The officially official Devuan Forum!

andyprough

Member

Registered: 2019-10-19

Posts: 327  

KDE 5.18.5 packages available for Devuan

Norbert Preining (long-time developer of TeX Live and most TeX related packages for Debian) is maintaining repos for recent versions of KDE: https://www.preining.info/blog/2020/05/ … or-debian/

I've verified they will install on Devuan Beowulf if I enabled the Cere repo at the time of installation. He's got repos that should work with Devuan testing as well.

He's a bit irritated that the Debian KDE group ignored his efforts to bring their packages up to date ("Waste of Resources, Bye Bye Debian KDE Team"): https://www.preining.info/blog/2020/06/ … -kde-team/

He has stated, "If I can do anything else in particular for Devuan, let me know."

PedroReina

Member

From: Madrid, Spain

Registered: 2019-01-13

Posts: 269  

Website

Re: KDE 5.18.5 packages available for Devuan

I've verified they will install on Devuan Beowulf

Good to know. Thank you. Do you highlight any improvement over Beowulf KDE?

farmatito

Member

Registered: 2019-04-29

Posts: 22  

Re: KDE 5.18.5 packages available for Devuan

Hi,
thanks for your great work.
Couldn't your repositories for example be added to beowulf-backports or to another differently named repo e.g "beowulf-innovative"?
This would be an evolutionary advantage over debian and at the same time starting to make devuan the better debian countering some critics like in a recent lwn thread (https://lwn.net/Articles/822066/) about the beowulf release that devuan just exists "to scratch an itch".
Using a clearly labeled repo would also avoid to break the stability of more conservative user and last but not least the work is mostly/already done by Norbert Preining.

Last edited by farmatito (2020-06-07 14:29:48)

andyprough

Member

Registered: 2019-10-19

Posts: 327  

Re: KDE 5.18.5 packages available for Devuan

I've verified they will install on Devuan Beowulf

Good to know. Thank you. Do you highlight any improvement over Beowulf KDE?

Hi Pedro,
It's a good question. Devuan Beowulf offers version 5.14.5 of most KDE packages, so these 5.18.5 packages would bring many new features. For example, I am a heavy user of the KDE Okular PDF reader. In the new packages from Norbert's repos, Okular has some new features like writing text onto PDFs. There are many examples of these new features for the nearly 200 new KDE packages, for example new features for users of the popular Kdenlive video editing package.

If you use Devuan Chimaera (testing) or Cere (unstable), you will get a more recent  5.17.5 version of KDE packages, so you would have many of the newer features. However, the 5.18.5 packages have now received 6 or more versions of bug fixes and stability improvements over the 5.17.5 packages.

More importantly, KDE will release version 5.19 this coming week sometime, and is working on version 5.20 - and these versions will once again have many new features that are useful to KDE users. Norbert Preining has said he will continue to package these new versions as soon as he has the build packages available. So users of Norbert's KDE repos will soon be fairly far ahead of the 5.14.5 and 5.17.5 versions available in Devuan's normal repos.

andyprough

Member

Registered: 2019-10-19

Posts: 327  

Re: KDE 5.18.5 packages available for Devuan

Hi,
thanks for your great work.
Couldn't your repositories for example be added to beowulf-backports or to another differently named repo e.g "beowulf-innovative"?
This would be an evolutionary advantage over debian and at the same time starting to make devuan the better debian countering some critics like in a recent lwn thread (https://lwn.net/Articles/822066/) about the beowulf release that devuan just exists "to scratch an itch".
Using a clearly labeled repo would also avoid to break the stability of more conservative user and last but not least the work is mostly/already done by Norbert Preining.

Hi - this is not my work or repositories, it is by developer Norbert Preining.

Yes, I see it as something that could be a big advantage over Debian-based distros. And Norbert has said he has particular interest in helping Devuan - I think he may be empathetic towards Devuan's goals.

szutt

Member

Registered: 2019-02-03

Posts: 35  

Re: KDE 5.18.5 packages available for Devuan

The funny thing about this lwn thread (https://lwn.net/Articles/822066/) is that the "HelloWorld" guy accuses the Devuan people of wasting everyone's time when he's the one who's just doing it

PedroReina

Member

From: Madrid, Spain

Registered: 2019-01-13

Posts: 269  

Website

Re: KDE 5.18.5 packages available for Devuan

these 5.18.5 packages would bring many new features. For example, I am a heavy user of the KDE Okular PDF reader. In the new packages from Norbert's repos, Okular has some new features like writing text onto PDFs.

Thank you for your info. The new features sound very interesting to me. Specially the Okular ones. I'm too a heavy user of it