A couple of days ago, I promised to use my holiday to come up with packages for KDE Plasma6.
Today I finished compiling packages for 32bit and 64bit Slackware-current and uploaded a fresh package repository to my ‘ktown‘. The name seems to stick with people, even when it has not seen activity for two years, so I will keep calling it ‘ktown‘.
You will find 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.
I just went through the process and this is the first time that I am actually running and using KDE Plasma6 on my production laptop:
I did not have to remove any kind of configuration from $HOME and merely had to delete a couple of obsoleted system tray elements.
I also switched to Wayland instead of X11 and to be honest, that is working better than expected and even better than the good old X11 session. For instance, suddenly I can play 4K video in VLC without stuttering. And the laptop’s Synaptics touchpad was not found at all in the X11 session (must be a bug because I had been using it for 9 years in Slackware KDE)… while it works perfectly in the Wayland session.
The thing that I miss is the Latte Dock which was dropped from KDE Plasma. Having these MacOS-like ballooning application launcher icons floating at the bottom of my screen always impressed my friends, but it was also extremely powerful in the way I could manage my favorite applications. In Plasma6 I created an auto-hiding QuickLaunch panel at the bottom of the screen but it looks dull compared with the Latte Dock. Shame.
My intention is to keep this new Plasma6 package repository in a ‘testing‘ state as reflected in the repository URL. I expect that there’s stuff that does not work as it should and I would like you all to help in testing and stabilizing the packages. When KDE Gear 26.04 releases in April 2026 I expect that the few remaining Qt5 based KDE applications will finally have been ported to Qt6. By that time, I want to promote the repository from ‘testing‘ to ‘latest‘ and that will then reflect in the repository URL.
If you would look at the content behind the ‘latest‘ repository right now (https://slackware.nl/alien-kde/current/latest/) you will see that it is pointing to a single left-over package for KDE Plasma5 (Slackware 15.0): ‘phonon-vlc‘, a backend for Phonon that requires VLC media player. By the way, I renamed that package to ‘phonon-backend-vlc‘ for Plasma6 to be in line with the Slackware naming convention for these backends.
In April 2026 that repository will get a new ‘stable’ URL to reflect that it is meant for the stable release of Slackware.
If you want to peek at the source code management, I track everything in a git repository. You will find the 6_25.12 branch at: https://git.slackware.nl/ktown/
A word of thanks to LuckyCyborg who maintained a fork of my ‘ktown‘ during 2024/2025. He never contacted me about this but I was made aware of his activities. I checked out his scripts last week and there were some improvements he came up with that I have incorporated into my own sources. See the git commit message for more details.
I suggest that you try these Plasma6 packages out yourselves! Please leave your feedback in the comments section below.
Enjoy the end-of-year festivities and all the best for 2026! Let’s hope that Slackware merges Plasma6 before the end of 2026.
Cheers, Eric
Wow, thanks Eric!
LuckyCyborg always spoke of your ktown system with the highest regard and admiration.
Question: are there any special instructions for migrating from LuckyCyborg’s releases to yours? (e.g., some packages that should be removed, etc…)?
That’s up to you to find out. I have nothing to do with that work.
After also getting asked about this on Mastodon I looked at the package tags used by that other build and my advice would be to:
1) remove all of LC’s packages with “removepkg /var/log/packages/*KDE6”
2) re-install the following packages from the Slackware repository: fcitx5-theme-breeze, futuresql, libindi, libnova, qca, qcoro and wcslib.
3) install my set of packages following the README instructions.
That would take care of the problem of upgrading packages with different names.
I noticed when checking on those LC packages that he has built some that I do not ship (ddcutil, neochat and perhaps others). After discussing with Pat, those are not likely to be incorporated into my build.
Thanks Eric. This is good advice.
@Eric LuckyCyborg wasn’t the only one working on KTown mac-a-roni was also. He set his up and he went threw flame wars with them on LQ even though he started off by working on the aarch64 side of things.
I am in contact with him on Mastodon. I wish more sane people would use that platform.
Great release! Finally!
About Latte-Dock, you might be aware that it’s sloooooooowly proceeding towards a QT6/KF6 port: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/latte-dock/-/issues/134
Hi Eric, I saw tesseract among your dependencies, and this is an upgrade (5.5.1 to 5.5.2) regarding the version used by LuckyCyborg.
I’ve summarily inspected your SlackBuild for tesseract and did not find any provision for training in various languages.
LC opted for including all languages requested and thus his tesseract was larger than usual, but still manageable.
In my case, I would need both English and Spanish language data. Can you add these languages, or instructions on how we could add that data ourselves, or something similar? Thanks!
Sorry, forgot to add: I rebuilt tesseract 5.5.2 using a SlackBuild taken from SBo, customized with both EN and ES training data, for now, but I would like to know if there’s going to be a process for that with each update of that dependency.
It’s in the README. You’ll have to download the training data for your language(s) yourself. These downloaded training data will not be affected by any future tesseract upgrades. Pat does not want these huge datafiles in Slackware.
Hi Eric, thanks for the clarification. I read the README and it just say this:
“you will have to download at least one set of traineddata”
Which I have, but it doesn’t say anything else about how could I prepare my ktown setup so that the tesseract should pick up the trained data I have on next releases of yours.
I know this is not the same as Latte Dock, but it’s something similar:
Crystal Dock
https://store.kde.org/p/2105085
Yeah that Crystal Dock looks nice. Also mature and actively developed. I get a bad feeling looking at the Latte Dock porting efforts and the team behind that.
Well, I went ahead and installed your packages. Still got to reboot, but in the meanwhile, I can say it was mostly without issues. Most LuckyCyborg’s packages upgraded with no issue.
A cursory comparison shows the following, and I put it here in case the information could be useful.
1. Packages present in LuckyCyborg’s distribution but not in AlienBob’s ktown:
cmark-0.31.1-x86_64-20.1_KDE6
ddcutil-2.2.1-x86_64-33.1_KDE6
fcitx5-theme-breeze-2.0.0-noarch-33.1_KDE6
futuresql-0.1.1-x86_64-33.1_KDE6
haruna-1.6.0-x86_64-33.1_KDE6
kdsingleapplication-1.2.0-x86_64-33.1_KDE6
kio-fuse-5.1.1-x86_64-33.1_KDE6
kwin-effects-forceblur-1.5.0-x86_64-33.1_KDE6
libindi-2.1.7-x86_64-33.1_KDE6
libnova-0.15.0-x86_64-33.1_KDE6
marknote-1.3.0-x86_64-33.1_KDE6
mpvqt-1.1.1-x86_64-33.1_KDE6
neochat-25.12.0-x86_64-33.1_KDE6
plasmatube-25.12.0-x86_64-33.1_KDE6
power-profiles-daemon-0.30-x86_64-33.1_KDE6
qca-2.3.10-x86_64-33.1_KDE6
qcoro-0.12.0-x86_64-33.1_KDE6
wcslib-8.4-x86_64-33.1_KDE6
2. Packages which seem to be the same but are installed in parallell due to small naming differences:
freerdp3 (LC), freerdp (alien)
kColorPicker (LC), kcolorpicker (alien)
kImageAnnotator (LC), kimageannotator (alien)
If you read the README you will have seen this:
“Original Slackware packages from the KDE section that you need to keep are: fcitx5-theme-breeze, futuresql, libindi, libnova, qca, qcoro and wcslib”.
I did not add marknote because its reputation is not as good as that of klevernotes which I *did* add to have a proper MarkDown editor.
Your list mentions several other applications of which I have no idea why LC added them. I see no reason to add those myself.
Eric, about this, I updated my -current setup today and I got prompted to install kColorPicker and kImageAnnotator from stock -current, so I would recommend that you change the case of your ktown’s kcolorpicker and kimageannotator packages.
Happy 2026!!
Just add those two to your blacklist. I am not a fan of camel-cased package names.
No problem Eric, I will do that, but I suggest a heads-up about that in the README for upcoming releases. Thanks again!
The README is pretty explicit already:
Original Slackware packages from the KDE section that you need to keep are:fcitx5-theme-breeze, futuresql, libindi, libnova, qca, qcoro and wcslib.
If you follow the instructions below to remove KDE Plasma5, these packages
will remain installed.
Also if you look inside plasma6_remove_plasma5.template which is mentioned as the file containing all packages that need to be removed, both ColorPicker and kImageAnnotator are mentioned there.
Thanks Eric, will do that
It’s great to hear that Wayland is working well for you! I’ve heard mixed reviews about its compatibility with older hardware, but your experience with VLC and the touchpad gives me hope. Looking forward to trying it myself.
The KWin Wayland desktop is stable, responsive and mature. When I last tried it two years ago I was not impressed at all because of all the hoops I had to take the distro through. Now it is simply a transparent user experience, and the X11/Wayland choice is your own to make – there’s no bad choice.
Hi Eric.
Just to thank you for this contribution. Merry Xmas!.
Hi Eric,
Thank you for the KDE6 ktown repository.
Even though I use Hyprland wayland compositor (from jloco repository) for my daily activity, I regularly use various KDE5 applications (ex: okular, kmymoney, dolphin, skanlite).
On a spare older laptop (2014), I installed your KDE6 ktown and could start sddm in wayland mode (no virtual keyboard and only english keyboard with kwin_wayland compositor) and then Plasma (full wayland).
After a sluggish start (55 seconds from sddm to Plasma desktop that I attribute to old laptop and HDD disk instead of SSD), the system is quite responsive.
I setup fcitx5 with virtual keyboard: “Fcitx5 wayland launcher (experimental)”. I can switch from French to Korean input in Konsole, Falkon, Kate, Firefox.
I found one strange behaviour for Falkon. First run will always segfault. But next run is OK.
First run:
> falkon
Falkon: 2 extensions loaded
MESA-INTEL: warning: Haswell Vulkan support is incomplete
libva error: /usr/lib64/dri/iHD_drv_video.so init failed
Erreur de segmentation falkon
Next run:
> falkon
MESA-INTEL: warning: Haswell Vulkan support is incomplete
libva error: /usr/lib64/dri/iHD_drv_video.so init failed
Falkon: 2 extensions loaded
Best Wishes for 2026.
Thanks you very much for KDE6 Eric!
Plasma 6 works like a charm on Slackware64 Current.
Best Wishes for 2026
Hi Eric,
spectacle needs to be rebuilt against opencv-4.13.0
Thank you
—–
> spectacle
spectacle: error while loading shared libraries: libopencv_imgproc.so.412: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Hi Eric,
Another application that needs rebuild against opencv-4.13.0:
– koko
Thank you
Indeed those two need to be rebuilt as well.
Hi Eric,
First of all, one more word of appreciation – really thanks for all of your effort, it’s good to see you back on this topic.
It’s just for me or kwallet-pam is not working on plasma6? I mean, when I launch chromium, for instance, it keeps asking for password to open the wallet when it should do it automatically. I’m using SDDM to login – runlevel 4, not 3.
Same issue here and I could not find a cause for this. If you have ideas or suggestions let me know!
Edit: I have a suspicion, let me check… pam_kwallet5.so should probably be installed to /lib64/security instead of the current /usr/lib64/security directory.
Edit2: so far, no luck with that.
Hi, Eric,
I don’t know if that’s the cause, but in the ‘kwallet’ package there’s a conflict between /usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.kde.kwalletd5.service and /usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.kde.kwalletd6.service. It’s a known issue, you should remove /usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.kde.kwalletd5.service,
normally.
Indeed, that’s the other part I am fixing, but neither fixed the password issue for me.
rm $PKG/usr/share/dbus-1/org.freedesktop.impl.portal.desktop.kwallet.service in “kwallet”
This new service file isn’t supposed to act like that, but it appears to be triggering a bug in kwallet. I read this somewhere within the kwallet git a while ago but of course I can’t find it now. Supposedly, there’s a fix coming for this soon ™.
Maybe here:
https://invent.kde.org/frameworks/kwallet/-/merge_requests/130
Indeed removing /usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.freedesktop.impl.portal.desktop.kwallet.service fixed the Wallet bug. I will have to respin the kwallet package because I just uploaded a fresh batch of packages 🙂
About the X.Org touchpad issue I will check out that advice. I work in a Wayland session all the time now so I did not have an incentive to go look for the fix. What still does annoy me is the frequent loss of mouse input in a X11 application which runs in my Wayland session via XWayland. But PiterPunk seems to have found a possible solution.
Now it’s working again! So, security/pam_kwallet5.so should be placed at /lib64 not in /usr/lib64 and, in my case, I removed both org.kde.kwalletd5.service and org.freedesktop.impl.portal.desktop.kwallet.service.
Now, regards the touchpad issue it’s related to Xorg using evdev instead of libinput. Doing cp /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/40-libinput.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ makes the touchpad being recognized on System Settings and able to be properly configured on X11 session.
Hi Eric,
Thanks for all your work.
I upgraded Plasma with your packages which went OK.
Everything seemed to work perfectly but I experienced severe problems with my internet connection since the upgrade. Data transfer dropped to zero intermittently all the time.
Tried to find the cause but could find anything wrong in configuration using networkmanager in Plasma. Finally I reverted back to Plasma5 and problems disappeard
Wifi adapter is an Atheros AR9485 fwiw. I don’t have the knowledge how this could be related but just to let you know.
Hi Dik,
Thanks for reporting. You would not expect this network speed breakdown to be the result of a Plasma upgrade. I just tested using speedtest.net and my up- and down speeds are at the limits of my wireless LAN. No issues here.” reveal in terms of packet loss? Did you experience network speed issues with only specific sites/addresses or was the problem with every host on the Internet?
One thing you could try next time, is to create a fresh user account and login to that, to see if that account has the same connectivity issues.
Another aspects I am curious about: what happened to the connectivity to other computers in your own LAN? What would “mtr -n
Et cetera. I hope you have the time (and the nerve) to try this again 🙂
Hi Eric,
It is on a dual boot laptop. In Win10 no problems.
Data transfer drop occurred on all websites and all browsers and also in a terminal using wget or slackpkg etc. Other hosts on the network no problem.
I also tried your suggestion of creating a new user account but same problem.
Even in XFCE the problem was there when Plasma6 was installed. After I removed Plasma6 the internet connection was normal again in XFCE
Dik
Can you retrieve from your .bash_history the command-lines that you used to remove Plasma5 and other original Slackware packages and then install my Plasma6 packages?
Perhaps that is where the conflict starts.
......slackpkg update
slackpkg upgrade-all
slackpkg install-new
exit
nano /etc/slackpkg/blacklist
cd /home/dik/testing
ls
cp plasma6_remove_plasma5.template /etc/slackpkg/templates
exit
init 3
cd /home/dik/testing
ls
ls
ls /etc/slackpkg
ls /etc/slackpkg/templates
slackpkg update
slackpkg remove-template plasma6_remove_plasma5
upgradepkg --reinstall --install-new x86_64/deps/*.t?z
upgradepkg --reinstall --install-new x86_64/kde/*/*.t?z
slackpkg new-config
reboot
cd /etc/slackpkg
ls
nano blacklist
exit
........
That’s exactly how I went about it on this laptop.
Maybe Power management could be the issue ?
https://linuxvox.com/blog/qualcomm-atheros-ar9485-driver-linux/#common-practices
I already disabled power management although it never was a problem in Plasma5
bash-5.3# iwconfig wlan1
wlan1 IEEE 802.11 ESSID:”DeOnze”
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: 1A:CF:0E:45:AC:88
Bit Rate=72.2 Mb/s Tx-Power=15 dBm
Retry short limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=70/70 Signal level=-40 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:72 Missed beacon:0
I am still afraid of Wayland. My 30 min experience with it led me stick with X11. While it lives
The idea behind ‘ktown’ is to find, report and get the bugs fixed before the new KDE lands in Slackware-current.
Of course, X11 is not going anywhere. Even when KWin eventually ditches its support for X11 and becomes Wayland-only in 2027, there’s a light-weight X11 fork of an earlier KWin which is part of Sonic Desktop but can be used in KDE Plasma: https://github.com/Sonic-DE/sonic-win .
There’s also initiatives like LiquidShell (https://invent.kde.org/system/liquidshell) that offer replacement for KDE Plasma Shell (the program which decorates your desktop).
If the SDDM developers drop it in favor of their systemd-dependent Plasma Login Manager, there’s stil LightDM as an alternative. KDE even maintains a greeter for LightDM that blends in with the Plasma desktop: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/lightdm-kde-greeter
In other words, people get together and make it work.
Looks like the BSD people are doing something to get the plasma-login-shell to work without systemd creep.
In essence, plasma-login-shell is the SDDM source code with support for elogind ripped out, and systemd made mandatory. Plus some Plasma integration fluff.
That’s why at this point it should still be possible to revert the elogind/systemd design decisions, but Bog knows how long that remains possible. After all the new developers are pretty adamant at *only* willing to support systemd.
Is this the best place to report bugs? konversation fails to launch. error msg:
Process org.kde.konversation exited with status 127
That’s not a bug report, sorry. You need to do better than that.
I also only deal with bugs in the way I compile my packages. I do not provide functional support, for that you have https://bugs.kde.org/
FYI: I just started konversation here, and it works without error or issue. I connected to an IRC network successfully.
Check your local install.