Planet Slackware Indonesia

September 15, 2024

Willy SR [SlackBlogs]

Dual Boot Issue After Windows 11 23H2 Updates

If you have just updated your Windows 11 machine recently and suddenly you found out that it broke your dual-boot setup, then most likely you were hit by another big regression by Microsoft. The error message that you might see when you boot your Linux will be something like this:

”Verifying shim SBAT data failed: Security Policy Violation. Something has gone seriously wrong: SBAT self-check failed: Security Policy Violation.”

This issues was caused by a failed mechanism to detect some custom dual-boot environment and it applied a SBAT value which should not be implemented in normal dual-boot environment.

If you are planning to install or happened to install the updates but you haven't rebooted your machine, you are considered lucky as you can prevent this update to be applied during your reboot. In order to do that, open Power Shell (using administrator access) and run:
reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecureBoot\SBAT /v OptOut /d 1 /t REG_DWORD

This will prevent the SBAT update to be applied as part of the August 2024 Windows update and future Windows updates.
 
If you already rebooted and faced with above situation, i would suggest you to read this article. You might need to install 3rd party packages provided by AlienBOB in his repository to get mokutils. In the article, it is suggested to disable secure boot, but i think Slackware will not be able to be installed when secure boot is enabled and active, so i disabled Secure Boot before i install Slackware-Current. I guess that article will be useful for those who have Secure Boot enabled and the Linux distribution that they used supports Secure Boot.

by Willy Sudiarto Raharjo (noreply@blogger.com) at September 15, 2024 07:48 AM

September 01, 2024

Willy SR [SlackBlogs]

My New Ryzen-based Laptop

My current laptop has been around for more than 7 years since i bought it on March 2017 and it was based on Kabylake CPU architecture. I had some fun tweaking it in order to work with Slackware since it was considered new hardware at that time with dual GPU (Optimus), my first dual-boot experience with Secure Boot option in the motherboard and also using grub instead of LILO which i have been used to for more than 15 years. It's still working well and i'm still using it for my daily activities, but since i switched to Ryzen-based CPU for my desktop at home and more recently my workstation at the office and both performed really well with more affordable price as well, i'm tempted to switch to Ryzen-based laptop for my future laptop.

Well, this year i had a plan to upgrade my laptop to a new laptop and i have been eyeing on some products in the market and after one week of researching all the pros and cons, i decided to take on ASUS TUF Gaming A15 (2024). It's a beautiful product with all my requirements are on board:


  • Must have expansion slots for memory and storage because i want to put maximum 32GB of DDR5 5600 MHz RAM and also i wanted different storage disk for Windows and my Slackware. Luckily this product came with 1TB of NVMe-based SSD, so i just need to add another NVMe for my Slackware setup.
  • Generous of I/O ports. This product came with 1x 3.5mm Combo Audio Jack, 1x HDMI 2.1 FRL
    2x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C support DisplayPort™ / power delivery / G-SYNC, 1x RJ45 LAN port, and 1x Type-C USB 4 support DisplayPort™.
  • Must have RJ-45 jack. This is important for me as i still prefer wired connectivity over wireless for stability. Some products have removed this for the sake of weight and compact size
  • I wanted recent processors with AI capabilities, so i'm aiming for Ryzen 9 8945H with 4GHz (24MB Cache, up to 5.2 GHz, 8 cores, 16 Threads); AMD XDNA™ NPU up to 16TOPS
  • NVidia GPU. I'm not a gamer but having dedicated GPU is definitely better, so i picked NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 4060 Laptop GPU (233 AI TOPs), 1940MHz* at 140W (1890MHz Boost Clock+50MHz OC, 115W+25W Dynamic Boost), 8GB GDDR6. The AMD Radeon Graphics is also included as part of the Ryzen CPU.
  • Good battery life. It came with 90WHrs, 4S1P, 4-cell Li-ion, which is very good compared to other products that i reviewed.
  • Silent under heavy load. ASUS is doing a great job on handling the air flows of this product
  • Must be durable for my line of work, and luckily it came with military grade certification MIL-STD-810H

  View of the lid of the TUF Gaming A15, with emphasis on the embossed logo.

This product came with Windows 11 Home installed, so when i got this product, i decided to setup it as soon as possible because in the past, i would need a whole day to setup for each platform (Windows and Linux), but surprisingly, i managed to do it in just few hours.

Once Windows is done, i took my time to prepare the latest Slackware-Current ISO from my local mirror setup at home because i'm using NVMe-based SSD along with newer Ryzen-based processors, so 15.0 might not be a good choice and since i'm already using -current on all my machines at home and workstation, i'm sure that it's a good choice and reduce my problems with newer hardware.

Well, turned out it paid well. The installation went smooth and it was finished in just few minutes and before rebooting, i managed to setup up GRUB instead of ELILO, but after rebooting, it went directly to boot Windows, so i noticed a problem there. It turned out that the GRUB installation was not handled correctly, so i booted again using Flash Drive and i choose boot existing OS and i chose Slackware Linux and from then i followed the same path as before

- Create a new initrd (i know it's no longer used since the generic kernel in -current had all the modules ready, but it's just old habbit and it should be safer, so i ran geninitrd to include all the required modules into initrd file)

- Install GRUB into proper location. The reason it failed during installation was probably because i didn't mount the proper EFI partition from my Windows system so the image wasn't installed properly and didn't overwrite Windows' boot manager. I used this command: grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi/EFI -v

- Update GRUB installation using update-grub script. 

Afterwards, i rebooted and voila, GRUB menu appeared and i went directly to boot my Slackware-Current and man, it was very fast. The boot process only takes like 4s to get the login prompt thanks to the NVMe-based SSD. I started my X session on Plasma 5 and everything is well detected including WiFI, something that often bugged people for days in the past. I don't really configure much on this new laptop as everything is just working out of the box. This is the screenshot from the Plasma 5 system setting.

With basic configuration done, i followed by installing sbopkg to install other packages that i need for daily work and i finished it under an hour or two.

One thing that i still haven't managed to setup is openrgb since my product is not yet listed on their website. It wasn't able to detect my chipset properly so it crashed when i tried to setup the keyboard backlighting, but i don't need that feature anyway. I was just curious about it and i also disabled the backlighting on my Windows setup as well to gain more battery life.

In general, this product works well for me and i'm super happy that Slackware also works fine with this without too much hassle and efforts. I also didn't encounter shutdown issue reported in LQ. If you are looking for a new laptop that works well with Slackware Linux or perhaps with any other Linux distribution (i never tested this yet but i'm sure you should have no issues if you are using recent kernel version), you might want to consider this product on your next wishlist.

by Willy Sudiarto Raharjo (noreply@blogger.com) at September 01, 2024 03:17 AM

June 17, 2024

Willy SR [SlackBlogs]

Cinnamon 6.2 Packages For Slackware-Current

Six months have gone by since i pushed Cinnamon 6.0 packages for Slackware-Current last year and here we are with a new Cinnamon 6.2 packages for Slackware-Current. As with previous releases, upstream never posted anything except for detailed commit logs in their github repository, so based on several sources who gathered information about this release, here are the main visible changes for this major release:

  • Cinnamon sessions now have greeter badges
  • Search bar shows by default when adding to Startup Applications
  • New screen lock delay options: 5 & 10 seconds
  • Workspace Switcher supports removing workspace with middle click
  • Cinnamon Spices now support configurable keybindings
  • Keybindings now searchable (in keyboard shortcuts editor)
  • User applet supports showing user profile pic on panel
  • Mint Menu gains a ‘Science’ category
  • Cornerbar applet makes click actions configurable
  • OSK picks up a toggle to disable the OSK
  • Active VPN connections append padlock to network icons

Upstream also added a new project called GNOME Online Accounts GTK, but i haven't added this into CSB project for now as i'm still evaluating if this is a necessary package to include or not. It's just a GTK front end so if people do not really need this integration, i will skip it until they set it as mandatory.

As usual, the SlackBuild scripts has been pushed to our github/gitlab repository and binary packages has been uploaded to Slackware.UK (Thanks to Tadgy for providing this). Hopefully it will be included in AlienBOB's liveslack images next release. Last update was in January when Cinnamon 6.0 get included.

by Willy Sudiarto Raharjo (noreply@blogger.com) at June 17, 2024 04:23 PM

February 25, 2024

Willy SR [SlackBlogs]

MATE 1.28 For Slackware 15.0

I have finished testing MATE 1.28 for Slackware 15.0 and current and packages for Slackware 15.0 is now available in the usual repository (Thanks to Tadgy for this space). There is no official announcement yet, but the sources have been around for few days, so i guess it's a good time to push the changes and packages to Slackware users. The code is now available in github and gitlab under a new branch: 15.0-mate-1.28. This branch should be used if you are using stable release (15.0) instead of current.

For current users, you need to use master branch as there has been some minor changes for now, mainly removal of 2 packages which are now included in Slackware main tree: libsoup3 and lxml. I will keep track of current changes in master branch only. There are no binary packages for current at this point due to this reason. When upstream pushes changes that only works on current, i will start building binary packages spesific for current users.

There hasn't been any major changes in this release, mainly just minor bug fixes, so don't expect big surprises. It's a small and continuous changes, which is good for stable releases of Slackware. I'm expecting that the next release should be targetted for next Slackware version (15.1).

Just for your information, Johannes Schoepfer also uploaded some of MATE components to SBo, so if you would like to build them from SBo repository, that should give the same results.

by Willy Sudiarto Raharjo (noreply@blogger.com) at February 25, 2024 04:09 AM

December 11, 2023

Willy SR [SlackBlogs]

Cinnamon 6.0 Packages for Slackware-Current

Cinnamon 6.0 tarballs has been released for some time and i didn't push the updates directly because normally it would take some time for upstream to stabilize the project with some minor releases before it's labeled as stable and the new version is announced. Well, it's not really the case for Cinnamon 6.0 where it has been stayed in 6.0.0 in most components for some time, so i decided to fire up my VM and started building it.

Surprisingly, it doesn't take that long to finish building all Cinnamon components this time. Slackware-Current has all the basic requirements except for some new packages that was introduced in this cycle: python3-webencodings, tinycss2 (replacing tinycss), and mint-l-icons as the new default icons theme. I have removed libcroco since upstream is archiving the project and everything is ok without libcroco. I also made some changes to the default schema for new user, which is defaulting the icon theme to Mint-L. One issue with the default icon theme is that it's lacking some default icons in the menu launcher, some of them are important icons, like cinnamon-control-center. With the new icon theme, it works nicely and it has more vibrant colors.

While the biggest thing about Cinnamon 6.0 is about Wayland support, which claimed to be working well in most cases, i haven't tried much during my test. Upstream is targeting for 2026 for complete Wayland transition from Xorg.

Binary packages are uploaded to Slackware.UK repository (credit goes to Tadgy) and SlackBuild scripts has been uploaded to github and gitlab.

Let me know if there's some issues with the build scripts. Until then, enjoy Cinnamon 6.0

by Willy Sudiarto Raharjo (noreply@blogger.com) at December 11, 2023 02:23 AM

August 09, 2023

Willy SR [SlackBlogs]

Adding Intel Microcode to Mitigrate CPU vulnerabilities

If you are concerned about security vulnerabilities affecting your CPU like Spectre, ZenBleed, etc, you might want to add microcode provided by your CPU vendors, like Intel or AMD and also make sure to get the latest kernel that provided the support to mitigate the vulnerabilities.

Installing microcode alone is not enough as we still need to load it early during boot so it needs to be added into your loader, whether you use LILO, ELILO, or GRUB2. Since i'm using GRUB2, this is how you add them. I'm using Intel CPU so i need to install intel-microcode package from SlackBuilds first.

To generate the microcode cpio archive, use this following command:

iucode_tool -S --write-earlyfw=/boot/early_ucode.cpio /lib/firmware/intel-ucode/*

This command will try to seach for the correct signature based on your CPU. In my system, this will results in:

iucode_tool: system has processor(s) with signature 0x000806e9
iucode_tool: Writing selected microcodes to: /boot/early_ucode.cpio

GRUB will detect the cpio archive automatically if it has the name of the following values:  intel-uc.img, intel-ucode.img, amd-uc.img, amd-ucode.img, early_ucode.cpio, or microcode.cpioIf you use different name, like ucode.cpio, you need to open /etc/default/grub and add the following line:

GRUB_EARLY_INITRD_LINUX_CUSTOM="ucode.cpio"

Regenerate grub.cfg by running grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

You will notice that the newly cpio archive is included as well:

Found initrd image: /boot/early_ucode.cpio /boot/initrd.gz

by Willy Sudiarto Raharjo (noreply@blogger.com) at August 09, 2023 04:48 AM

June 07, 2023

Willy SR [SlackBlogs]

Cinnamon 5.8.0 For Slackware-Current

It's been a while since i posted on this blog and last post was about Cinnamon 5.6.0 and now, it's time to jump to Cinnamon 5.8.0 packages for Slackware-Current. It's fresh from the oven and i believe there will be more minor releases to fix bugs that are found after the .0 release, but all the scripts are now pushed to github/gitlab repository and the binary packages have been uploaded to slackware.uk repository (Credit to Tadgy).

Looking at the changelog, i'm interested to add support for multi-touch gesture project called touchegg and Touché. It's not a mandatory requirements, but cinnamon-settings does have this support when the package is available. I will probably try to push it to SBo first before i add them into my CSB repository.

by Willy Sudiarto Raharjo (noreply@blogger.com) at June 07, 2023 05:42 PM

November 25, 2022

Willy SR [SlackBlogs]

Cinnamon 5.6 for Slackware-Current

Three months since i posted Cinnamon 5.4 and here we are with Cinnamon 5.6 release for Slackware-Current. As usual, there is no release notes yet as this post is written, but based on the commit message per components, it seems that this release doesn't have major features compared to previous releases. Most of the changes are refinement to what 5.4 had offered and they want to polish the desktop even further.

I have pushed the changes for building Cinnamon 5.6 to master branch in github/gitlab repository and pushed the binaries into Slackware.UK repository (Thanks to Tadgy). As usual, i tested them using Slackware-Current as base, so i can't guarantee that it will work on Slackware 15.0. There will be more updates to the Cinnamon projects over few weeks before they are finalized.

Please give it a test and feedback on the build script.

by Willy Sudiarto Raharjo (noreply@blogger.com) at November 25, 2022 03:03 AM

August 16, 2022

Willy SR [SlackBlogs]

Cinnamon 5.4 For Slackware Current

I have been playing with Cinnamon 5.4 packages for some time and i think it's now ready since it has reached 5.4.10 and LinuxMint 21 has been released, meaning they have been finalized. One of the reason why i didn't publish it sooner is because i was experiencing crashes on my VBox tests, rapid changes in -Current, and lack of spare time to deal with this project due to my workload at the office.

There are 2 new packages introduced in this new major version: gsound and xdotools. I was trying to remove caribou, cogl, clutter, and clutter-gtk from this version, but it seems that some components still looking for them, so i added them back even though upstream have declared the project no longer maintained.

The new Cinnamon 5.4 comes with a new icon sets and also faster loading time to the desktop (if you are using runlevel 3). Remember that you need proper 3D acceleration in order to use Cinnamon. I tested it under VirtualBox and it worked smoothly. One small issue i found is missing the control center icon on the favorite.

Binaries have been pushed to the usual repository, thanks to Tadgy for providing this repository and the sources have been merged into master branch. Enjoy Cinnamon 5.4 packages on top of Slackware Current.

by Willy Sudiarto Raharjo (noreply@blogger.com) at August 16, 2022 12:17 PM

March 23, 2022

Willy SR [SlackBlogs]

How to Send Patches to SBo

Some people have been asking about how to send patches to SBo when submission is still closed (usually during development cycle for next SBo repository or for a while after new repo is released). There are a few ways to do it:

  1. Use a pull request on GitHub or merge request on GitLab
  2. Send a patch using git format-patch to the mailing list

The first option has its own documentation, so please go look on the specific platform that you prefer. For  the second option, here's how to do it.

  1. Make sure you clone the latest changes from master branch or if you haven't done it, use this command: 
    git clone git://git.slackbuilds.org/slackbuilds.git && cd slackbuilds
  2. Make a new branch (eg. yourname)
    git checkout -B willysr
  3. Make changes to your scripts and commit using this command:
    git commit -asm "category/script: Updated for version X.Y.Z"
    NOTE: 1 commit for each script!
  4. Make a patch using git format-patch and save it to home directory (assuming it's willysr)
    git format-patch master.. > /home/willysr
    NOTE: double dot means from master to latest changes in your branch
    it will give you output like this: 0001-libraries-antlr4-Update-DEP.patch
  5. Send those patches to the SBo mailing list or maintainer to be tested and merged

by Willy Sudiarto Raharjo (noreply@blogger.com) at March 23, 2022 07:05 AM

February 04, 2022

Willy SR [SlackBlogs]

Slackware 15.0 Released

After more than 6 years of development and so many big changes happened during the development cycle, Patrick Volkerding finally released Slackware 15.0 into another stable release. It is the longest development cycle of Slackware so far, but i think it's worth the wait as big changes are integrated smoothly into this release.

Here are the highlight of this release:

  • Kernel 5.15.19 (LTS release)
  • KDE Plasma 5.23.x 
  • XFCE 4.16
  • PAM, Pipewire, and Wayland support
  • ConsoleKit2 replaced with elogind
  • Python 3.9.10
  • Perl 5.34.0
  • Qt5-5.15.3
  • Tetex replaced by Texlive
  • sendmail replaced with postfix
  • net-tool replaced with iproute2 for networking
  • Removal of .la files
  • Wireguard support
  • GTK4-4.4.1

If you appreciate Patrick's work, please consider donating to support the project via PayPal or Patreon.

We are still working on getting SBo repository ready for 15.0, but we are not there yet. Hopefully soon.

by Willy Sudiarto Raharjo (noreply@blogger.com) at February 04, 2022 05:37 AM

August 19, 2021

Willy SR [SlackBlogs]

MATE 1.26 Released

After 18 months, MATE 1.26 is officially released by the developer. The main goal of this release is to add new functionality while maintaining the look and feel and also to fix bugs, modernizing code base, and optimizing performance.

I have built MATE 1.26 packages since last week and publish them on the usual repository (Thanks to Tadgy) and the SlackBuilds to the GitHub and GitLab. There are 3 new packages introduced compared to 1.24 release and 5 packages were dropped since it's now included in the Slackware packages. See MATE-1.26-CHANGES.TXT for more information.

These packages are intended to be built on top of Slackware-Current, not for 14.2 since they require newer library version of what we have in 14.2.

by Willy Sudiarto Raharjo (noreply@blogger.com) at August 19, 2021 05:04 AM

August 04, 2021

Arief JR [Tuxnoob]

June 03, 2021

Willy SR [SlackBlogs]

Initial Preview of Cinnamon 5.x

 I noticed that Cinnamon 5 is now available from their github project page, so last night i started to work on it and it seems that it's a trivial update to the build scripts. There's no hackish or extra effort to update the build script to build the latest Cinnamon 5.x on top of Slackware-Current. Since it was late at night, i finished bumping and i left to sleep while the build machine test the script while i was asleep.

This morning, i can confirm that the build is working fine, thus i uploaded all the binaries to the usual place (thanks again Tadgy for providing this access). All the changes to the build script has been pushed to github as well if anyone is interested to build from scratch.

I don't have any detail about changes implemented in Cinnamon 5, but some of the new features can be seen in the LinuxMint newsletter back in April. The official announcement usually follows after it has been considered stable enough.

by Willy Sudiarto Raharjo (noreply@blogger.com) at June 03, 2021 01:45 AM

May 26, 2021

Willy SR [SlackBlogs]

Moving to Libera

Open source community has faced another drama when Freenode is now being taken over and staffs were resigning and they decided to make a new service based on previous Freenode service called Libera Chat. The service is now up and running and many open source projects and communities are migrating from Freenode to Libera and more will follow soon.

I have registered the same nickname and channels i used (#msb, #sbopkg) in Libera network and so did other projects, like #slackware-help and #slackbuilds. Soon, we will leave Freenode, so if you join our channel in Freenode, it's time to look back on your IRC configuration and set to Libera network :

  • Server: irc.libera.chat
  • Port: 6697

If you have any difficulties connecting to Libera network, please see this guideline. Please note that at this point (May, 26 2021), Libera is still working on providing access via Tor. Hopefully they will enable this service as soon as possible.

by Willy Sudiarto Raharjo (noreply@blogger.com) at May 26, 2021 01:28 PM

May 22, 2021

Willy SR [SlackBlogs]

Running Steam and Windows Games on Slackware Linux without Multilib

Few years ago, i was quite lucky to get 3 free games from Ubisoft Holiday Bundle, Assasin Creed IV: Black Flag, World in Conflict: Complete Edition, and Watch Dogs. I played Assasin Creed IV for a while under Windows in my spare time, but later on, i rarely login to my Windows machine (it's only available on my laptop, not in my other machines), so it's kinda abandoned.

The arrival of Steam under Linux does give some  inspiration, but it also comes with it's own problems. In order to install/use Steam you need to have 32 bit libraries installed. This can be achieved in Slackware by using multilib provided by Eric Hameleers, but you must be really careful when using Slackware-Current since changes in -current can break your multilib. It's not officially supported by Slackware, so you must rely on community to help your issues if you encountered them. Many people have been using this approach and it worked just fine for them. I didn't install multilib on my machines because i'm not really a hard core gamers. I just play games on my spare time and it's not my highest priority.

Few days ago i saw this thread on LQ about running unprivileged containers  and i think it's an interesting topic to try on weekend, so i directly downloaded Conty on my desktop at home (running pure Slackware64-Current) and try to use it and it worked. I'm able to install Ubisoft Connect, the ecosystem of players services for Ubisoft games across all platforms which later can be used to download/install/play all Ubisoft-based games. It's like Steam but coming from Ubisoft. I copied the files from my Windows machine in order to avoid downloading a massive 41 GB source and now i can play my games again.

Conty is a non-root container compressed into squashfs and packed into a single executable based on ArchLinux. You can use this container to run any applications, including games that requires Vulkan or OpenGL. In the project's repository on github, you can also see many other information regarding this project.

So, here's what i did in order to play games on my Slackware-Linux without using multilib:

  1. Download the conty releases (i choose to the conty.sh at the beginning, but later on i switch to conty_lite.sh for lighter version). From the release page: "The lite version (conty_lite.sh) includes everything from the regular version (conty.sh), except for: gcc, mingw-w64-gcc, firefox, meson, cmake and jre8-openjdk." If you only planning to use Conty to play games, i would suggest you to pick the lite version.
  2. Make sure you have Vulkan packages and either NVidia/AMD GPU drivers. This is quite challenging because each release will have it's own spesific version depending on ArchLinux update. Release 1.8 will work with NVidia 465.24.02 while 1.8.1 will work with NVidia 465.27.
  3. You need to set some parameters documented in this page. I use the the second option, which is modifying the /etc/security/limits.conf file and add this following line: <username> hard nofile 524288. Please note that this method only works when you are logged in using runlevel 3. I tried to use runlevel 4 and lightdm and found out that this method do not work. I think because i haven't configure lightdm correctly, but i will leave this out for you to solve. Make sure to reboot after editing this file as the changes will take effect after a reboot.
  4. Run this command: ./conty_lite.sh steam or ./conty_lite.sh lutris to start the installation of steam or lutris.
  5. Once steam or lutris installed, you can start download and play your games directly.

I hope this short article can help for those who wanted to switch to Slackware Linux but afraid of losing their capabilities to play Windows games available on  Steam.

 Update:

Conty 1.10 works with NVidia driver 465.31

by Willy Sudiarto Raharjo (noreply@blogger.com) at May 22, 2021 02:37 AM

April 17, 2021

Willy SR [SlackBlogs]

Slackware 15.0 Beta Announced and SBo Development Cycle

It's a few days late, but Patrick has announced Slackware 15.0 Beta in the Changelog per April 12. It's another milestone after declaring Alpha in February. We are coming closer to final release of Slackware 15.0 after almost five years of development since the release of 14.2 back in 2016. Many things have changes since then and as far as i can see, all the major toolchain is now fixed in Slackware development tree and we are likely focusing to fix the remaining issue reported by many users who have been testing -current for a long time.

SBo is following up by entering the development cycle for 15.0 repository as per this week and submissions is now closed. No new scripts can be submitted unless it's a new dependency for newer version of the scripts available in the repository and it can only be added by admins. Thanks to Ponce's work on tracking -current, his repository has contained a lot of commits fixing scripts to be buildable on current. That will be a good starting point and we will work on fixing the rest afterwards. This process might take some time as some of the scripts are outdated and some are abandoned by the maintainer or upstream.

We welcome any help at this point and we do hope that we can release 15.0 repository the same day as Slackware 15.0 gets released like what we did last time.

by Willy Sudiarto Raharjo (noreply@blogger.com) at April 17, 2021 09:38 AM

February 16, 2021

Willy SR [SlackBlogs]

Slackware 15.0 Alpha 1

It's been a long wait but Patrick has just called the current branch as Alpha 1 as the mass rebuilt due to glibc 2.33 has been done in the weekend. In this massive update, more than 1500 packages were rebuilt against latest glibc 2.33 to make sure it doesn't have any regressions. Please note that the new glibc was just released in February 2021, so it's very new. Good news is that based on most users who have just upgraded, the rebuilt works just fine as expected. I personally have upgraded to the latest version on both my desktop and laptop and it worked just fine. It just takes time to complete the upgrade and remove the .new or merge it with your existing configurations.

So what's next? Well it's definitely working towards more bug fixing and making sure there are no regressions on the default installation of Slackware 15.0. You can help by downloading the latest ISO here and install it on your machine, either via VM or in bare metal and report it to the LQ where Patrick and most of the dev team are there to monitor.

There are still some scheduled upgrades in the future, but they will have to wait until the mass rebuilt is done today and give time for users to test this snapshots. If you are curious, just try to install and use slackware-current now. In my opinion, it's very stable even on daily usage. 

by Willy Sudiarto Raharjo (noreply@blogger.com) at February 16, 2021 05:38 AM

December 29, 2020

Willy SR [SlackBlogs]

XFCE 4.16 Landed in Current

 I never used XFCE before, but i'm curious about this lightweight desktop environment since it's included in Slackware and has just released it's latest release 4.16. The new version drop GTK+2 support and fully migrated to the newer GTK+3. The announcement of XFCE 4.16 showed that this is a major upgrade both in the backend and also in the front-end (UI/visual). They now have the cool icons, many new APIs, support for fractional scaling, and many more.


So i tested to run the new XFCE 4.16 from my desktop at home and here's the default desktop i got

It runs very fast and it's very minimalistic, which i love since i don't need the fancy things on my desktop or any of my machine (i still like KDE/Plasma 5 even though it's full of fancy things).

Big thanks for Robby Workman for his work on packaging XFCE 4.16 so Patrick can smoothly include it on Slackware-Current.



by Willy Sudiarto Raharjo (noreply@blogger.com) at December 29, 2020 05:31 AM

December 20, 2020

Willy SR [SlackBlogs]

Linux Kernel 5.10.x Goes In and NVidia Legacy Patch (309.138)

Linus just announced the next LTS kernel 5.10 last week and 24 hours later, the first point release was released by Greg to revert 2 commits that caused problems, but in less than a week after, it landed straight into Slackware-Current main tree without going into /testing first. So we have a final confirmation that next Slackware release (15.0) will surely use the latest LTS kernel release which will be supported up to 5 years (which will be EOL around 2026).

Up to this point, NVidia hasn't released any update to their legacy drivers, but that didn't stop me to push the upgrades knowing that there's a patch to make the current Legacy driver works with 5.10. I have pushed the patches onto my SlackHacks repository and i have tested it before posting it here. In fact, i'm now running Slackware Linux with Kernel 5.10.1

uname -a
Linux slack64.slackie.org 5.10.1 #1 SMP Sat Dec 19 17:07:30 CST 2020 x86_64 AMD Ryzen 5 1600X Six-Core Processor AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux

One notable differences with previous patch was that it now requires me to run the nvidia-installer with --no-unified-memory parameter or else it would failed to build nvidia-uvm.ko modules. I suspect that this has to do with CUDA things and i don't have it installed on my machine. If you do have CUDA installed, you can try to remove this parameter and see if it works on your machine.

 Hopefully this patch can help users who are still stuck with legacy drivers like me :)

by Willy Sudiarto Raharjo (noreply@blogger.com) at December 20, 2020 04:27 AM

December 08, 2020

Willy SR [SlackBlogs]

Early Preview Cinnamon 4.8

After the big merge (tm) event, i respun two new fresh VM based on latest update on -current and rebuilt all packages for MATE and Cinnamon to see whether there's a breakage or not and it turns out it works very well for MATE. You can use the same script to rebuilt all the packages if it's broken due to the big update.

As for Cinnamon, i'm using this good chance to push the updates for Cinnamon 4.8.x that has been pushed by upstream developers. I had prepared for this launch when vtown was introduced few weeks ago, but i'm stuck at elogind that didn't get pushed to main tree since it's one of the main dependency for Cinnamon packages besides other things. I'm really glad that it was finally pushed and i can push my changes for Cinnamon 4.8 and provide early preview for Cinnamon 4.8 for Slackware-Current users.

Binary packages has been uploaded to slackware.uk (Thanks Tadgy) as usual and master branch has been updated as well with the latest commits.

Let me know if you find any issues running the script or the binaries.

Have fun :)

by Willy Sudiarto Raharjo (noreply@blogger.com) at December 08, 2020 08:16 AM

Big Merge Updates

This is the day!!! This is the Big Merge (tm) day of Plasma 5 and newer XFCE from /testing into main branch. This is also the day of Qt4 and ConsoleKit2 removal from Slackware since it has been replaced by Qt5 and elogind. It took time for Patrick to push all these changes but finally all is in the main tree now and it's time to polish this tree for best release ever of Slackware 15.0.

Since there are a lot of changes (new, removed, upgraded, rebuilt) entries in the changelog, pay attention in the new and removed parts since you don't want to miss them.

LQ community has done a great job of submitting suggestions, testing (and found broken packages), and sending patches to Patrick and we want more of those positive suggestions/comments to improve the stability of Slackware.

I'm looking forward for an Alpha/Beta state of Slackware 15.0 once Pat is finished with some more cleanups after this big merge. Stay tunes and stay safe!!!

by Willy Sudiarto Raharjo (noreply@blogger.com) at December 08, 2020 12:50 AM

November 27, 2020

Willy SR [SlackBlogs]

Thanksgiving Updates

It's Thanksgiving day in the US and Patrick gives a very nice gift to every Slackware users which he posted on his Patreon page. He pushed GNOME-related stacks to main tree (including UPower 0.99.x) and XFCE stack to vtown.

Please note that this update will affect those who are using MSB and CSB projects as some of the dependencies are now part of the main tree, so before upgrading, it would be good idea to remove them first.

For MATE users, here's the list of packages you need to remove:

  • glade
  • libwnck3
  • gtksourceview3
Since UPower has been bumped, i have the chance to bump mate-power-manager to 1.24.x release as well since it requires newer UPower which was the only blocker to bump this package. With this update, all MATE packages are now in 1.24.x release.

For Cinnamon users, here's the list of packages you need to remove:

  • libsass
  • sassc

by Willy Sudiarto Raharjo (noreply@blogger.com) at November 27, 2020 07:48 AM

November 04, 2020

Willy SR [SlackBlogs]

VTOWN Goes to Current

Hey all, it's been a while since i posted here, but today there's a big update that i want to share to all Slackware users who have waited for this to happen and this is one of the remaining part of my wishlist and that is the one and only, Plasma 5!!!

Yes, Patrick has finally decided to push Plasma 5 after coming with teaser in previous updates. At this moment, the Plasma 5 packages are still in /testing directory, but i'm guessing it won't be long until it's merged into the main tree along with other updates. I have downloaded the new Plasma 5 packages at my current desktop at home, but didn't have time to upgrade it this morning so i did test the upgrade on my workstation at the office first and once i confirmed it worked well, i perform the upgrade on my laptop which i used to write this post.

Here's how i perform the upgrade

slackpkg update

slackpkg upgrade-all (to upgrade poppler and libinput first)

slackpkg remove kde (to remove all KDE 4 packages)

cd slackware64-current/testing/packages/vtown

installpkg --install-new --reinstall deps/*.txz kde/*.txz

So for your information, the Plasma 5 that were added today consists of KDE Applications 20.08.2, Framework 5.75.0, and Plasma 5.20.2. This is the latest update from KDE developers per October 2020.

So far, i don't see any major issues with the new Plasma 5, but it will require more extensive testing  to discover issues. I do wish Patrick can keep distributing digiKam. It's a nice application that probably needed by many graphic designers or people that do digital manipulations using digital cameras.

This is the current Plasma 5 screenshot taken from System Settings on my laptop

To prevent slackpkg to revert back to the original KDE 4, put this into your /etc/slackpkg/blacklist until Plasma 5 gets added into main tree: [0-9]_vtown_[0-9]


by Willy Sudiarto Raharjo (noreply@blogger.com) at November 04, 2020 04:32 PM

July 18, 2020

Willy SR [SlackBlogs]

Thunderbird 78 Provides End-toEnd Encryption by Default

I have been using Mozilla Thunderbird as my default mail client application both at home, work, and also on my laptop. It has been working great so far and with the help of Enigmail, it's super easy to send encrypted/signed email messages and also to verify them.

With the latest release of Thunderbird 78, things will change a bit. The new Thunderbird 78 will be a new ESR release and it will be full of new features. However, this new release also comes with a significant changes, which is the removal of the old XUL overlays and moving to support MailExtensions and MailExtension Experiments only. This will hugely impact add-ons, including Enigmail. Developers working on add-ons will have to rewrite some or most of their code in order to work with the new technology.

Other changes coming to Thunderbird is the out-of-the-box support for OpenPGP and End-to-End Encryption by default without using any third party add-ons. It has been requested for so long and finally it made it in this release. However, this feature will not be using GnuPG as the backend just like Enigmail, but they will rely on RNP library. Alas, in this initial version, it will be less feature than what we have seen in Enigmail, but they are working on other areas as the development goes.

New end-to-end encryption preferences tab.

So what is going to happen with Enigmail development? They will cease support for Thunderbird, but the developer of Enigmail has agreed to move forward and help the migration. The work will be ready by the time Thunderbird 78.2 is released in coming months, so if you are currently using Thunderbird 68.10.0 in production environment, DO NOT UPGRADE to 78.0 and WAIT FOR 78.2 INSTEAD!!! If you want to do the initial test on non-production environment, you can try to use the steps from this Wiki.


by Willy Sudiarto Raharjo (noreply@blogger.com) at July 18, 2020 02:37 AM

June 20, 2020

Willy SR [SlackBlogs]

Preparing to move to elogind

Slackware community is very active nowadays, and that's for a reason. They are waiting for the big update coming to Slackware, which is the new Plasma 5 and XFCE. It has been requested for so long after -current start moving, but Pat hasn't made the change until 2020 when big basic components such as Qt5 went in and many followed up.

There were some distractions along the way, such as PAM taking some time to test (it was initially planned for a day or two in testing/), but at the end it was a smooth migration. I barely notice any changes since all the changes happening under the hood and it works well both in my MATE and Cinnamon project (basically for Cinnamon since i already have PAM installed, but not as part of the core packages. It just sit there as a requirement for Cinnamon-screensaver).

For next Plasma 5 and XFCE, there are some another changes needed for it to go smoothly and that's UPower and elogind. Slackware 14.2 up to -current is still using the old UPower which is already deprecated for some time, but since it's related to many other libraries/applications, Pat kept them until it's time to move on with the rest of the projects and i believe it's time. Newer UPower is needed by Plasma 5, XFCE, mate-power-manager 1.24 (it's still at 1.22 for now due to this constraints) and better battery support in Cinnamon.

The other thing is the need of replacing ConsoleKit2 with elogind. CK2 has been inactive for 3 years and i don't see any future development on the project, so we can't rely on it anymore, while Plasma 5 and others need the session management tool which was initially provided by systemd's logind. As Slackware isn't going to ship systemd anyway, the idea is to use elogind, another fork of systemd that focus on logind module only.

Since CK2 is part of the core packages and deals with session management, it must be taken care with caution or else people would ended up getting locked up from their own machine. So Patrick (and alienBOB initially) made some preparations that you can see in the -current ChangeLogs:

a/sysvinit-scripts-2.1-noarch-34.txz: Rebuilt.
       rc.M: check for elogind first so that we can ignore a stale CK2 package.
x/xinit-1.4.1-x86_64-2.txz: Rebuilt.
       When using elogind, start the session on the current console.
       Thanks to alienBOB.
a/sysvinit-scripts-2.1-noarch-33.txz: Rebuilt.
       rc.M: add support for elogind. Thanks to alienBOB.
a/util-linux-2.35.2-x86_64-3.txz: Rebuilt.
       /etc/pam.d/login: support pam_elogind.so. Thanks to alienBOB.

We should be seeing more updates soon, but just as an early warning, please DO READ THE CHANGELOGS and never do blind update.

If you are interested to try the new elogind in action, you might want to see AlienBOB's work on Plasma 5 with Wayland and elogind and Robby's work on XFCE

by Willy Sudiarto Raharjo (noreply@blogger.com) at June 20, 2020 02:27 PM

May 19, 2020

Willy SR [SlackBlogs]

Slackware is now PAM'ified

After three months of testing (initially it was planned to be few days only), PAM is finally merged into the main  tree of Slackware-Current per 18 May 2020. Many people have expected this to happen, they just wait for the trigger and finally Pat pushed the changes today.

Some people have started to panic about the integration of PAM, but really, there is nothing to worry about. Slackware will still keep to it's root and traditions. The integration of PAM is something inevitable as more and more upstream projects requires PAM as one of the authentication mechanism (including my Cinnamon SlackBuilds project) and the myth about PAM being insecure is no longer valid. Other distributions have been using PAM for many years and they do work well, so it should work well with Slackware as well.

Kudos to Patrick and the rest of the crew and some contributors, the integration of PAM is very smooth and there's no breakage at all. Everything works normally before and after the upgrade process as long as you follow the instructions carefully (install those three important packages: pam, libpwquality, cracklib). I have upgraded all my machines (except for my laptop but soon) to the PAM'ified version of Slackware and everything works fine here.

I also took this chance to add PAM support to cinnamon-screensaver and bump some packages in deps for MATE SlackBuilds project. All the packages in MATE are being rebuilt on a fresh Slackware-Current VM using the latest update that consists of PAM packages.

One milestone have been passed and now we are waiting for the next big steps, which is upgrading Plasma and XFCE along with the new UPower.

by Willy Sudiarto Raharjo (noreply@blogger.com) at May 19, 2020 05:01 PM

May 14, 2020

Willy SR [SlackBlogs]

Cinnamon 4.6 Early Preview

Few days ago i saw that Cinnamon 4.6.0 has been released on GitHub and as usual, developers will still release a couple more releases before they mark it stable, but i have made some changes to the SlackBuild scripts and push it to master branch for those who are eager to try the new Cinnamon 4.6.x series.

I believe this version will be used in the next Linux Mint 20 which will be released in June, but i want Slackware-Current users to try this version first :)

So as usual, go grab the latest master commit in github or grab the binary packages in slackware.uk (don't forget to support Tadgy for providing this free service to Slackware community by signing up in his Patreon page).

Any feedback for the project is very appreciated.

by Willy Sudiarto Raharjo (noreply@blogger.com) at May 14, 2020 09:21 AM

December 20, 2016

Arief JR [Tuxnoob]

Testing Sound - Enable Surrounding Sound In Slackware Linux With Realtek Audio Card

The first idea was occured by windows driver, because in my laptop supported dolby sound. So i found the interesting article to enable surrounding sound.
Before you changed the sound, first test your sound with command:

December 20, 2016 01:07 PM

November 07, 2016

Arief JR [Tuxnoob]

August 31, 2016

Arief JR [Tuxnoob]

August 05, 2016

Arief JR [Tuxnoob]

How To: Create Drop Caps In Libreoffice Writer

Drop caps is use a large font like a mass media, magazine, paper etc. That will be stylish or good looking. The time will create in libreoffice.

August 05, 2016 04:18 AM

August 04, 2016

Arief JR [Tuxnoob]

July 02, 2016

Arief JR [Tuxnoob]

Shell Scripts For Backup Files / Directories With Rsync In Linux

This time i’ll share backup files in / Directories, i use Slackware Linux as mainly operating system. The implementation using local linux machine to a remote linux server using rsync command. This will be an interactive way to perform backup files / directory, where you need to provide remote backup server hostname or ip address and folder location.

July 02, 2016 04:46 PM

June 28, 2016

Arief JR [Tuxnoob]

Shell Scripts For Delete Empty Directories In Linux

Many tricks and tips using linux for daily activity, one of them is use linux default program i.e shell script. Persistence shell script is very easy for use furthermore for progammer’s, administrator etc.

June 28, 2016 07:11 PM

Backup MySql Database Linux Using Shell Scripts

The night will discuss about MySql again which previously was discussed Reset MySql [MariaDB] Password. If you have an important data you can create the backup using shell script and if using linux.

June 28, 2016 04:13 PM

June 26, 2016

Arief JR [Tuxnoob]

4 Tools Send Email Subject, Body And Attachment In Mail Linux

Today i will share about mail tools in linux default with shell script, yep this mail using command line not graphical. In Slackware Linux the mail was include 3 tools i.e Mailx,Mutt And Sharutils.

June 26, 2016 11:59 PM

June 21, 2016

Arief JR [Tuxnoob]

Reset MariaDB Password In Slackware Linux

Yesterday, i finished setup mysql a.k.a MariaDB for develop a website in my machine and today i forget the mariaDB password.

June 21, 2016 11:19 PM

June 20, 2016

Arief JR [Tuxnoob]

June 18, 2016

Arief JR [Tuxnoob]

How To - Solved Bluez Disappeared In System Tray KDE Plasma

Yesterday ago, i get problem again. Yeah this problem unimportant too, because this little problem. But i’ll share for those experienced the same thing …

June 18, 2016 11:22 PM

How To - Enable Spectacle For Desktop Screenshot Application

This problem just a little problem, because the KDE default screenshot application is ksnapshot. But if you installing KDE Plasma ksnapshot was removed, and changing to spectacle.

June 18, 2016 10:56 PM

May 27, 2016

Arief JR [Tuxnoob]

April 04, 2016

Arief JR [Tuxnoob]

March 26, 2016

Arief JR [Tuxnoob]

March 05, 2016

Arief JR [Tuxnoob]

January 22, 2016

Arief JR [Tuxnoob]

January 21, 2016

Arief JR [Tuxnoob]

HOW TO: Enable Cups As Printing Media On Linux

Cups Is Software Open Source Printing System, For OS X And UNIX-Like Operating System.

January 21, 2016 02:03 PM

January 19, 2016

Arief JR [Tuxnoob]

January 16, 2016

Arief JR [Tuxnoob]

January 15, 2016

Arief JR [Tuxnoob]

January 14, 2016

Arief JR [Tuxnoob]

January 12, 2016

Arief JR [Tuxnoob]

HOW TO: Fix Problem GIMP After Change Text Tool Always Force Close

Tuxnoob - The real problem of the day ago, like on video. I’m using Slackware and KDE plasma 5 as Desktop Environment, I don’t know whether it be a factor in KDE or nope clearness i got this problem.

January 12, 2016 02:02 PM

January 11, 2016

Arief JR [Tuxnoob]

January 10, 2016

Arief JR [Tuxnoob]