GUI for FreeBSD

aet said:
Is there a recommended GUI desktop for FreeBSD?
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There's nothing 'official' or 'recommended'. Setting one up is part of the fun. You have options as to which one: KDE, GNOME, XFCE, IceWM, and more. You can ask for pointers on these Forums.

Kind of like designing your own kitchen - you pick out the appliances, flooring, cabinetry, decide what goes where - oh, but you have to make sure you don't create an electrical (or gas) fire hazard along the way, or flood the place out of the sink faucet.
 
While my "daily driver" runs FreeBSD with Xfce, I prefer to post a screenshot of my 12-years-old Netbook running IceWM, just to show how an old machine can still be useful with the right software. This Netbook was nothing to write home about even when it was new. In fact it was underpowered even then - but with the advantage of being extra small and easily portable.
And yet it still works without issues today, thanks to FreeBSD and IceWM. Of course, the hardware won't win any performance awards, but it does the job in a more than decent way. And look at the memory usage - it can even be lower, I just allowed myself a few gadgets. Xfce on the same machine uses about 150 Mb more (still low compared to Mate or Cinnamon, and very low compared to the bloated DEs). You will get similar results with Openbox, Fluxbox, CWM (or tiling window managers like herbslutfwm). So for very low specs just use one of those.

screenshot_2-4-23.png
 
Pap said:
While my "daily driver" runs FreeBSD with Xfce, I prefer to post a screenshot of my 12-years-old Netbook running IceWM, just to show how an old machine can still be useful with the right software. This Netbook was nothing to write home about even when it was new. In fact it was underpowered even then - but with the advantage of being extra small and easily portable.
And yet it still works without issues today, thanks to FreeBSD and IceWM. Of course, the hardware won't win any performance awards, but it does the job in a more than decent way. And look at the memory usage - it can even be lower, I just allowed myself a few gadgets. Xfce on the same machine uses about 150 Mb more (still low compared to Mate or Cinnamon, and very low compared to the bloated DEs). You will get similar results with Openbox, Fluxbox, CWM (or tiling window managers like herbslutfwm). So for very low specs just use one of those.

View attachment 15979
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This scene made netbooks cool for me:
 
alexseitsinger said:
This scene made netbooks cool for me:
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This was actually an Atari (DIP) Portfolio, a palmtop running DIP DOS. My Netbook is a monster PC compared to that one. Not that I wouldn't want to have one though.

At any rate, there is a plethora of old computers that can have a second life with FreeBSD, instead of collecting dust in the attic. And by the way this used to be true for some GNU/Linux distributions as well, but not anymore. Many old netbooks/laptops won't run the vast majority of even lightweight Linuxes, because glibc 2.36 or newer is incompatible with them. FreeBSD has its own libc and it's not affected.
 
I had gnome on Linux Debian6. On the 90s. Its built for Linux since freeBSD was born then. Also Afterstep in Debian6.
 
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