I was curious what the plan / road-map is for integration of Plasma 5 into Slackware Current?

I am quite aware of alienbob's Ktown repository and is apparent alot of good work has been done there.

Is the plan to wait for the next LTS release of Plasma 5 or choose a version of Plasma 5 like 5.20.X ? I understand that the next LTS version of Plasma 5 after 5.18.X is to occur when Plasma 6 is to be released which by all indications is sometime next mid-to-late Spring.

Plasma 5 Version 5.20.0 is scheduled to be released on October 13th and looks like to be a major feature upgrade to Plasma 5. I noticed that Ktown has embraced the 5.19.X variant in the last upgrades this year.

Reason for asking is it is my suspicion that the integration of Plasma 5 into Current is the last major hurdle before the release of Slackware 15.0.

Just curious is what is the path / criterion?

Thank You to all the developers for all the hard work over the years that had made Slackware my goto default linux since the mid-to-late 1990's.

I suggest that you read the -current changelog for new additions and news about KDE5. To answer your question. We know that certain components for KDE5 have been added to the -current branch, like qt5. Other than what is written in the -current changelog we don't know the ETA of KDE-plasma.

I do look often to the current changelog to try to detect an upcoming stable release. Apart from a big batch of PAM-related updates months ago, I don't see much. My feeling is more that current is kept up to date. Library abc updated to 1.4.7a, program xyz updated to 2.31, every single release of the last LTS kernel 5.9.

I am no expert, but to my eyes, it looks like "business as usual".

Don't get me wrong. I do value all this maintenance work. In current and all the supported stable releases. I just don't get any feeling of an impending release.

Do you experts see that something is cooking?

Another point is that apparently, from comments here, I see that apparently many users are running Current as their main driver, and apparently with no stability issue.

Is it because of this that the apparent priority is keeping Current in good working condition?

Is Slackware actually turning into a de facto rolling release model? (despite whatever Slackware old-timers here repeatedly say)

I am. Yes. Slackware-current is very stable.

In my experience -current is stable. It is important to read the updates in the current changelog to avoid gotchas.



No. I think that 15.0 will arrive.

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I figured this would come up again, which is why I did not bother creating a thread - anyways, to re-state the obvious, the radio-silence is imo the biggest worry. Sure QT5 is integrated, but we have not seen any further progress on this issue. Again also, we know the mantra of "Plasma5 is coming..." , but I like some others would like to see at least a blurb on the matter.

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I don't like the radio silence either. I'm hopeful we will get some KDE5 updates soon.

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Cannot help but quote The Smiths - "How Soon Is Now?"

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It is why I created the thread.

I have seen the various notes in the ChangeLog.

I am not asking for firm dates for releases because I am realistic enough that sometimes things progress smoothly and sometimes there are unforeseen difficulties that gum up the works.

I am curious if the plan for integration is one of the following:

[1] Wait for the next LTS version of Plasma 5

[2] Wait for a particular non-LTS version of Plasma 5 for example 5.20.X to stabilize (Plasma 5 future releases dates are here: https://community.kde.org/Schedules/...uture_releases )

[3] Wait for Plasma 6

[4] Some other series of rational that is outside of my limited sight

[5] There is no plan

Nature abhors a vacuum. So do I.

Option [5] is correct as far as I can tell. There's simply no stated plan. Ktown is currently on deep maintenance mode and except for the addition of Qt5 and PAM there's no sign of impending addition of Plasma 5 into Slackware.

The best course of action would be so far to wait and see. Plasma 5 shall be eventually added, or Ktown would be reactivated. Failing these two outcomes, eiter a) stay with Slackware and move to another desktop environment or b) move out of Slackware and into another distribution offering up to date Plasma packages.

I suggest we exert a little patience. For anyone who would like to see the best Plasma 5 support in Slackware this situation is less than comfortable but eventually it will be resolved under one of the outcomes I mentioned above.

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Plasma5 is not the only important update in Slackware. There's also the new XFCE, and new versions of upower, udisks2 and replacement of ConsoleKit2 with elogind. All of that can not be separated, and thus a lot of time is required to make all of this work seamlessly from the start. Imagine the uproar when all of this is uploaded to mirrors and the next day, everybody has a broken system.
Patrick is not verbose but he is busy, and we will get there.

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Thank You for your reply and all the hard work that Patrick, yourself and many other have done -- it helps to understand where things are going and the complexity of the issues to be tackled.

I appreciate your casting a light on this issue.

Best Regards
Gerry

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I don't see why there is focus on Plasma5. It already works much better, thanks to Alien Bob's (and others) incredible efforts, than the early official versions of KDE v4 did.

OCD? Patrick takes apart every script and investigates every packages that accumulated inside the deps directory of my 'ktown' repository over the years. He will take only that which is needed to build his version of Plasma5 for Slackware. High probability that some of the KDE packages in my repository will not make the cut (think of the stuff in applications-extra for instance). I'll keep maintaining those packages that are not adopted into Slackware.

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This swipe is not against you just to be clear, but I do hope Akonadi and KDE-Pim doesn't make it - I have seen Plasma5 without it(Kubuntu) and the memory footprint is at par if not slightly lower than something like MATE. Yea I just REALLY hate Akonadi and KDE-Pim.

As for OCD, the problem also is being stuck in a loop. Yes Plasma5 will be adopted when Pat feels it is ready, and Pat doesn't have to be verbose; however at this point just a minor heads up from Pat on this matter would satisfy me as well as others here.

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Yes. It has been my experience as a Slacker for 16 years that Mr. Volkerding does play his cards close to his chest. I understand that. We are understandably curious.
I will wait.

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