Yesterday evening, KDE released their Frameworks 6.24.0 and taking advantage of the moment and even before morning coffee, I uploaded the Slackware packages for these new Frameworks.
Alongside with these Frameworks, I built a package for the third Beta of Krita 6.0.0 – the KDE drawing tool will finally be available as a Qt6 based application with proper Wayland support. Krita 5.2.15 is still Qt5 based and super stable, but I am replacing it with this 6.0.0.beta3 version because it’s time to start testing the new software. The stable version 6.0.0 of Krita will hopefully become available in April.
Also I took the opportunity to put a new stamp on my ‘ktown’ KDE Plasma6 package repository: KDE-6_26.03.
You will find all these packages at the origin location: https://slackware.nl/alien-kde/current/testing/ together with an expansive README which will help you remove KDE Plasma5 from your Slackware-current computer and install the ‘ktown‘ version of KDE Plasma6 instead.
The version of KDE Gear (Applications and PIM) which will be released in April will carry the version 26.04 number and will mark the moment that all official KDE Applications have been ported to Qt6 and KDE Frameworks 6. I will use that moment to switch my ‘ktown’ repository from ‘testing’ to ‘latest’ to highlight the fact that Plasma6 Desktop Environment is ready for production use.
If you want to peek at the source code management, I track everything in a git repository. You will find the 6_26.03 branch at: https://git.slackware.nl/ktown/
Please try these new Plasma6 packages. Not per se to find application bugs; rather I want to fix all bugs related to my packaging. More rigorous testing means that Pat has to do less heavy lifting when he finally adopts ‘ktown’ into Slackware.
And as usual – leave your feedback in the comments section below.
Cheers, Eric
Thanks Eric! Upgraded today, no issues so far.
I’ve been using KDE6_26.02 since February in my three main machines (plus some laptops) without any relevant issues. All running X11 or wayland. Today I changed my home machine to KDE 6_26.03 and so far so good!
Thank you Eric
Hello Eric,
the eigen deps package is meant to replace Slackware’s eigen3 package or go together with it?
Nevermind, you had written it in the README.
The only issue I have found so far is merely cosmetic:
I’m using a “light” theme (i.e., light color background and dark text). But when I try to shut down (or logout), that screen resorts to a black background, which has zero contrast against the usual black text. Maybe there’s a config setting somewhere that I have to adjust…
I use a light theme myself (Breeze) but have not seen what you describe (black background with black text). When/where exactly does this occur?
It happens when I hit the Application Menu > Power Session > Shut Down.
My colorschemes are:
Global Theme: Reactionary Plus
Color Scheme: Reactionary-KDE
Plasma Style: React Plus
With the previous Plasma (26.02) everything was normal.
Forgot to add: Application style (in case it’s relevant): MS Windows 9x
I assume since you installed and are using custom themes and colour schemes, that the issue must be in these themes/schemes.
Perhaps check for updates to these themes or contact their author?
The stock Plasma6 light theme and color scheme do not show this faulty behaviour.
I will do that, Eric, but if this is related to the application style, be aware that “MS Windows 9x” is one of the stock Qt widget styles that comes standard.
It can still be incompatible with the KDE Plasma6 styles/themes. But that would be something for the Plasma6 developers to fix.
I switched among different iterations of app styles, plasma styles and coloschemes and found the culprit: It’s the plasma style.
Seems like Plasma or Frameworks (don’t know which one, really) switched their logout screen to a black/dark screen against light text. But the older styles can’t do this correctly and end up putting a dark screen and dark fonts.
I saw this on my plasma style (React Plus), and also on an older “Breeze” style. Choosing “Breeze Light”, however, gave me black background and a bright text, which is OK.
I guess some plasma styles should be updated. Thanks Eric!
Hi Eric, I contacted with the theme developer and he released an updated version of the theme which now works very well in the shutdown / logout screen. He said that now Plasma hardcoded the logout screen as black, that’s why the issue appeared. Problem solved now.
Trying to run krita-6.0.0.beta3, I get this:
rherbert@slackware:~$ krita
Fontconfig warning: ignoring en_Latn_GB: not a valid region tag
Invalid profile : “/usr/share/color/icc/colord/Crayons.icc”
Invalid profile : “/usr/share/color/icc/colord/x11-colors.icc”
Fontconfig warning: ignoring en_Latn_GB: not a valid region tag
terminate called after throwing an instance of ‘std::out_of_range’
what(): vector::_M_range_check: __n (which is 0) >= this->size() (which is 0)
Aborted krita
And gdb reports:
(gdb) r
Starting program: /usr/bin/krita
[Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled]
Using host libthread_db library “/lib64/libthread_db.so.1”.
Fontconfig warning: ignoring en_Latn_GB: not a valid region tag
…
[New Thread 0x7fffce1ff6c0 (LWP 8964)]
[New Thread 0x7fffcd9fe6c0 (LWP 8965)]
[New Thread 0x7fffcd1fd6c0 (LWP 8966)]
[New Thread 0x7fffcc9fc6c0 (LWP 8967)]
[New Thread 0x7fffca2596c0 (LWP 8968)]
[New Thread 0x7fffc9a586c0 (LWP 8969)]
[New Thread 0x7fffc92576c0 (LWP 8970)]
[New Thread 0x7fffc8a566c0 (LWP 8971)]
Invalid profile : “/usr/share/color/icc/colord/Crayons.icc”
Invalid profile : “/usr/share/color/icc/colord/x11-colors.icc”
Fontconfig warning: ignoring en_Latn_GB: not a valid region tag
terminate called after throwing an instance of ‘std::out_of_range’
what(): vector::_M_range_check: __n (which is 0) >= this->size() (which is 0)
Thread 1 “krita” received signal SIGABRT, Aborted.
0x00007ffff269d7a1 in pthread_kill@@GLIBC_2.34 () from /lib64/libc.so.6
All I see is the splash screen and then it exits.
Anyone else?
Thanks
Krita starts and runs here (I tested that before uploading the package) but interestingly it gives me different messages – in particular the one related to PyQt5 is weird:
"
$ krita
Invalid profile : "/usr/share/color/icc/colord/Crayons.icc"
Invalid profile : "/usr/share/color/icc/colord/x11-colors.icc"
Found PyQt5 in '/usr/lib64/python3.12/site-packages', removing from Python's search path to avoid crashes.
Python cannot find the Qt5 bindings.
Please make sure, that the needed packages are installed.
krita.scripting: "Traceback (most recent call last):"
krita.scripting: " File \"/usr/lib64/krita-python-libs/krita/__init__.py\", line 28, in
krita.scripting: " from PyQt5 import QtCore"
krita.scripting: "ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'PyQt5'"
krita.scripting: "Could not import krita"
qrc:/TextAlign.qml:269:9: QML GroupButton: Binding loop detected for property "icon.color":
qrc:/TextAlign.qml:275:13
...
… and then Krita loads normally.
Thanks, Eric. I just checked krita-6.0.0.beta3 on one of my Slackware-current VM’s and it runs fine, so the problem is with my bare metal machine. Sorry to bother you.
No problem! The idea is to allow people to do test-runs with the new Krita.
I myself do not hope that there will be packaging bugs but the software itself may still be buggy. In that case, people are encouraged to report those bugs. Suppose they are unique to Slackware? I’d like to have stuff like that fixed by the developers before the stable release.
Everything seems to be working correctly here.
For krita look here: 😉
https://github.com/KDE/krita/commit/7a40a9227b88609e804b2983738074a3dc9d4e3d
Just FYI, krita-6.0.0 runs on my bare metal Slackware machine, where beta3 didn’t. The startup messages now look more like the ones you posted. Onward and upward!
Hi Eric,
Thanks for this new release.
It seems that your build has a hard dependency on pulseaudio. I’d like to use pipewire instead of pulseaudio, and if I remove the latter then I have dependency errors in the audio configuration. Is it really necessary to have pulseaudio as a dependency ? Thanks
Pulseaudio is an integrated part of Slackware, hence it is an unavoidable library dependency.
But you can use the script “/usr/sbin/pipewire-enable.sh” to switch to Pipewire as the default audio server. Programs will keep linking to pulseaudio libraries but Pulseaudio audio server will no longer be started.
That worked, thanks.
I t seem that ‘vlc’ need rebuild with the new ‘ protobuf’:
/usr/lib64/vlc/plugins/stream_out/libstream_out_chromecast_plugin.so:
libprotobuf-lite.so.33 => not found
Correct!
Changes required for KDE Gear 26.04, ‘libkleo-26.04.0’, (kdepim) will require ‘gpgme-2’.
https://slackware.halpanet.org/gmgf/pkg-gpgme-2/GPGME2-PKG-NEEDED-REBUILD.txt
my gpgme-2 exemple packages:
https://slackware.halpanet.org/gmgf/pkg-gpgme-2/gpgme-2/
For your information, if it’s helpful:
The new openSUSE patch ‘dolphin-go_up.diff’ for ‘dolphin-26.04.0’
is available here:
https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/KDE:Unstable:Applications/dolphin
as well as the new patch to use ‘kdesu’ with dolphin (0001-Revert-Disallow-executing-Dolphin-as-root-on-Linux.patch) for those who wish to use it.
It’ll be helpful once I start building Gear 26.04 🙂
Just 9 more days until I can download its sources.
I built the BETA and the RC here without any particular problems using gpgme 2, it should go well. 😉
Hi, Eric, maybe a good added for ‘application-extra’:
https://apps.kde.org/fr/glaxnimate/
https://blogs.kde.org/2026/03/08/this-week-in-kde-apps/
Just a suggestion 😉
The project put two and a half years between releases of 0.5.4 and the recent 0.6.0… so I will wait a bit and probably it’ll be in the hands of Patrick then to decide.
Looks like a nice simpler application than Karbon, so I hope to see more releases with shorter intervals.