GUI for FreeBSD

drhowarddrfine said:
My point was that the overall operation of a gui system is contained within itself. The only potential problems are interfacing with the OS. Any bugs within the desktop system have nothing to do with FreeBSD or any other operating system. The post I was responding to seemed to think that FreeBSD would be the problem when it's not.
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I think the most important thing is that it's possible as it is, but it's not optimal and never should be considered as an exemplary case. I'm having fun running non-desktop system on desktop, but it's important to warn others. The less they rely on GUI the less problems they will have.
 
The only thing I miss about Linux it is a fully integrated plasma desktop running with less then 1gb of ram. My two best plasma experience was on Gentoo and Slackware.

Unfortunately plasma it is very laggy (and sometimes freezes) on my T430 with FreeBSD. So I run xfce instead T.T
 
For a lightweight but fully-featured desktop, I would recommend Xfce. The more popular KDE and Gnome are bloated, without offering something you can't do with Xfce. MATE and Cinnamon are somewhere in the middle, performance-wise. All things considered, I still think Xfce is the best choice.
For very old machines with (1 Gb of RAM or even less, weak CPU and GPU) I would recommend IceWM as a better choice. Some people might argue IceWM is more like a window manager instead of a "desktop" (perhaps that's why it is not mentioned in the documentation about desktops). However with some tweaking, IceWM looks great and has all the features of a light desktop. Even though Xfce works well on very old machines, you will get better performance with IceWM - and it uses less memory (~100-150 Mb less than Xfce, depending on your configuration). I have a very old Netbook which runs surprisingly well with FreeBSD and IceWM.

Both Xfce and IceWM are pretty easy to install in FreeBSD. Configuring the desktop to your liking can be done graphically in Xfce, while for IceWM you will need to edit some self-explanatory configuration files (nothing complicated).
 
This is my XFCE build.
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Maybe Windows' GUI could be described as "better integrated" but "better optimised" is a bit of a stretch. Ever since Windows Vista, I've found I have to wait about a minute in between first seeing the desktop, and actually being able to have things respond when I click on them.
In any case, is it actually good when things are more tightly integrated? Like having a GUI in the kernel? If I keep my grandmother in the toilet and say she's better integrated that way, it may be true but I think my relatives will complain.
 
ProphetOfDoom said:
Maybe Windows' GUI could be described as "better integrated" but "better optimised" is a bit of a stretch. Ever since Windows Vista, I've found I have to wait about a minute in between first seeing the desktop, and actually being able to have things respond when I click on them.
In any case, is it actually good when things are more tightly integrated? Like having a GUI in the kernel? If I keep my grandmother in the toilet and say she's better integrated that way, it may be true but I think my relatives will complain.
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Vista was like beta at that time. What I meant was how responsive was desktop under load. Not loading time. It directly depends on how it is integrated and built as a part of the design. For the same reason Mac OS doesn't use pure FreeBSD kernel but instead it is a hybrid with Mach and all the GUI tests made 'in house'. The lagging problem may be solved in complex with the rest of the system.

My version, I don't rely on GUI much:

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I apologise if I sounded confrontational, definitely not intentional, I'm not really fussed about other people's GUI choices/experiences so long as theyre happy, I just like a colourful discussion. I'm a GUI connoisseur and FreeBSD has given me the smoothest KDE experience I've ever enjoyed. I tend to view the moments in between installing FreeBSD and getting X up and running like an unnerving chasm I have to leap over (probably in the minority there). I have to say though, if Windows is theoretically more responsive then... why isn't it more responsive?
 
ProphetOfDoom said:
I apologise if I sounded confrontational, definitely not intentional, I'm not really fussed about other people's GUI choices/experiences so long as theyre happy, I just like a colourful discussion. I'm a GUI connoisseur and FreeBSD has given me the smoothest KDE experience I've ever enjoyed. I tend to view the moments in between installing FreeBSD and getting X up and running like an unnerving chasm I have to leap over (probably in the minority there). I have to say though, if Windows is theoretically more responsive then... why isn't it more responsive?
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Because it's too busy communicating with home base and "fearless leader"ship... and its plethora of commercial advertisers?
 
I started on FreeBSD a number of years ago with a fluxbox (a wm rather than a desktop) and then went to gnome - took a break from freebsd for about 10 years :)-) then more recently I have been experimenting with Xmonad (now on freebsd 13.1. (A minimalistic tiled window manager written in Haskell).

Playing around configuring window managers can become a hobby in itself, especially to get it customized how you like it and I realized I was spending too much time addicted to that so I recently went back to using a stock configuration of XFCE and I really like it. It does have tiled support as well and I have been able to customize it the way I like it with fairly minimal effort. If you want a solid desktop environment that works pretty well out of the box I would highly recommend XFCE. I have have combined it with slim as a login manager and they both work great. I have XFCE working with a dual monitor setup - a few hoops to shoot through to get it working but I think I going to stay with XFCE. I occasionally will run windows 10 on the same system and everything is much slower in comparison to XFCE on FreeBSD. I am running a bare metal installation (not a VM).
 
Ogis said:
I use motif because i have a mission critical applications that requires 24x7-uptime. On the second machine i use fvwm.
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What Heresay! you don't have time for MS Windows to lag or crash your precious system? Ha ha /sarc_off I do hear that some Navy battleships and NASA use MS Windows for critical tasks. Ya Right. Linux replace windows users computers in the Space Station.
k2msmith said:
I occasionally will run windows 10 on the same system and everything is much slower in comparison to XFCE on FreeBSD. I am running a bare metal installation (not a VM).
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Running GhostBSD MATE desktop seems, or other desktop on FreeBSD, give the impression of stability and quickness compared to MS Windows. I am glad for Stability of FreeBSD, I open 50+ Tabs on GhostBSD. I have killed the desktop, ran out of memory; swap was not enabled, The desktop stopped, hung up, restarted the desktop and I logged in; started the browser; restored the tabs; was back to running again with out rebooting. Rock Solid Stable
I like that feel of stability and trust the system to continue working. I notice too that windows 10, seems to function slower. Always waiting. FreeBSD seems snappy in comparision. Thank you for confirming what I noticed.
 
Windows runs slower because it has a lot of software and functionalities running in the background that we have no idea what they do. It's a secret ? After all, antivirus eats up 30% of performance.
 
Angrenost said:
Very nice!
I'm new to freeBSD (not yet installed) I'm looking to find my niche when it comes to software like the desktop. In the past I have run KDE, Gnome, and a couple others X's but not Xfce (I might have run it on Redhat 4.x). Can the task bar have smaller icons ?
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Yes, you can set it to adjust automatically or to have a fixed size.

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Most of the famous Desktop Environments available on Linux are also available in FreeBSD ports. FreeBSD tends to be a more DIY thing than most Linux distros. Most Linux distros pick a DE or two, and build around it (pull in a recent kernel/drivers and userland packages). That's what makes those DE's "recommended GUI's" - for those specific distros. Case in point - lots of distros have a "KDE spin".

FreeBSD builds around its own kernel, everything else is just ported to run on it.
 
Install & Setup of FreeBSD 13 on Raspberry Pi 4 & 400 Robonuggie. Older Windows Managers 26 minutes bsdinstall
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Which image file to choose, how to fix an issue with screen resolution, how to update, search and install packages, and how to get a desktop or window manager up and running. This is an update and full video regarding installing FreeBSD on the Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspberry Pi 400.

A Viable Alternative! - FreeBSD 13.0 not RPiOS on the PI 19 minutes Robonuggie XFCE 4.16
In this video we'll see that there is an alternative OS for your Pi... FreeBSD 13.0 is a fantastic OS, mature, efficient and reliable - put this on a low energy, low cost device such as a Raspberry Pi and you have a viable alternative to the Raspberry Pi OS.

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In these days of rising energy costs, the Raspberry Pi offers computing at a very energy efficient rate, and with FreeBSD you have the power of to get things done. I spent a week using it as the only OS and only computer for a week, How did it stack up? Can you make it as your daily driver? The answer is...... Oh, and there are a couple of sneak peeks :)

www.youtube.com/@Robonuggie Channel for wonderful FreeBSD videos
 
e16 then get the epplets off of sourceforge too they are cool, I modify some of them to get them to work with wifi (in linuk) on FreeBSD they do not work as easily ( go figure) but still kind of nice to have installed with e16. then xfce4 is nice too, I start off cli add e16 in my .xinit to start that then use startxfce4 for xfce4 which works out nicely.
 
drhowarddrfine said:
What gui?



Any gui developed elsewhere has little to do with it running on FreeBSD. If it uses standard system and function calls, it should run fine on FreeBSD as on any other system. The only potential problems are the interface between that program and FreeBSD where they may use incompatible calls but that *should* be a minority.
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The GUI ( / ˌdʒiːjuːˈaɪ / JEE-yoo-EYE [1] [Note 1] or / ˈɡuːi / [2] GOO-ee ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, instead of text-based UIs, typed command labels or text navigation.
 
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