Popularity of what? The DE or the base? How many actually understand that the eye candy is not the system?
a) You would normally need to provide good evidence along with a statement such as "True". Have you carried out any studies?
x11-wm/awesome ?
Waste of time when you already have a broad choice of DEs, WMs and other desktop software that work fine on FreeBSD. x11/lumina was started with FreeBSD as the main target (it was later ported to Linux) but I wouldn't call it a success. Join development of your favourite one and make it more awesome!
Or even build your own! Here's TinyWM, a window manager in less than 50 lines of code! Fork it and make it awesome!
/* TinyWM is written by Nick Welch <nick@incise.org> in 2005 & 2011.
*
* This software is in the public domain
* and is provided AS IS, with NO WARRANTY. */
#include <X11/Xlib.h>
#define MAX(a, b) ((a) > (b) ? (a) : (b))
int main(void)
{
Display * dpy;
XWindowAttributes attr;
XButtonEvent start;
XEvent ev;
if(!(dpy = XOpenDisplay(0x0))) return 1;
XGrabKey(dpy, XKeysymToKeycode(dpy, XStringToKeysym("F1")), Mod1Mask,
DefaultRootWindow(dpy), True, GrabModeAsync, GrabModeAsync);
XGrabButton(dpy, 1, Mod1Mask, DefaultRootWindow(dpy), True,
ButtonPressMask|ButtonReleaseMask|PointerMotionMask, GrabModeAsync, GrabModeAsync, None, None);
XGrabButton(dpy, 3, Mod1Mask, DefaultRootWindow(dpy), True,
ButtonPressMask|ButtonReleaseMask|PointerMotionMask, GrabModeAsync, GrabModeAsync, None, None);
start.subwindow = None;
for(;;)
{
XNextEvent(dpy, &ev);
if(ev.type == KeyPress && ev.xkey.subwindow != None)
XRaiseWindow(dpy, ev.xkey.subwindow);
else if(ev.type == ButtonPress && ev.xbutton.subwindow != None)
{
XGetWindowAttributes(dpy, ev.xbutton.subwindow, &attr);
start = ev.xbutton;
}
else if(ev.type == MotionNotify && start.subwindow != None)
{
int xdiff = ev.xbutton.x_root - start.x_root;
int ydiff = ev.xbutton.y_root - start.y_root;
XMoveResizeWindow(dpy, start.subwindow,
attr.x + (start.button==1 ? xdiff : 0),
attr.y + (start.button==1 ? ydiff : 0),
MAX(1, attr.width + (start.button==3 ? xdiff : 0)),
MAX(1, attr.height + (start.button==3 ? ydiff : 0)));
}
else if(ev.type == ButtonRelease)
start.subwindow = None;
}
}
DesktopBSD beat you to the punch on that idea, back in 2016. They actually had a tool like that. You can try getting it into the ports tree here at FreeBSD. As long as you follow the Porter's Handbook, and make your code fit to FreeBSD's established frameworks, you have a pretty good chance of pulling that off.
The minute BSD starts attracting the kind of people who inherently enticed by a fancy desktop environment is the same time we start attracting people who undermine the very things thatare unique benefits of BSD, i.e. stability and security. I myself think there is a strong argument for being cautious who you attract to the BSD community.
