Alien Bob ktown:

How is it that you are getting Plasma 5.20.0, etc.?

He compiles all of the packages himself using my build scripts. Works very well for him and others.

2 members found this post helpful.

It's, here (the source, the scripts) :

https://alien.slackbook.org/ktown/source/latest/deps/
https://alien.slackbook.org/ktown/source/latest/kde/

and read eventually also this here:

https://alien.slackbook.org/blog/page/2/

the last source of (plasma, frameworks, applications), are here:

http://mirrors.dotsrc.org/kde/stable/frameworks/
http://mirrors.dotsrc.org/kde/stable/plasma/
http://mirrors.dotsrc.org/kde/stable/release-service/

4 members found this post helpful.

While I am not looking to be spoon-fed this is a a far from trivial build project. I actually might be motivated enough to give it a shot but not in my common use partition because it looks like things could go very wrong. some pointers about how to attack a major build project like this might be interesting.

With Eric's impressive SlackBuilds, it really isn't (other than fixing potential breakages).

That being said, it will probably take some work to download the latest versions of all the source files. I didn't see anything that automates that (which might be hard to automate anyway).

The catch phrase here is "fixing potential breakages" in a mega-build while going from the "verified" build from KTown for a certain Plasma/Frameworks/Applications set, to new releases everywhere. What could go wrong?

Build options changed? Build orders changed? Patches there and there? New packages added while another are removed? New dependencies?

If I remember right what I read, some time ago LC struggled with making Pipewire to work for real and lamented about the Slackware lack of ability to run init scripts after login as a particular user and before logout from this particular user. And he said something about a thing named "xdg-desktop-portal" which also should be well built and run as is supposed.

For what is worth, both LC and GMGF plays with Plasma5 since several years, and that can translate in having certain experience in tuning this Plasma5 build.

Meanwhile, the Plasma5 release from KTown has a ticking bomb under the bed. It (still) works, but Slackware-current is a moving target, and is not a wild guess to imagine that several months later and more random package updates, it will not work anymore.

What will happen, then?

Will become Plasma5 a privilege for an elite of few, who studied and sweated for years to handle it?

We, the humble ones, we will look at Plasma 5.21 in screenshots to see how cool it is? Oh, wait! We already look at major release of 5.20 in screenshots.

Thanks you, Slackware!

I sincerely wished that those "vision divergences" about Plasma5 to be solved in your private rooms, where all decisions are made anyways...

Halleluyah!
You make it sound so worthwhile! 谢谢赵琳！
世上无难事，只怕有心人！
加油！加油！
就是有办法：

ok! Thanks! I remember seeing those lines many times now.
I will give it a spin this weekend.
ZhaoLin has encouraged me.

What's the fuss? I understand that some people prefer Plasma 5 over any other desktop, but to me a desktop is no more than a way to access applications and all desktops provide such an access, so using one or another is just a matter of convenience (Mate is the default in Slint, mainly because it is the most accessible to blind users). And if people absolutely want to use Plasma 5 it's available in many other distributions, so if using Eric's stuff is too much of a hassle for you just set up a dual boot with another distribution and be happy, until eventually Plasma 5 makes its way in Slackware. Me, I have installed Fedora 33-KDE-beta in a VM just out of curiosity but don't tell anybody, I could be excommunicated.

5 members found this post helpful.

And if that happens, John Wick comes looking for you : )

It wasn't just a puppy.

3 members found this post helpful.

If you look through the commit history of ktown, there doesn't seem to be many changes pushed between ktown releases, so it may not be crazy difficult. Eric already did the hard work in getting Qt5 support added (although, it's possible some of those patches might no longer be needed).

I'm not saying there won't be some errors, but Eric has said that the KDE developers have made Plasma relatively easy to package:

This is why Eric decided to stop updating ktown. The "ticking bomb" is now in Pat's court. If Eric kept providing updates, there's a lot less pressure on Pat to incorporate Plasma5 into Slackware. Yes, that does mean that Slackware users might end up with an outdated or broken ktown, but Eric didn't want to keep the pressure off Pat by continuing to provide it. Hopefully it will be the kick that Pat needs to finally bring it into -current.

If Plasma5 is incorporated into Slackware, there's no guarantee it will have the latest version in it. Once 15.0 is released, it is unlikely any updates would be pushed to it except for security updates (although, I know many run -current because it tends to be bleeding edge and others are only running it now since stable is old enough they're running into issues with it).

This is just the reality when running Slackware. If you want the latest and greatest, -current can sometimes offer that, but not always. We have the latest LTS kernel, but there's 5 new major versions that have been released since then. And we obviously know that Xfce and KDE have lagged behind their latest releases. And if we check out distrowatch's package tracker, bind, binutils, compiz, db, firefox, gcc, glibc, make, and python are all not the latest versions. (Don't take this as a slight on all the other packages that are the latest and greatest... there's a lot more green (meaning up-to-date) on that list than black (outdated)).

You could say the same for any package that isn't up to date. Sometimes this happens within Slackware and it definitely happens outside of Slackware. For the packages I maintain on SBo, there are several that are not up-to-date that can be updated (there's also quite a few that can't be updated due to limitations of 14.2).

If you want the latest and greatest, the only one who can guarantee that is you. Even on Arch, packages lag behind if the maintainers don't update immediately.

This is like saying that if Slackware isn't doing what you need it to do, you can switch to another distro. There is absolute truth in that, but some people prefer what Slackware (or Plasma5) offers. I have used Xfce in the past when I broke KDE4, but I still didn't enjoy using it when compared to KDE4. Yes, people are able to use other WMs/DEs or other distros that provide those WMs/DEs, but some prefer a certain one within a certain distro and if that isn't available, it can be frustrating.

1 members found this post helpful.

Apart from the KDE users who would like to take advantage of the nice upgrades in functionality that have now been available for years (just one example are the improvements in Okular), I'd say at a minimum because it's seen to be a major block to a stable release of Slackware (we passed four years without one last July).

It's possible, but switching to another distro is quite a hassle in terms of workflow, I mean I found it kind of annoying even just switching temporarily to XFCE (I managed to bork my Plasma setup somehow, since fixed).

I really don't know if that's really a major block to a stable release. We could as well speculate that Patrick waits for something to happen (like a major release of another component), or come across some hurdle difficult to overcome or is performing a time consuming change in the distribution, whatever, and prefer not to maintain Plasma 5 meanwhile to stay concentrated on other tasks.

EDIT Or maybe Patrick is still unsure if he will ship Plasma 5 in Slackware 15? Remember what happened with GNOME...

3 members found this post helpful.

I build it in VirtualBox. The Host is this computer, Slackware64-current. The Guest is Slackware64-current without KDE.

1 members found this post helpful.

I wrote a script that mirrors frameworks, plamsa and applications from a KDE mirror with lftp and the extras using wget in the same script.

2 members found this post helpful.