Plasma 5 on Slackware 14.2 - My Install Problems & Fix
 

The title isn't very clear, but here is what happened:

I’m running Plasma 5 on Slackware 14.2, on a 6 year old HP Laptop (dv6-2140ca), with 4GB RAM, and a 750GB HD, and the video card is an independent Radeon HD4650 that has 1GB of memory.

Install #1 – I had a clean full install of 14.2 running with KDE 4.14.3, I removed KDE 4.14.3 and the short list of apps as per instructions from Eric’s README file. I then downloaded Plasma 5, and promptly started the Plasma 5 install, all went well. I rebooted, then ran xwmconfig to change the default window manager for X to Xinitrc.plasma. I then ran startx. The boot / startup was very slow, once loaded…there was no taskbar, so I punched the keystrokes to load desktop effects, BAM! the screen went black. I hit ESC key, I hit enter, and then I did a ctrl-C, that brought me to the CLI. I had windows 10 moment and rebooted : )

Plasma 5 starts up again, and still no taskbar, I right clicked and I had three options, I chose the default taskbar. Now I have a taskbar, the time was wrong, I was unable to change / set the date or time – nothing happened. The OK and APPLY buttons stayed greyed out, the root password request did not happen as well, plus, it was running really slow. So I went to a second install.

Install #2 – I completed a clean install of 14.2, this time without KDE 4.14.3. I installed the KDE 4 apps recommended as per instructions, and then did a Plasma 5 install. All went well. I rebooted, changed to Xinitrc.plasma, and started X (startx). This time it loaded much faster, and I got a taskbar. I was able to change / fix the date & time issue, and I didn’t crash to a black screen when using the keystrokes for desktop effects. Virtually no problems. This install of Plasma 5 is very very fast and snappy, I have tried to find problems, but so far I have yet to come across any issues preventing me from using Plasma 5.

I’m not sure why the two installs were so different, but install #2 seems to be the better way to go, in my humble opinion. Just to see if it was a one off thing, I did an install #1 & 2 on a different computer, I had the same results. It may not make sense, but installing Plasma on top of KDE 4.14.3 doesn’t seem to be healthy, but installing Plasma 5 on a clean install without KDE 4.14.3 works much better. It just runs smoother, and much faster.

Anyway, I’m really enjoying Plasma 5, in my experience, it’s much faster than KDE 4.14.3. I know this is not solving a problem, but why would one install / way be better than the other? Just cleaner? I'm not sure why the experience would be different.

Just sharing how the problems kind of fixed themselves with install #2. I hope it helps if you are having similar problems.

Hmm. Not sure what to think.
What I do is dl everything first. Now I change to XFCE or Fluxbox. Next, enter the directory and load the README and follow the instructions to removepkg some KDE (not all). Then install Plasma 5 according to the directions Eric provided on the README.
Last, change to Plasma 5 and enjoy

Ya, it's puzzling for sure, but at least there is a way to get a positive experience. KDE Plasma 5 is very good, it's finally stable and snappy, I really like it. I am now running it on my main production laptop, I'm very pleased. It looks like KDE 4 will be a mere memory come August (Aug 18th,2016) when KF5 / KDE Applications 16.08 are released, currently Beta. I'm pretty sure the next Slackware release will be based on KDE Plasma 5 - based on this install, it's a treat to run so far.

I think something must have gone wrong on your first install. It shouldn't matter whether you remove all of KDE 4 and then add back in the few packages that are still needed, or whether you just don't remove those few packages in the first place. The end result is the same. That is, unless Alien Bob's list of KDE 4 packages that need to be removed is incomplete, but I doubt that. Either that, or maybe you had some junk on your system during the first attempt that messed something up, since you said the second time you did a clean install of 14.2.

I agree with you that Plasma 5 is quite good right now. I've been running it for a few weeks and my experience has been completely positive.

I use plasma5 since Eric build it, I never had big problems with.

I have a little, helped Eric (modestly, because I'm not an engineer) when I could, her work is of high quality, and I enjoy it, I love plasma5, I am an old kde user since kde-1.0, plasma5 is the best kde major release, for me ;)

well, today could download it and running now plasma 5 !

NICE WORK btw ! !

sorry for bothering ...

ktown is available at slackware.uk mirror. Instead of whingeing about the bandwidth available at Eric's server you should be grateful he is making the fruit of his efforts available to you.

If you'd read his blog, he lists the following (bolded emphasis is mine).

you can use a different mirror, i use bear mirror for the source:

rsync -av rsync://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/alien-kde/source/5 .