KDE 4.4.0 on Alien Bob's site
 

http://alien.slackbook.org/ktown/4.4.0/ KDE 4.4.0 packages and full instructions. Looks good so far.

Thank you Eric.

samac

Awesome!

Thanks Eric and thanks Samac for letting me know about this.

Thanks for the heads up on this! Eric's on a roll with these KDE updates.

Hmm, I've noticed this new version of KDE does that Windows 7 snap thing.

Neat

I'm running it now. Hooray!

what's new?
 

Besides the 'snap' feature, what else is new in KDE 4.4 from 4.3?

In http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/its-...-kde-sc-4-4-0/ I have added some pointers that deal with the "what's new" of KDE SC 4.4.0.

Eric

Thanks Eric!

I'm on the verge of ditching KDE on my eee pc 1000H and going with fluxbox, but KDE 4.4 with the netbook workspace might just pull me back. I'll give it a try later this week.

The screencasts provided by the KDE team are really nice.
The desktop looks too "shiny" for my tastes, I don't really like the Oxygen / Air themes and how everything seems to be transparent, but the effects & features look good. The integration between the desktop and the apps looks good, and it is something Windows and MacOS do nicely but the UNIX desktops kind of lack.

All the things I considered nice when I first look at a Win7 desktop are now in KDE :-)

I'd like to see a similar screencast of the netbook desktop, I don't own a netbook but still would want to play with it on my 15.4" laptop display.

I am also happy that the previous comments by AlienBob regarding KDE "political issues" finally are not so big to prevent it to be included in Slackware. I mean, if packages could be created so quickly, I would think the integration in Slack is not so hard :-) I wonder if it has something to do with the recent update to the shadow package.

Just waiting 'till the next Slack release, I'm sick of the small annoyances of KDE4.2 but don't have the time, will or bandwidth to go -current.

Not sure how I missed that, but most helpful. Thank you. And thanks for all the contributions to Slackware.

Thank you very much sir. First week using Slackware, and cannot thank you enough for the work you do here. Glad to have such current/stable system =) Only issue so far: plasma or something keeps crashing if I try to switch themes. Switiching from "Air" to "Air for Netbooks" will make the panel and desktop things crash =( Nothing major though, sure it will be fixed in 4.4.1. Oh.. and why wont KDE remember to keep Compositing on after I reboot? Any ideas?



Off Topic: since I am new with Slackware, i was wondering about starting a guide for fellow Noobs such as myself. I found the Slackware Odyssey thread (http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...dyssey-764887/) to be quite helpful. But would like to take it to the next level. Would there be any use/interest for anything like this? Or do most slackers just RTFM?

Very cool! Thanks, Eric. :)

KDE is really getting it right! And thanks Eric!

While kde 4.4.0 seems fine, the latest batches of updates in current broke dri with my radeon 9550 card(opensource drivers) and interacting with qt4 apps are very slow now - changing tabs takes about 1-2 seconds.

I have this error in /var/log/Xorg.0.log:
Edit: Sorry, this lag is gone, probably some service was slowing kde down after login, but i thought it's the same lag i encountered in kde 4.3.4 without dri.

Working great here :). I only had to recompile kde-workspace to apply compiz wallpaper patch.

I can be happy, KDE is every day better and faster.
Thanks a lot for Alien Bob compiling work.

What about the deprecation of HAL?

I started deprecating HAL on my system (upgrading glib2, then udev, then installing udisk and upower, than patching X), but I am running GNOME, and I'm very curious how KDE does with the deprecation of HAL.

HAL is still used in Slackware. It will be upgraded to the latest release soon. HAL is deprecated in favour of devicekit/polkit and its friends, but for a while to come software such as X.Org will keep supporting it.

KDE mainly interacts with DBUS so if you have ripped out HAL, that should not make much of a difference.

In fact, the presence of polkit will enable the compilation of some additional KDE components - such as the font installer - that require extra privileges (in KDE4.4 GUI applications preferably no longer run as root and kauth/polkit are supposed to be used as the authentication framework).

Eric

You may want to start a separate thread for this problem as it's not really about KDE 4.4.0 but about your direct rendering issues (which seems to be a result of not having the 'radeon' kernel module built on your machine, as far as I can tell).

Adam

Hi,

I'm not sure if this note is that important;

'-current' is still on 'Sun Jan 31 19:28:54 UTC 2010'.

Just a heads up! Probably not a major but I'm sure someone will know.

:hattip:

There is nothing being hinted at. Merely, I am building on a Slackware-current that has all those published updates up to and including 31-jan-2010.
Whatever is cooking in Pat's non-public tree has not been used to create my KDE 4.4 packages.

In your other post regarding this piece of text you stated "I smell a RC" but that is really not the case here. In fact, I expect that lots of updates still need to go into -current so a RC is miles and miles away.

Eric

Just upgraded from 4.3.95 to 4.4.0 and found that the virtuosoconverter did not work for me, so I just logged out, manually deleted everything under the ~/.kde/share/apps/nepomuk/repository directory and restarted, as mentioned.
This eye-candy stuff is becoming addictive as more features with real productivity benefits are added. So far this rocks!

@Alien Bob
Thanks also from me for building the packages and making them available. Your efforts are much appreciated.

Three cheers for Alienware! (Oh wait! That names taken... er... Bobware?.. no, not Bobware, that doesn't sound quite right... Ericware?)

Thanks Eric. I also appreciate your efforts. :)

How about "Slackware Alienesque, its out of this world!"

samac

Greetings from KDE 4.4.0! Thanks for all your hard work Eric!

First of all, big THANKS from my side, too! I haven't upgraded to KDE 4.4, but I am using your *totally* stable KDE 4.3.4 and multilib packages --- excellent, really!

Regarding the smell of an RC: IMHO it would make sense, if -current, as it is now, would be released as Slackware 13.1, with the multilib stuff in /extra. Because of the many improvements of mainly KDE since Slackware 13.0 was released, such a release would be well justified, I think. Also, AFAIK, KDE 4.3.4 will be maintained for some time to come.

A release of 13.1 with KDE 4.3.4 now or around Easter would also allow you, the developers of Slackware, and the KDE folks to get the KDE 4.4 stuff including the *kit stuff right. There have been so many statements about the inferior stability of policykit, that I am not really keen to have it soon on my desktop. My understanding is, that the architecture of the *kit stuff is ok, but that the implementation needs some more time to mature.
If this is true, the question is, how long we would have to wait for another release. A 13.1 release with KDE 4.3.4 therefore would make sense to me.

Or are these problems all solved, now?

But: I have developed a lot of faith regarding the decisions of Pat V. and the Slackware crew. So YOU decide, if the next Slackware comes with KDE 4.4 (or even 4.5?) and when it is going to be released.

Best regards!

gargamel

I don't believe Slackware is that close to a release. Perhaps a service pack, sure.

We should wait until at least the GTK and Xfce updates are pushed through. I'm personally glad there isn't a new release of Slackware every 6 months or so just because a few packages had version bumps. Slackware, as always, should be released when ready. Historically this is ~once every 8-10 months, along with the big packages, Xorg, Xfce, GCC, and KDE updates. Currently there's 2 out of 4 (50% done). I'd rather wait until June for Xfce 4.8. If released now, 3-4 months later everyone will demand the new Xfce.

Besides that, the AOLS Fun and Games haven't started yet, so it's still at least 2 months away :)

The fact that KDE4.2 in Slackware 13.0 was pretty much a "It's not quite ready, but we'll make do" release is going to be the main reason people are impatient for the next release. Somehow I suspect that at the moment there are far more people running current than ever before, and purely because of the KDE4 updates. In contrast, anyone using XFCE or Fluxbox are most likely more than happy to sit on 13.0 for as long as it takes.

I don't envy Pat trying to decide when the best time will be. It can't be easy to plan around the rapid rate of change going on with KDE at the moment.

KDE 4.4...wow...very nice..installed in my 64 bit-multilib without a hiccup. Thank you Eric once again for your cool handiwork.

That's just one of the things I love about Slackware...a great community of people who make the distro truly a pleasure to use.

This is *exactly* my point. In fact, I am one of these users. Usually I stick to stable releases, but at the moment I am using -current. And it's totally stable and consistent, so IMHO it could be a valid RC, already

I couldn't agree more! But Pat V. seems to have an extra sense for the right time and will do it right, like always --- I have no doubt!

gargamel

Damn it all! KDE 4.4 even makes me want to try it out! even after my beliefs that Fluxbox is all people need.

Thanks in advance Erick. I'll wait the weekend to download and play with it for the whole 'carnaval'.
Let 13.1 cook the time it needs =]

The XFCE developers pushed back the 4.8 release date to June 12th from April 12th as they first had announced so XFCE is gonna be a while http://foo-projects.org/pipermail/xf...ry/026609.html

On the other hand, since libnotify has been added to Slackware now it would be useful to rebuild exo with it present.

Great! Thank's Eric.

I already downloaded, put on slackware current and burned. Tonight I will test and post the results here!

[]'s

Installed without a hitch. Thanks mate!

Hello,
Can someone tell me when will be KDE 4.4 moved to current?
Or are there some plans to keep KDE 4.3.4 in current?

Thank you for any information.

Best regards,
Jack.

Cheers

KDE 4.4.0 will not be added to slackware-current. That is the reason why I am building these packages and making them available "unofficially". The reason being that KDE 4.4.0 has requirements which Slackware can not satisfy. As a result, the KDE 4.4.0 Slackware packages (the ones I built) miss certain features that require authorization through PolKit: for instance there is no font installer, and it is impossible to change the computer's time and date in KDE 4.4.0. Perhaps other stuff is missing too which I have not yet found, because during compilation I saw many hints that stated "if you would have had polkit you would get extra functionality".

KDE 4.3.5 will get added to slackware-current soon.

Eric

Thank you very much Eric!
Will Slackware-current become satisfy the
requirements KDE 4.4.0 has? Sometime? I would
like this very much. ;)

Best regards,
Jack.

Cheers

Ps: Sorry for my bad english.

Personally, I view that as a good thing. :)

Notice that after the kde 4.4 install in both my -current and 64 -current/multi that slackpkg upgrade-all wants to bring back the 4.3 version. Normal behavior I assume given that 4.4 is not "official"?

Of course. This happens because slackpkg wants to make your system match the official Slackware package set for the version you configured.

Eric

Speaking of slackpkg, you wouldn't happen to have a convenient list of packages to blacklist so that it doesn't wipe out KDE 4.4, would you?

Has anyone told you lately, Alien Bob, how much you are appreciated?

This thread might prove helpful.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ight=blacklist

A list of all packages you have installed which carry my "alien" tag (like the set of KDE 4.4.0 related packages) can be obtained by running:
Dump the output of that command into /etc/slackpkg/blacklist.

You may want to consider if you really want to blacklist the "dependencies" (i.e. the non-KDE core packages) this way, because I know for a fact that ibv4l is going to enter slackware-current soon, and strigi as well as libxklavier packages are going to be upgraded at the same time.
Perhaps you want to use the official packages once they enter slackware-current.

Eric

But, according to your previous post, they won't...?

gargamel

Some of the dependencies will but not kde 4.4 itself

I second!

I third. ;)

gargamel

I fourth. He deserves the Nobel Prize for Services To Slack.

Eric has a "show your appreciation" paypal button on his site :)