Alien Pastures

My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

Tag: frameworks (Page 1 of 2)

Updated ‘ktown’ packages, and a heads-up

May 8, 2026 / / 44 Comments

Time for a KDE Plasma6 package refresh.

On KDE’s announcement page, the releases of KDE Gear 26.04.1 and Frameworks 6.26.0 were announced yesterday and today. Since OS packagers have early access to the source tarballs, I had everything compiled and ready for days and could simply push everything into my ‘ktown’ repository today.

I also updated okteta to the new release 0.26.27 (unfortunately still Qt5 based).

Get the new packages from https://slackware.nl/alien-kde/current/latest/ (NL), https://us.slackware.nl/alien-kde/current/latest/ (US), or https://slackware.uk/people/alien-kde/current/latest/ (UK).
Or use their rsync URI’s for commandline downloads.

And a heads-up:

I went to the spring conference of the NLUUG (the Dutch Unix User Group) yesterday . My old colleague (from 40 years ago) and friend Jeroen Baten gave a demonstration of setting up and configuring Forgejo. This is a software forge software which is stewarded by Codeberg e.V in Germany. A fully open source, constraint-free and European alternative to Github or Gitlab. Absolutely relevant given the current political climate where the Orange Clown and his Big Tech billionaire minions try to control the whole world from a US “me! me! me!” perspective.
That same conference also had a presentation from a Dutch government team that maintains their software on code.overheid.nl which is also running Forgejo. It’s really cool to see that finally the Dutch government acts (somewhat) on the commitment to favor open source and open standards above commercial and closed software.

It made me decide that Slackware software projects need a space for their  code that is never in danger of being abused for AI training or where repositories are deleted and access revoked simply because the Orange Clown demands it. The final push to decide that I need to get my own projects off Github came recently when I read this: VS Code v1.117.0 automatically adds GitHub Copilot as your co-author.

My commitment: I am going to setup a Forgejo instance below the slackware.nl domain.

At first, I will work on getting the git repository server up and running with moderated creation of user accounts. Projects that can show a relevance for the Slackware Linux community will get an account. I will be using Keycloak for Identity and Access Management (IAM). Rather conveniently I already have a full setup guide in my Slackware Cloud Server series: https://blog.slackware.nl/slackware-cloud-server-series-episode-2-identity-and-access-management-iam/

The fun will not stop there. I also intend to allow runners and workloads on the Forgejo instance. That will give projects a chance to create CI/CD pipelines for their code. I will be offering Slackware 15.0 and -current Docker containers (64bit but also 32bit) for these runners and will also ensure that the Docker images are re-generated after a ChangeLog.txt update in the Slackware tree.

It’s a lot of ambition but this is something I really want to do. The process will likely end up as another article (or two) in the Slackware Cloud Server series.

I cannot give a timeline, it depends on the complexity of setting up the Docker infrastructure for the Forgejo runners. The git repository server with Keycloak should be rather straightforward. I’ll move my own projects from Github to Forgejo ASAP of course.

When I have updates you’ll hear it first on this blog!

KDE 6_26.04 for Slackware-current (almost free of Qt5)

April 29, 2026 / / 18 Comments

To be honest, I was waiting for a move from Pat. But I got restless, Pat is otherwise occupied for a few days so I took the plunge.
What I am talking about is of course packaging KDE Gear 26.04.0 for Slackware. The latest release of Applications and KDEPIM is nicknamed the “KDE at 30″ edition because KDE is around for 30 years already (!). Congratulations are in order.

The reason I wanted to wait for Pat is that the new Kleopatra release (part of KDEPIM) requires a version of gpgme which is not present in Slackware-current. I had hoped to see an upgrade to gpgme 2.x in Slackware first, followed by a rebuild of affected packages, which according to avid Slackware user gmgf aka Gérard Monpontet is at least: gmime, gpa, libcups-filters, mccabber, mutt, poppler, samba, volume_key, wget2 and labplot. But that did not happen, and I wanted to have a stable ‘ktown’ which is fully ported to Qt6 before my 65th birthday next week.
Therefore I decided to trick Slackware by upgrading gpgme from 1.24.3 to 2.0.1 but not rebuilding all those other Slackware packages that depend on gpgme 1.24.3. Instead I added another package to ‘ktown’ called gpgme1 which contains all the libraries from the previous gpgme 1.24.3 package. Zero broken Slackware packages and I could finally move on with KDE Gear without having to wait for the upstream.
As you might have guessed after all these years – I hate to be dependent on others and like to have full control. So, move aside Pat 😉
Jokes aside, I hope that Pat picks up this completed work and adds it to Slackware-current soon.

As promised when I revived the ‘ktown’ repository for Plasma6, the addition of a legacy-free KDE Gear 26.04.0 marks the change for this repository from ‘testing’ to ‘latest’, as witnessed by the change in the package download URL: https://slackware.nl/alien-kde/current/latest/. The latest KDE Plasma6 Desktop Environment is absolutely ready for production use. It’s snappy, feature-complete and beautiful. I have been using the Wayland session ever since my first batch of packages and the quirks have by now been removed that annoyed me in the beginning. By now, okteta in ‘applications-extra’ is the only left-over of the old Qt5/KF5 era.

Formally kwayland-integration is also still built against Qt5 and the two old Frameworks kwayland5 and kwindowsystem5, but that’s required for the Plasma6 Wayland session to still support older 3rd-party Qt5 based applications).

The new release of packages is accompanied by 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 origin host is of course https://slackware.nl/alien-kde/ (rsync://slackware.nl/mirrors/alien-kde/), but you could choose the alternative
mirror https://slackware.uk/people/alien-kde/ (rsync://slackware.uk/people/alien-kde/) which is faster for some people, but you may have to wait until it syncs against slackware.nl. Or if you live in the US, try https://us.slackware.nl/alien-kde/ (rsync://us.slackware.nl/mirrors/alien-kde/), this server has a lot of bandwidth available.

If you want to peek at the source code management, I track everything in a git repository. You will find the new 6_26.04 branch at: https://git.slackware.nl/ktown/

Have fun with KDE Plasma6 and please  leave your feedback in the comments section below.

Cheers, Eric

KDE: February 2024 MegaRelease

October 25, 2023 / / 18 Comments

Just a heads-up to you people who wondered when Alien BOB would pick up on the KDE Plasma bleeding edge again.
Simply put: Patrick did a hell of a job pushing every new KDE Plasma update into the slackware-current package tree (even before the 15.0 release) in no time. There was nothing for me to do (or to improve on) since Plasma5 got added to the distro.

My intention is to change that, soon.

Exactly one month ago, KDE published their planning for Plasma6, the successor to Plasma5, so numbered after the version of the Qt framework which underpins it. As seen on the ‘February 2024 MegaRelease‘ page, the first Alpha release of the Qt6-based Frameworks, Plasma and Gear (the three main components of KDE Plasma) is expected to see the light on November 8th, 2023. The final stable release of KDE Plasma6 will be on February 28th, 2024.

I don’t expect that Slackware itself will absorb this new software immediately upon release. Perhaps we will have a Slackware 15.1 next February, maybe not – but a new KDE desktop is a major and potentially disruptive upgrade. Still, it needs solid testing on Slackware -current somehow. Therefore I will have that stable KDE Plasma6 in my ktown repository when it is released.

I am currently working on updating the kde.SlackBuild infrastructure which I took from Slackware-current, to make it work with the new Plasma6 sources. It is not a trivial task; there are new non-KDE dependencies, new KDE programs and changed interdependencies, patches to remove and patches to add.
So far, I have finalized the scripts for all of the new dependencies, as well as the Frameworks and Plasma. Currently working on KDEPIM, and then the Gear collection (formerly called Applications) awaits. The results up to now took me a full week, and the Gear will probably have the same level of unpleasant surprises (hey, it won’t compile! what did they sneak in now? <initiates another search through KDE Invent>…).

Meaning, I won’t make promises on the timeline for a first Slackware-based test release. I aim to make it coïncide with KDE’s own Alpha release, but I may not be able to finish on time. To be clear about my roadmap: anything that I make available before the stable release of Feb 28, will take the shape of a Slackware Live ISO image (the ktown variant, we haven’t seen that one for two years almost!) for you to test and play with.
There will be no new packages in the ktown repository until the time when KDE Plasma6 stable gets released. I am supportive of people who want to compile this set themselves, so I will make the sources available in ktown as soon as I release the first live ISO and will keep updating those sources.

Note that I will not make Plasma6 co-installable with Plasma5. It’s going to be one or the other. Any official Slackware package that I have to recompile to add Qt6 support, will not lose its Qt5 support. Meaning, my ktown versions of gpgme, kdsoap, phonon, polkit-qt-1, poppler, qca, qcoro or qtkeychain will be 100% compatible with standard Slackware.

Hope to have more news in a week or two!

Sunday update (Oct 29) – a screenshot of the “about” screen after I compiled the new dependencies, Frameworks, Kdepim, Plasma, Plasma-extra and Gear (excluding some twenty packages which are not yet compatible with Qt6):

Eric

KDE 5_15.07 – July release for Slackware-current

July 10, 2015 / / 35 Comments

Plasma5_lockedpowerpenguin Today my son had his last day at school – holiday time! We had little hope he would pass his semi-final year at the “middelbare school” but he managed to pull of a small miracle and passed anyway. Yay! His dad will sleep better now… and I used the relaxed mood to sit behind this computer and write a blog post about the July release of KDE 5 for Slackware-current. While my son went out to party, we slackers just install the latest and greatest software and pound it hard to see if any bugs seep out of the cracks.

The past month saw various KDE component releases which I let slip, because I intend to offer upgrades only when newer versions of all of Frameworks, Plasma and Applications are available. Well, there was Frameworks 5.11.0 several weeks ago but I skipped that one entirely, and today Frameworks 5.12.0 was released. The KDE Applications 15.04.3 release was already more than a week ago, and Plasma 5.3.2 one day before that, on 30 June.  Time for some package building, and because the Frameworks sourcecode was made available to packagers a number of days ago, I had them ready on wednesday… but needed to wait for the public release of the new Frameworks.

Now then, my July release of the next-gen KDE for slackware-current: KDE 5_15.07. Its main components, as said earlier, are Frameworks 5.12.0, Plasma 5.3.2 and Applications 15.04.3. The updates to Applications also contain the usual KDE 4 Long Term Support (LTS) updates for kdelibs, kdepimlibs, kdepim, kdepim-runtime and kde-workplace. Hopefully Pat will fold those LTS releases back into the official KDE 4 for Slackware-current.

What’s new in KDE 5_15.07?

Well… probably all sorts of improvements under the hood of the various packages, but nothing exciting jumps out that I feel compelled to tell you about. Overall, more stability and less bugs, let’s hope. Read the Release Notes and you’ll know it all. Hey, weekend ahead! Time is on your side.

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 this time, especially if you already are running KDE 5_15.04 or later. 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_15.01 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 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)
# 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)
# slackpkg reinstall kactivities-framework (ensure that you are using the frameworks version of kactivitymanagerd)

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://blog.slackware.nl/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

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

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