Studiosg

En/Trinity desktop environment 14.1.4

Revision as of 10:18, 3 June 2025 by Wikiuser (talk | contribs) (Added page about TDE 14.1.4)
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)

Welcome to Simone Giustetti's wiki pages.


Languages: English - Italiano

TDE 14.1.4 and Slackware 15.0

A semester passed and at last 27th April 2025 marked the official release of Trinity Desktop environment 14.1.4: A desktop environment for Linux and other UNIX-like systems. This is a maintenance release meant to solve all bugs reported in the past six months as well as to add some minor enhancements to the user experience. No major new feature was introduced and the largest part of development was done under the hood, hidden from users. A bunch of optional applications were updated to support cmake builds:

  • Digikam;
  • Krecipes;
  • Ksquirrel;
  • Ktorrent.

The release includes some new themes, color schemes and wallpapers introducing a modern and polished look to the graphical interface. Add some more additions to the libraries and some common programs like codeine and tderandrtray, the closing of all reported bugs and that will result in all the modifications listed in the release notes.

As usual I managed to update the SlackBuild build scripts for Slackware Linux, built, installed and tested packages for the graphic environment, that is my usual choice for virtual machines requiring a GUI and all of the many Arm powered devices laying around the house. Thanks to the few changes introduced, the scripts required only a bunch of updates listed below.

Tdewebdev

The tdewebdev package is the last of the base group built by the scripts. It includes some programs and tools useful for web developers; among them is Quanta+: a HTML and CSS editor comparable to BlueFish in terms of functionality, speed and appearence, but intergrated in TDE.

The XML syntax check functions require debugging support enabled in the libxslt system library. Debugging support was disabled by default with release 1.1.43 of the library included in Slackware 15.0 as reported by an error message lamenting a missing macro definition before aborting the package build. In order to produce an incomplete but working package, the cmake configuration line was updated from 

   # Configure the package
   cmake ${TMP}/tmp-${PRGNAM}/${DIR_SRC} \
      -DCMAKE_C_FLAGS:STRING="${SLKCFLAGS}" \
      -DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS:STRING="${SLKCFLAGS} ${DEBUG_CMAKE_OPT}" \
      -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=${PREFIX} \
      -DLIB_SUFFIX=${LIBDIRSUFFIX} \
      -DMAN_INSTALL_DIR=${MANDIR} \
      -DSYSCONF_INSTALL_DIR=${SYSCONFDIR} \
      -DBUILD_ALL

to 

   # Configure the package
   cmake ${TMP}/tmp-${PRGNAM}/${DIR_SRC} \
      -DCMAKE_C_FLAGS:STRING="${SLKCFLAGS}" \
      -DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS:STRING="${SLKCFLAGS} ${DEBUG_CMAKE_OPT}" \
      -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=${PREFIX} \
      -DLIB_SUFFIX=${LIBDIRSUFFIX} \
      -DMAN_INSTALL_DIR=${MANDIR} \
      -DSYSCONF_INSTALL_DIR=${SYSCONFDIR} \
      -DWITH_OTHER_EDITORS="ON" \
      -DWITH_QUANTA_CVSSERVICE="ON" \
      -DBUILD_KIMAGEMAPEDITOR="ON" \
      -DBUILD_KLINKSTATUS="ON" \
      -DBUILD_KOMMANDER="ON" \
      -DBUILD_KXSLDBG="OFF" \
      -DBUILD_QUANTA="ON"

When run for the first time Quanta+ will show a message reporting the missing xslt support and the inability to use some of its functionality. Whoever needs xslt support should:

  • Rebuild the libxslt library enabling debugging support;
  • Replace the library version included in Slackware Linux 15.0 with the custom one;
  • Rebuild the tdewebdev package using the tdewebdev.SlackBuild script directly; it avoids rebuilding the whole TDE. ero TDE.

Tde-i18n

The tde-i18n package includes localization files for languages other than English, the default one. Some of the languages included in the past are not actively supported anymore thus their descriptor files were removed in order to obtain a lighter package. The removed file list follows:

  • tde-i18n-hsb - Upper Sorbian;
  • tde-i18n-id - Indonesian;
  • tde-i18n-ie - Irish;
  • tde-i18n-ku - Kurdish;
  • tde-i18n-mi - Maori;
  • tde-i18n-mt - Maltese;
  • tde-i18n-nso - Northern Sotho;
  • tde-i18n-oc - Occitan;
  • tde-i18n-ven - Venda;
  • tde-i18n-zu - Zulu.

If in a future release of TDE someone will step up to maintain any of the languages in the list, I'll put the files back, but until then I think it better to remove useless, not working, not actively supported stuff in order to avoid unnecessary issues.

Even if not supported, some partial localization files were present and inducing errors while building the related packages. To avoid blocking errors I added some lines of code to the script which remove the aforementioned files and their related directories: 

   # Remove leftovers from some unsupported packages
   rm -r /tmp/build/tmp-${PRGNAM}/${PRGNAM}-${SRCVER}/${PRGNAM}-ie
   rm -r /tmp/build/tmp-${PRGNAM}/${PRGNAM}-${SRCVER}/${PRGNAM}-ka
   rm -r /tmp/build/tmp-${PRGNAM}/${PRGNAM}-${SRCVER}/${PRGNAM}-zh_Hans

Again, if in the near future someone should step up and fill in and maintain those files, I'll include them back in the fully supported language list, but It is better to remove causes of unwanted hassle until then.

Here is the link pointing to the build tree which enables anyone to build all of the packages for her/his Linux box. The procedure is identical to the one used with previous releases. I'll provide a brief summary below. For the detailed description, please refer to the many TDE related pages in this very web site.

Building Packages

In order to build TDE successfully, please remove any installed TDE package from your Linux box, logout then login again in order to reset the environment variables, removing unwanted TDE options. Before you start you are strongly suggested to:

  • Back-up all of your data, the configuration directory ˜/.trinity and the configuration file ''˜/.tderc in your home directory. I never experienced any data loss or other issue updating, but you definitely want to have a fail-safe in case any of that should happen.
  • Removing TDE packages means no graphical interface will be available since the new release will be ready. The required time interval depends on your machine. You are suggested to switch to runlevel 3 (Command Line Interface) for the duration of the procedure:
   init 3
  • Remove all previously installed TDE packages. To remove release 14.1.3, for example, execute command:
   removepkg /var/log/packages/*trinity-14.1.3*
  • Delete configuration scripts left over by the removepkg command.
   rm /etc/profile.d/tqt3.*
   rm /etc/profile.d/trinity.*
  • Logout, then login again as user root to ensure that all references pointing to TDE are removed from the environment configuration.
  • Install or update some packages required by TDE. Optional packages include:
  • Heimdall;
  • Imlib;
  • Linxslt if you use the XML debug functionality;
  • Compilers and other tools used too build software;
  • Programming languages to bind to TDE (Optional);

If you don't install the prerequisites, some functionality could go missing for the resulting packages.

Ready the Build Tree

The Trinity Desktop Environment includes about 50 packages which require building and installing in the right order. Download the source code, available as a big tar archive, decompress it and move the resulting compressed files in the proper directory.

  • Download and decompress the build tree archive in a local directory. Both /tmp and /usr/src/tde-14.1.4 are valid candidates.
  • Download and decompress the tar archive containing the source code for all of the packages.
  • Move the compressed source code archives in the target directories. Every archive with tar.xz extension to the directory bearing the same name.
  • Set the build options required by your CPU. For a computer with a 64 bit Amd CPU inside, for example, use the following command:
   rm TDE.options
   ln -s TDE.options.x86_64 TDE.options
  • Move to the directory where script TDE.SlackBuild is located.
   cd ./tde_build_script/bin
  • If you wish to build all of the localization packages together with the base ones, update the main build script tde_build_script/bin/TDE.SlackBuild turning lines
      # Build package
   #   bash ./${PKG}.SlackBuild

into 

      # Build package
      bash ./${PKG}.SlackBuild
  • Run the main script and wait patiently for its conclusion:
   sh ./TDE.SlackBuild

The script will build each and every package in the base, library and prerequisite group then install and configure them. A full installation will require several hours. When the script will finish, TDE will be installed and ready for use. The script will stop before its programmed conclusion only when encountering issues such as a missing dependency package, a missing build tool or something similar.

  • Check the Trinity Desktop Environment installation running the startx command to load the graphical interface.
  • Last, whoever usually starts its Linux box in GUI mode should close the TDE session and revert the runlevel to 4:
   init 4

The Updated Build Tree

The updated build tree can be downloaded from the following link: tde_build_tree_sg-14.1.4.tar.xz. The tar archive includes every and each SlackBuild script, patch and configuration file.


CONCLUSIONS

This web page brief instructions to successfully install from source code TDE 14.1.3 on Slackware Linux. Al of the scripts were provided along with some example commands. All the of the build, installation, configuration and subsequent use tests were conducted on 64 and 32 bits AMD CPUs running an up to date version of Slackware Linux 15.0. In conclusion, the deserved praises to all of the TDE developers for their commitment and efforts are renewed. Until the next official release for the usual update.


For any feedback, questions, errors and such, please e-mail me at studiosg [at] giustetti [dot] net


External links


Languages: English - Italiano

Retrieved from "http://www.giustetti.net/wiki/index.php?title=En/Trinity_desktop_environment_14.1.4&oldid=1463"