New kde-3.5.5 testing packages

The last several days have been quite busy! :) I've posted some testing packages of kde-3.5.5. They are compiled with dbus, dbus-glib bindings, dbus-qt3 bindings, gamin, and all of the kmail-gpg integration packages, as the goal is to test all of those things as a whole. In other words, if you're just wanting a shiny new kde version number for whatever reason, then these packages are not for you - these are intended for intermediate/advanced Slackware users who are interested in and capable of testing things that are slated for possible inclusion in Slackware -current (of course, whether they are is ultimately Pat's decision, but he is aware of this ongoing project).
Anyway, these need lots of testing, and we'd like to get as much feedback (whether positive or negative) as possible.
There is one bug in konqueror with devices not showing up in it if they're mounted and then subsequently unmounted and remounted (see KDE Bug 136123), but there's little I can do about it until/unless the Konqueror developers address it.
Thanks in advance to everyone who's willing to help out on this.

This will almost certainly be my last post until the holidays are over, so here's wishing happy times to everyone during them.

Slackware Podcast

Thanks to Chess Griffin over at Linux Reality for a nice podcast on Slackware! It's a good discussion geared toward new Linux users (or maybe just new to Slackware), but it's a good listen even for more advanced users. A special thanks is in order for his mention of our SlackBuilds.org project in the interview; Chess has contributed a few good scripts himself to our project... :-)

Also, there's a new version of dbus out (1.0.2), and I've got new packages of it and dbus-glib. Be sure to update them, as there's a security fix included (it's not remotely exploitable though, so no huge hurry).

DBus 1.0 Released; Xfce Rebuild Coming Soon

DBus 1.0 was released a few days ago (thanks to MagicMan for the heads-up), and I've finally got the kinks worked out of the init script for it, so packages of it and dbus-glib (rebuilt against dbus-1.0) are now available. If you were experiencing any bugs with it, be sure to upgrade to the newest version.

In other news, I'm currently recompiling and testing Xfce 4.4rc2 adding --with-sound=alsa to the configure script for the mixer, and preliminary results indicate success :) Thanks to all of you who emailed about it. I'm not entirely certain about this, but I'm guessing that the differences due to 2.4/2.6 kernel headers as they pertain to alsa are responsible for this - the autodetection routines in the configure script don't seem to work with the 2.4 kernel headers, but then, I've not tested it with 2.6 headers (nor do I plan to do so until Pat upgrades them in stock Slackware), so I may be totally off-base on that. Regardless of the cause, the moral of the story is that it should work now with that simple change to the build script. Assuming everything goes as planned, I should have new Xfce packages (in all flavors - with and without {dbus,dbus/gamin} dependencies - available within a day or two. Keep checking the ChangeLog for updates, because it probably won't be posted here.

Packages for xfce 4.4rc1

Well, after much discussion on IRC and various other places, I've got xfce 4.4rc1 packages for Slackware -current built and posted here.
I'm not extremely happy with having to do this, but I was more or less forced to build xfce against dbus and dbus-glib (which required building those two and getting them working). Brian Tarricone (the xfdesktop maintainer) implemented a new Trash icon with some interactive features (for example, an "Empty Trash" function), which depend on dbus. Unfortunately, he's not finished with the code, and he's been away on holiday for the last week or so, and the current state of the code does not allow one to disable the dbus dependency. I've explained it in a bit more detail in the ChangeLog, so read through it if you want more information. The main thing to keep in mind right now is that you MUST install the dbus and dbus-glib packages available from the main package link above, or you should build them yourself with the SlackBuild scripts prior to starting xfce. Regardless of which route you go, make sure you follow the instructions for dbus setup.

This dbus issue should be resolved in the next release candidate of xfce 4.4, so I'll hopefully be able to offer a build without requiring dbus next time.