Alien Pastures

My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

Tag: plasma6 (Page 1 of 2)

Updated ‘ktown’ packages, and a heads-up

May 8, 2026 / / 17 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

New KDE Frameworks and Plasma packages

April 10, 2026 / / 19 Comments

KDE just announced the KDE Frameworks 6.25.0, and earlier this week they came with Plasma 6.6.4.

I built the packages for those new releases – targeting Slackware -current of course. Along with these updates I also refreshed KleverNotes, Krita, Kstars and Okteta to their latest versions.

You can find the packages in my ‘ktown‘ repository: https://slackware.nl/alien-kde/current/testing/ with the sources in https://slackware.nl/alien-kde/source/testing/ and the changes tracked in git: https://git.slackware.nl/ktown/log/.

If you are using the slackpkg+ extension to slackpkg and have already switched from Slackware’s Plasma5 to my Plasma6 then the upgrade to the latest set of Slackware-current packages along with the new ‘ktown‘ Plasma 6 is trivial (assuming you tagged my repository with the string “ktown” in slackpkgplus.conf):

# slackpkg update
# slackpkg install-new
# slackpkg install ktown
# slackpkg upgrade-all

Are you still running Slackware’s own KDE Plasma5 on the other hand, it must be removed first. No clean upgrade path can be provided! Do as follows:

Use the slackpkg template provided in the package directory (https://slackware.nl/alien-kde/current/testing/plasma6_remove_plasma5.template is the online version).
The template is called ‘plasma6_remove_plasma5.template‘. This file contains the name of all original Slackware packages that need to be removed.
You can do this either using slackpkg (no slackpkg+ needed):

# cp plasma6_remove_plasma5.template /etc/slackpkg/templates
# slackpkg update
# slackpkg remove-template plasma6_remove_plasma5

… or else using pkgtools:

# cat plasma6_remove_plasma5.template | while read PKGNAME; do removepkg $PKGNAME ; done

And then proceed with the upgrade steps I shared higher-up.

The next major update is going to be KDE Gear 26.04 which will be the first release of KDE Gear (i.e. Applications & PIM) without dependency on Qt5 or the KDE Frameworks 5.
This move to Gear 26.04 requires some additional changes to the packages in Slackware -current itself, for which I asked Pat to assist. Let’s see what happens in the weeks to come.

Have fun and enjoy the weekend. Eric

KDE 6_26.03 for Slackware-current

March 14, 2026 / / 35 Comments

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

KDE 6_26.02 for Slackware-current

February 17, 2026 / / 25 Comments

Today I released a fresh batch of KDE Plasma6 packages for 32bit and 64bit Slackware-current to my ‘ktown‘ repository.

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.

My intention is to keep this new Plasma6 package repository in a ‘testing‘ state (as reflected in the repository URL) until KDE Gear (Applications and PIM) version 26.04 is released in April 2026
I expect that the few remaining Qt5 based KDE applications will finally have been ported to Qt6 by that time. That moment, the repository will be promoted from ‘testing‘ to ‘latest‘ and that will then reflect in the repository URL.

If you want to peek at the source code management, I track everything in a git repository. You will find the 6_26.02 branch at: https://git.slackware.nl/ktown/

Let me know what you think after trying out these Plasma6 packages. As usual you can leave your feedback in the comments section below.

Cheers, Eric

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