Well, this is an experiment regarding an alternative KDE4 desktop for Slackware 15.0, started with the following post of our friend
Hannes Worst in another thread:
Honestly I looked since some time for a way to build KDE4 for Slackware 15.0, and this not because I hate Plasma5 or something similar, BUT because I arrived at conclusion that there are many computers modern enough to offer a fine experience with Slackware 15.0 , while lacking on the OpenGL 2.1 support (minimally) required by Plasma5 for its desktop effects. Those computers has Core2 Duo or Core2 Quad with socket 755, and some motherboards have even support for 32GB DDR3 1333MHz or DDR2 800MHz.

Yep, all those motherboards with Intel socket 755 and chipset G31 or similar, has only support of OpenGL 1.4, and that's why I looked back to KDE4, which is quite capable to work properly on this kind of computers.

However, even there are the PBSLACKS which contains a build of KDE4 for Slackware 15.0, I have still not managed (or maybe I had no time) to understand how to build only KDE4 from it.

So, thanks to Hannes Worst I have found this small fork of KDE4 named Katana Desktop Environment which is capable to be built for Slackware 15.0 and probably also for -current.

http://fluxer.github.io/katana/
https://github.com/fluxer/katana
https://osdn.net/projects/kde/

And a small presentation I have found there:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPbd-7BkDDg

Katana is quite small compared even with KDE4 and let's do not talk about Plasma5 whale - it's shipped in just 6 tarballs, while containing a nice set of applications for KDE4 and a desktop for it.

In the end, I have managed to make a set of SlackBuilds for it and its dependencies (basically just libdeflate) with some notes and the build order, which I attached to this post as a tarball renamed as .txt file.

Additionally, you will need to have installed MPV from SlackBuilds.org, which I did not showed as dependency, because I have this MPV installed in all of my computers as an alternative to MPlayer.

Also, I attached a screenshot of Katana running on Slackware 15.0 on one of my computers.

Some additional points of attention regarding this build:

To get the required source tarballs, I have put on every SlackBuild directory a file named .url with the link to tarball, but libdeflate needs an alternate download method, described in NOTES.txt

Also, I have hit some build issues with katanalibs package - not from the part of C/C++ sources, but because of CMAKE build system. I have managed to create a small patch (included too) which partially fix the build, but I had to use also an ugly hack in SlackBuild too for adding the place where the (build) libraries are put to LD_LIBRARY_PATH:
So, any suggestions for improving this will be appreciated.

Finally, seems like the Katana developer stripped down the OpenGL support from KWin's desktop effects, and also the Blur effect. However, using XRender only and no Blur I think is a terrible idea, because the desktop effects are quite slow on XRender and desktop popups are transparent.

Because I have no knowledge C/of C+ programming and KDE, while I am aware that in theory is possible to make a patch to add back the OpenGL support and Blur effect on desktop effects, from KDE4, I am unable to do this.

If someone will be interested to make this kind of patch, I believe that would be very nice and very useful.

How to build and install Katana:

Even it's quite small, please bear in mind that Katana, just like KDE4 will conflict as functionality with Plasma5, then before of all, you should remove entirely the packages from KDE series of Slackware 15.0 . Yeah, unfortunately, it cannot tag along with Plasma5.

This mean also the removal of SDDM, and you will have only XDM at disposition as Desktop Manager. Probably in future I will make a separate SlackBuild for SDDM for bringing it back.

For starting the Katana DE, you should first update your system with xwmconfig then to use startx or XDM with preferable a brand new user to avoid the .config files conflicting.

PS. From what I understand, Katana is made for BSDs and Solarix, so obviously it has support only for ConsoleKit2, so probably it needs also to be patched for elogind.

PS2. Believe it or not, please note that Katana has no Akonadi or Baloo as requirements.

Attached Thumbnails

 

Attached Files

katana-build.tar.xz.txt (5.4 KB, 18 views)

I haven't tried Katana, but I have installed Trinity which is a KDE3 fork on Slackware 15. Not because I wanted to run KDE3, but because good old KDM works so much better than SDDM. Isn't kdm included in Katana? It was part of KDE4 in Slackware 14.

With trinity there was no need to remove KDE, it works fine to launch Plasma/KDE5 from the kdm login manager included. However, maybe to be able to coexist with KDE the kdm login manager has been renamed to tdm.

regards Henrik

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Looking at the youtube video you can see that in "system settings" there is a choice "Login Screen", that is used to configure kdm, so I would guess that kdm is included in Katana.

regards Henrik

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Nicely done!
Thanks for all your hard work.

Nope, the KDM is stripped down from Katana 4.22 and even in 4.21 (the one presented in video) is not present.

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While I have nothing of value to contribute to the actual title of the thread, I have used both Trinity and Katana (on Debian), and can say that IMO, it'd be far more useful to help with the packaging of Trinity than Katana. In my experience, Katana removes a lot of the KDE applications leaving it an incomplete desktop experience compared to either the older Trinity, or the newer Plasma. Also, it's not PARTICULARLY faster than the modern Plasma after the KDE team worked to optimize their code in the 5.12-5.18 releases. They did a really good job, and the performance difference between Katana and Plasma is minor, whereas the significantly older based Trinity code is actually faster than either.

Just my $.02 if anyone's interested.

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Well, incomplete desktop experience or not, I for one I can live with Katana as main DE. And I tell you why:

Katana happens to ship beyond the desktop shell, all the KDE4 (or Plasma5) applications which I usually use. There's Konsole, Okular, Gwenview and KGet (with support for downloading torrents)

Believe it or not, beyond of these programs I use extensively only Mozilla Firefox, Chromium and LibreOffice.

From my own experience of using this self-built Katana on Slackware 15.0 , I believe that someone who can live with XFCE also can live well with Katana as main DE, until BrunoLafleur decides to explain us, the mere mortals how the heck we can build only and solely his full and wonderful updated KDE4 part now of PBSLACKS.

Yep, there's is already a full and updated KDE4 for Slackware 15.0 but seems that I have yet to understand the build system behind PBSLACKS, to extract the KDE4 and its dependencies from there.

Also there is already a Trinity build for Slackware, as seen there:

https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...rs-4175684562/

BUT, in the end, I for one I do not want Trinity, but KDE4 and I guess that Katana does not conflicts with all Plasma5, but only with KDE Plasma (aka the desktop shell) so in theory we can keep in future the KDE Frameworks and many of those 200 KDE Applications.

Anyway, I have installed back the SDDM and it works fine without rest of Plasma5. True, the /etc/sddm.conf should be edited manually - no graphical interface to configure it, but it's not a huge tragedy.

Now, the question is WHY I look for KDE4 while Slackware ship a nice and complete Plasma5. I do this not because I want a faster DE than Plasma5 or because I hate it - on contrary I was one of the users who vocally advocated the adoption of Plasma5 in Slackware.

The issue is that Plasma5 requires minimally OpenGL 2.0 for its desktop effects and there are relative modern computers stuck on OpenGL 1.4.

I have one: HP Elite dc7800 USDT, which sports an Intel Core2 Duo E8500 as CPU (3GHz or so) on socket 775, with 4GB DDR2 800MHz memories AND integrated graphics Intel GMA3150 capable of OpenGL 1.4 and with workarounds of OpenGL 2.1 but this is sluggish. However, there are motherboards who are even capable to use 32GB of DDR3 1333MHz and Core2 Quad processors on socket 775, while they are stuck on OpenGL 1.4 - see all those used 755 socket motherboards on EBAY with G31 or Q35 chipset.

Believe it or not, this kind of computers support Windows 10 as is. Yep, Windows 10 works fine on them, with no sluggishness, flickering or other issues. I have tested myself.

BUT, thanks of stripping down the OpenGL 1.4 support for desktop effects, on them Plasma5 is sluggish, flickers and has a tearing galore. Meanwhile, the KDE4 works fine, not because it's faster, but because it have support for OpenGL 1.4 for its KWin's desktop effects. And without those desktop effects, the KDE desktop Environments are like a horse without back legs.

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BTW, meanwhile I have worked at a build of previous release Katana 4.21.0 and seems like that that particular release is considerable more stable on Slackware 15.0 than Katana 4.22.0 - who knows, maybe its code matches better the Slackware release, considering that it was released on May 12, 2022

Of course, after some additional testing , I will show the build (tree) to the fellow Slackers.

I for one I am quite happy of how works Katana 4.21.0 - it's rock solid just like KDE4 itself, and the single regret I have is that the Katana developer stripped down the OpenGL support for the desktop effects (and the Blur effect along), leaving only the XRender.

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Just out of curiosity
Is the kwin support for opengl 1.4 the only reason ?
If it is, why not just switch to another WM ?

In principle, yes. According with my own experiments, the root cause of the Plasma5 behavior issues on those computers (capable of OpenGL 1.4 graphics) is the lack of support for OpenGL 1.4 on KWin's desktop effects.

I know, I know, at first sight you are inclined to think that those KWin's desktop effects are a "caprice" . BUT, it's not this way. Without them you have no compositing, and NO many other things ending with an ugly flickering interface.

In other hand, is not that simple. The Plasma5 desktop was designed to run with KWin, not whatever else WM, so switching to another one i.e. XFWM4, will result in malfunctioning. You don't believe me? Please run "xfwm4 --replace" on a Plasma5 session and see what happens.

And the cherry on the top of cake is that there are not so many WM's capable of a fine compositing under OpenGL 1.4 . I for one, I know only about the KWin from KDE3 and KDE4. And anyway, the compositing solve only partially the issues.

Now excuse me that I do not want a malfunctioning crappy, sluggish and flickering interface on my OpenGL 1.4 capable hardware, neither I want XFCE or Trinity, so I build what I am capable to build.

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This thread has gotten me nostalgic. I ran KDE4 with compiz for many years. I remember a hidden feature you could patch in kde-workspace that would allow you to draw a transparent background which in turn would allow you to use compiz-wallpaper to have a different wallpaper on each side of the cube. Yeah it is a useless feature but now I want to play around and see if I can get it running again since I kept the patch around for it.

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LuckyCyborg did you try LXQt 1.2.0? I think it can run any KDE5 application and you can choose any compositor/wm that you have installed like here kwin and compiz but also openbox, fluxbox, marco, fwvm3 and wmaker, in a nice GUI that you can also start in the command line: lxqt-config session. If no one is pre-configured at first start lxqt will ask you to choose one.

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I know what hardware LuckyCyborg is talking about. It's about the old integrated Intel graphics, which are really nasty. I had a motherboard like this.

He is right, only KWin from KDE3 and KDE4 managed to handle them in a reasonable way. You won't do anything with Fluxbox in this situation, nor with LXQt.

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So, attached at this post is my current build system for Katana 4.21.0 , which from my experience is much more stable than 4.22.0 - at least on Slackware 15.0 .

In my opinion, the robustness of Katana 4.21.0 is similar with the one of KDE4 from Slackware 14.2 , then I can say that's "production ready".

The main differences compared with the build of 4.22.0 are an additional package named katana-baseapps and that a libdeflate package is not required.

There are some patches applied and they are found by me in the release page from Github.

https://github.com/fluxer/katana/releases/tag/4.21.0

This time, the katanalibs does not need a custom patch for CMAKE, however that ugly patch is still required if it's about a clean build, with no katanalibs installed. I hope that in future I will find a better fix for this - I guess that's something wrong in CMakeLists.txt files.
You have also a screenshot made for it.

I for one, I believe that I will use this Katana 4.21.0 which behaves OK, the single disappointment being (as noted previously) that the OpenGL support was stripped from KWin's desktop effects, along with Blur.

I think that keeping only the XRender support for the KWin's desktop effects does no favor to Katana - for example on a box with a quad core AMD AM3 Athlon II 605e , 16GB DDR3 1333MHz and integrated graphics Radeon HD4250 (capable of OpenGL 3.3), this XRender is considerable sluggish compared with the Intel GMA3150 integrated graphics capable only of OpenGL 1.4 from my much older HP Elite dc7800 USDT. And as someone will expect knowing KDE4 on XRender, all desktop popups and menus are quasi-transparent.

I really hope that someone much more skilled on C/C++ programming than me, like is @BrunoLafleur or @ctrlaltca, will want to make a patch to bring back those things for KWin, which will be really great for improving the Katana's behavior.

Also, bringing back the (PulseAudio based) audio controls widget from taskbar would be great.

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Attached Files

katana-4.21.0-build.tar.xz.txt (7.6 KB, 6 views)

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The thing is that I do not want something else than a KDE desktop environment.

Honestly, I am truly not interested of minimalist DEs or WMs, unless we talk about emergency shells.