Planet Slackware Indonesia

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.

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.

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

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_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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

 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.

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.

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

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.

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. 

 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.

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 :)

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 :)

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!!!

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.

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]

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 …

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.

| Genymotion Launcher (Screenshot : Arief-jr) |

| Image Source From Wordpress.org |

| VirtualBox Version 5.0.10 |

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

| Wireshark With QT5_GUI |

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.