working on the resurrection of KDE Plasma6 for Slackware-current. Two years ago after releasing a Beta version of Plasma6 as a live ISO image, life took another turn and Plasma6 moved to the TODO list. I wrote about that period on some occasions.
But I think (or at least hope) that having a Plasma6 ktown out in the open and available for testing, will nudge Patrick into merging this into Slackware-current eventually. I’d rather have him focus on the other stuff that blocks a release, since I’ve shown and proven that I can maintain a ‘ktown’ out-of-tree.
Patrick and I discussed it, he sounds interested, not saying it is going to happen, but no risk, no reward, right? I promised that I would maintain a Plasma6 ktown during 2026 but not after. I got burnt with Plasma5 years ago, not going to repeat that. Ideally i’ll keep it going until that time that Plasma6 replaces the ageing Plasma5 in -current in 2026. And if it does not happen, someone else can copy my ‘ktown’ sources and continue from there.
I have a working Plasma6 and I’m now fine-tuning the scripts (I want everything to be built correctly, using the right dependencies) and will update my server’s ‘ktown’ package and source repository and also the git repository on https://git.slackware.nl/ktown once I am satisfied with the results.
Until that time, all you get is a screenshot.
Enjoy the holidays! Be safe and be there for your family and friends.
Eric
Wow, that would be great, Eric!!
I’m using LuckyCyborg’s builds now and Plasma is truly stable and beautiful. I look forward to test your builds.
Hi Eric, how are you?
I’m glad to see you’re getting back to your project. I also maintained a version of it for my personal use for eighteen months. About six months ago, seeing how KDE was evolving, I removed the ‘frameworks-5’ and adapted the source code of your old KDE5 project to KDE6 (the KDE5 source code from Slackware-current).
I recently decided to publish my packages, which I did yesterday on LQ, and right after (pure coincidence), someone posted an excerpt of your new blog post on the same LQ. So, obviously, if I can help in any small way, you can count on me.
Happy holidays to you and your family,
Gérard Monpontet
Hi Gérard,
I am not prepared to remove KDE Frameworks 5 (KF5) yet. There’s going to be 3rd party applications that depend on it, and until KDE Gear 26.04 gets released, not even all of the applications have been ported to Qt6 / KF6.
I restarted ‘ktown’ mainly because the time is near that the port to Qt6 will be complete for KDE Plasma and I wanted some time for testing before this whole lot gets merged into Slackware.
I do not visit LQ, but feel free to comment here on the blog. Once everything is maintained in git, that will also make it easier to track changes and revert mistakes.
I have not installed Plasma6 on any actual machine yet, the 2023 Beta was the full extent of my playing around with it. I checked it out in a VM earlier this week to see if everything worked but the new batch I am compiling should be feature-complete and that will be installed on this laptop I am working at.
Hello Eric,
I’ve been building my own Plasma6 since the end of 2022, based on your build scripts for the Beta 2.
I must say that besides the addition of removal of some package, few deps, finding patches in case of need and changing the order of the builds, it’s all pretty much straightforward.
It is very much important that we have again an “official” voice that can advocate in favor of Slackware with KDE devs when they propose changes and stuff.
Thanks! And Happy Holidays
Let’s see how much my refreshed kde.SlackBuild differs from yours (and of the other people making Plasma6 packages since that Beta release).
nice to know that you are working toward plasma 6 !
keep up the good work Bob and and have a happy new year