Based on Slackware 14.2, the new SlackEX Linux release drops the lightweight Xfce desktop environment for the even more lighter and beautiful Enlightenment desktop environment/window manager. In fact, SlackEX appears to be the only live system that uses the latest Enlightenment release, version 0.24.2.

But that's not all that' new in the latest SlackEX Linux release, which is now powered by the Linux 5.9 kernel series. This not only means better hardware support, but it also means you won't find another Slackware-based live system running Linux kernel 5.9.

• Absolute64-20201103 released

  Based on Slackware64-current.
  Keeping up with wholesale library changes (especially python) and kernels, etc...
  (Will there ever be a Slackware 15?)
  Edited some utilities to adjust to new libs.
  Tighten up the UI/mime/icons.

• Progress on OMLx 4.2

  Work continues on OMLx 4.2. It is anticipated that Beta release should be happening in the next week or two.

• Accessibility audit of Vanilla framework | Ubuntu

  The team behind the Vanilla Framework has a background in development, UX and Visual Design. We all care about accessibility, but none of us is an accessibility expert.

  We were interested in evaluating how well the framework complies with accessibility standards. We decided to start with an internal audit, fix any issues we find, then look for a third-party service to evaluate the framework from the perspective of real-world users with disabilities

The Document Foundation recently released version 7.0.0 of their Libre Office suite of applications. The packages for Slackware-current can be found in my repository. But the situation for Slackware 14.2 used to be different – I got stuck after LibreOffice 6.2 because the newer source releases (6.3 and onwards) require versions of system software that our stable Slackware 14.2 platform does not offer.

From time to time during the last year, when there was time and the build box was not compiling packages, I messed around with the libreoffice.SlackBuild script in futile attempts to compile recent versions of LibreOffice on Slackware 14.2. I failed all the time.
Until last week. After I had uploaded the new KDE Plasma5 packages to ‘ktown‘, I had an epiphany and decided to use a new approach. What I did was: question all the historic stuff in the SlackBuild script that got added whenever I needed to work around compilation failures; and accept that the compilation needs newer versions of software than Slackware 14.2 offers. The first statement meant that I disabled patches and variable declarations that messed with compiler and linker; and for the second statement I stuck to a single guideline: the end product, if I were able to compile a package successfully, has to run out of the box on Slackware 14.2 without the need to update any of the core Slackware packages.

New Plasma5 packages for Slackware-current are ready for download & installation. I skipped July (holiday season) and so here is KDE-5_20.08 aka my August 2020 release. Be sure to read the upgrade instructions very carefully to prevent breakage, because starting with my June batch the goal is to remove Slackware’s ConsoleKit2 and replace it with elogind!.

It would not harm if you (re-)read my previous blog article about Plasma5, “Replacing ConsoleKit2 with elogind – first steps“. It has a lot more detail about the reasons for this move as well as guidance on using the Wayland Window Manager (as a test) instead of regular X.Org. Note that Wayland sessions still need a lot of maturing and X.Org will remain Slackware’s default choice.