Salix Xfce 14.0RC2

[gapan]

Our second release candidate for our Xfce edition version 14.0 is now available for testing. Very little has changed since RC1 and hopefully this time all bugs are fixed.

With respect to the installation procedure, the autoinstall bug that RC1 had, has now been fixed. Also, The default filesystem is now XFS, but as always, users doing a manual install can choose between Btrfs, ext2/3/4, ReiserFS, JFS and XFS.

A last minute addition to the default full installation is Sakis3g, along with usb_modeswitch. Sakis3g is a script that makes connecting to the internet with mobile broadband as easy as possible. Important upgrades in the default installation since RC1, are the upgrade of libreoffice to the latest 3.6.3 version and of OpenJRE to version 7u9.

Out mirror of the slackbuilds.org repository now includes limited dependency support. It uses only the data in each SlackBuild's .info file and these are written with the assumption of a full Slackware installation, so some dependencies may be missing in some cases. Software that is already present in either the Salix binary repositories, or the Salix SLKBUILD repository, will not be visible through our slackbuilds.org mirror to avoid confusion with same packages being available in both gslapt/slapt-get and sourcery/slapt-src (although the respective scripts are there for anyone that wants to download them manually).

Please help with testing this release candidate so we can be sure there are no remaining bugs for the final release. You can download either through Sourceforge or using a torrent client.

i686, 32-bit
(size: 664 MB, md5: b90a4a7a6767ab9e6f8025ecb3646ece)
Sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/salix/f ... o/download
torrent: http://salix.enialis.net/i486/14.0/iso/ ... C2.torrent

x86_64, 64-bit
(size: 681 MB, md5: 66db28af828198dd4429389685f2b645)
Sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/salix/f ... o/download
http://salix.enialis.net/x86_64/14.0/is ... C2.torrent

Thanks for testing!

[Huee]

Got this version up on a test machine few hours ago. So far I found more bugs than in RC1:
1) System ignores /etc/hostname and /etc/hosts and names itself as "darkstar" until I use hostname command
2) After a few minutes of normal use, desktop refuses to launch applications. Either from menu or from keyboard shortcut, no app would ever launch until I relog. Already happened twice to me.
3) WINE has gone missing from slapt-src, although pkgs like winetricks or q4wine are still there
4) unzip hangs while trying to unpack some archives with errors like
*** glibc detected *** unzip: malloc(): memory corruption: 0x0000000001976770 ***

Will continue testing tomorrow...

[gapan]

1) System ignores /etc/hostname and /etc/hosts and names itself as "darkstar" until I use hostname command

Nothing changed in that respect. And that's what the Hostnames tool in the system menu is about.

2) After a few minutes of normal use, desktop refuses to launch applications. Either from menu or from keyboard shortcut, no app would ever launch until I relog. Already happened twice to me.

That doesn't make sense at all.

3) WINE has gone missing from slapt-src, although pkgs like winetricks or q4wine are still there

Expected. The reason is in the announcement.

4) unzip hangs while trying to unpack some archives with errors like
*** glibc detected *** unzip: malloc(): memory corruption: 0x0000000001976770 ***

That looks bad. I haven't seen anything like it and I have tried a lot of zip files before I upgraded the package. Can you upload a sample zip file somewhere? unzip 6.0 has a nasty bug and it doesn't handle non-latin charsets properly. unzip 6.10b fixes it, but the fix breaks other zip files completely, it's a bigger problem.

[Huee]

That doesn't make sense at all.

Managed to keep an open terminal now. When this bug occurs, every GUI app states that it cannot open display. Relog (restart of X) solves it temporarily.

That looks bad. I haven't seen anything like it and I have tried a lot of zip files before I upgraded the package. Can you upload a sample zip file somewhere? unzip 6.0 has a nasty bug and it doesn't handle non-latin charsets properly. unzip 6.10b fixes it, but the fix breaks other zip files completely, it's a bigger problem.

Well, I get those errors about 1 in 100 cases. I don't have those archives here, will upload them tomorrow.

And about that hostname and wine... Sorry, my hothead failed again

[witek]

Strange but both midori and firefox crash the whole X when I`m entering this website http://time.is
Chromium and Opera works OK. Maybe this is Ati driver related?
EDIT after reboot it doesn`t crash but shows strange characters instead of digits. I assume the video card is to blame here.

[laplume]

Hello,
Currently testing the release in Virtualbox.
When running Salix Codecs Installer (as root) procedure ends up with an error message 'It Seems you don't have permissions to write the repository files'.
Of course the item Install multimedia codecs still remains in the Main Menu.

No further problems detcted so far.
BTW I was delighted to see that .jar files would open simply using openjre.

I'll come back with more findings, if any.
Regards
Antonio

@Witek: tried the link you posted with Midori. No X crash here. Suspect it's card failure.

Update: seems the problem with the codec installer has gone. I simply rebooted the system and relaunched salix-codecs-installer from the terminal after having made a slapt-get --update & --upgrade; process was executed correctly then.

[Jonny]

... Mozilla Firefox browser has been replaced ... However, Firefox is available in our repositories and any users that feel the need to keep using it instead of Midori can just install it using the package manager.

I am not seeing Firefox in the repositories (used slapt-get and sourcery) - do I need to add additional locations?
On the subject of repositories, is there a list of recommended ones that I can add to the default ones?

Also, I am experiencing complete system lockups occassionally on the system.
The screen freezes and keyboard and mouse are inactive with no drive activity.
I cannot switch to another tty console and have to pull power and reboot to contiinue.
Is there any way that I can find out what is causing this ie logs, disabling services, etc?

[gapan]

I am not seeing Firefox in the repositories (used slapt-get and sourcery) - do I need to add additional locations?

Come on... refresh the package cache first...

On the subject of repositories, is there a list of recommended ones that I can add to the default ones?

There are no other repositories that are recommended. If you wish to add more than the ones already there, you're on your own.

Also, I am experiencing complete system lockups occassionally on the system.
The screen freezes and keyboard and mouse are inactive with no drive activity.
I cannot switch to another tty console and have to pull power and reboot to contiinue.
Is there any way that I can find out what is causing this ie logs, disabling services, etc?

Hardware problems? Check your RAM first, that is usually the culprit.

[Jonny]

Sorry - I'm still a bit of a newbie to Slackware. Had a busy few weeks breaking distros and learning lots!

Come on... refresh the package cache first...

I did "slapt-get --update" as root, a couple of times. Is there something else needed to force a refresh?

There are no other repositories that are recommended. If you wish to add more than the ones already there, you're on your own.

OK, thanks - I shall experiment in adding offical Slackware 14 repos. I assume that building apps from source is recommended.

Hardware problems? Check your RAM first, that is usually the culprit.

Unlikely as I am running Windows and a couple of other Linux distros on the same system (multiboot).
Salix 14 RC1 was fine, it's just RC2 that is having this issue. It is very random - I hate intermittent bugs!
Going to run a full memtestx86 now for a few hours...

[gapan]

I did "slapt-get --update" as root, a couple of times. Is there something else needed to force a refresh?

No, that's it. Now run "slapt-get --search firefox". I suspect you were running "slapt-get --install firefox" which obviously wouldn't work in any case. If you don't know how to run slapt-get, there is a man page and also help through the --help option. You could also use gslapt.

OK, thanks - I shall experiment in adding offical Slackware 14 repos.

These are already there. No need to add what is already added by default.

I assume that building apps from source is recommended.

I assume that you need to read the startup guide first.

Unlikely as I am running Windows and a couple of other Linux distros on the same system (multiboot).
Salix 14 RC1 was fine, it's just RC2 that is having this issue. It is very random - I hate intermittent bugs!
Going to run a full memtestx86 now for a few hours...

It's unlikely it's something specific to salix either, because everybody would be having the same issues. In general: random bugs = hardware problems. Also, nothing much really changed since RC1.