Switching from MATE to KDE

A

attezione

Hello
I had preinstalled MATE, then i decided to switch to KDE. I've installed all needed KDE packages through pkg.

Then changed /etc/ttys
ttyv8 "/usr/local/bin/kdm -nodaemon" xterm on secure

But after reboot, still XDM appears. What i'm doing wrong?

The kernel module is loaded.
 
Kdm is obsolete/unsupported since some years ago. The current login manager supported by KDE is sddm but seem to not have a port for it (yet?), so better give a try to x11/lightdm.

Alternatively, you may find a sddm port on Area51, I do not know.

EDIT: or simple stick with xdm...
 
Hasn't Plasma 5 been out since 2014 or so? I'm surprised it's not packaged yet. Not saying that I really care, it just seems like there's been enough time. From what I've read, Plasma 5.8 is stable now. Maybe there are too many linux dependencies? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
KDM works just fine as I found out here https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/59242/

It may have been better to just install KDE normally instead of trying to figure out your own way, though I'm sure you learnt a lot by doing that (this may have been one of the lessons). :)

Code: 
pkg install kde4

In my experience that installs KDM and KDE starts automatically with that. Make sure you install Xorg first.
 
lonestar said:
Hasn't Plasma 5 been out since 2014 or so? I'm surprised it's not packaged yet. Not saying that I really care, it just seems like there's been enough time. From what I've read, Plasma 5.8 is stable now. Maybe there are too many linux dependencies? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Click to expand...

On the web page is nothing about date and if you ask in the mailing list there are no answer.
 
The lack of Wayland port was the real blocker to have KDE/Plasma5 on Ports. Now there is the Wayland port, I asked on #kde-freebsd a couple of days ago, and they said it should not take so long anymore to have KDE/Plasma5 on Ports.
 
Last edited:
I know you can already compile it from that experimental PC-BSD repo. But for me that's not a real option, compiling an entire desktop environment. So I just use something else.
 
lonestar I saw yesterday on #kde-freebsd kde5 may be on ports about the end of February or begin of March, so the packages should be there at same time too. Anyway, if you want you can install the packages right now using this way:

/usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/area51.conf
Code: 
area51: {
  url: "http://meatwad.mouf.net/rubick/poudriere/packages/110-amd64-area51/"
  priority: 2
  enabled: true
}

Then: pkg ins kde5

EDIT: I am running it on virtualbox and it seem quite stable already. I just couldn't get sddm to work yet, but had not tried hard too...

Cheers! :beer:
 
Ok. I just had to try.

Well, not a disaster. But in my opinion, it's not ready yet. A few crashes, terrible animations, choppy, slow response times.
 
hum. I just use it on a VM from time to time, and some of those behaviours are expected in there, like slow response time for instance.

You can follow the changes on #kde-freebsd, the devs are quite active in there. And you eventually may submit the problems you are experiencing. :)
 
My guess is that's probably about as good as it's going to get with Intel graphics. I've never had good luck with smooth animations. XFCE has been about the best I could do for a good experience. Effects required for expose, sliding animations, etc. make the limitations pretty obvious.
 
I have no experience with Intel graphics, but if I had such limitation on the graphics I probably would use Openbox or another *box WM. i3WM seem to be quite common these days too.

Indeed, I just do not use Openbox because I never had the patience to configure it to look how I want. :mad:

EDIT: IIRC you can use Openbox with KDE instead KWin, it should speed up the things.

I think you would just need to install x11-wm/openbox, after install KDE, and use exec openbox-kde-session on .xinitrc, or select it on the login manager.

EDIT_2: Yes, tried it here (Gentoo/Linux) and it worked that easy, but you would still need to configure some things on Openbox, like transparency.
 
I would never use i3, it's just not my thing personally. The whole tiling paradigm gives me no benefit from a productivity standpoint and it's not worth "training" myself to like it.

Between XFCE and *box, there's really no competition. I've messed with fluxbox a few times just for the hell of it, then at best end up with a poor man's XFCE once it's configured to my tastes. And even then, some window rules just don't function the same.

So I just use XFCE, no problems. I would ideally like to have an expose feature that shows an overview of all open windows, all desktops, etc. (I have tried the xfdashboard thing, and didn't like it.) But it's a minor thing, considering I'd have to install KDE or Gnome to get it, both of which are severely hobbled on FreeBSD from their full potential in my opinion. It bothers me to install a large DE when I can't use half the features that make it a large DE in the first place.

Really the main problems with XFCE that sometimes almost make me wanna run back to Linux are (1) Thunar crashes fairly easily on file operations and (2) Chromium lately has really sucked on FreeBSD. But Firefox mostly works I guess.

Normally I don't care (if it's true) that most FreeBSD devs don't actually use it on real hardware, but these are the types of annoyances that may result from that. Relatively minor but nagging problems take a long time to get fixed, if ever.
 
lonestar said:
… an expose feature that shows an overview of all open windows, all desktops, etc.
Click to expand...

That's amongst my main reasons for preferring KDE.

… xfdashboard …
Click to expand...

http://goodies.xfce.org/projects/applications/xfdashboard/start interesting but ./configure fails – I'm seeking help in irc://chat.freenode.net/#xfce

KDE … severely hobbled on FreeBSD … I can't use half the features that make it a large DE in the first place.
Click to expand...

Which features would you shortlist as unusable?

… Thunar crashes fairly easily on file operations
Click to expand...

Also, are you bugged by https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=216230 (devel/tevent: upgrade from 0.9.28 -> 0.9.31 causes gvfs-mount fail for smb shares, …)?

… Chromium lately has really sucked on FreeBSD.
Click to expand...

I use it so rarely that I can't define the suck. How would you define it?

… Firefox mostly works I guess.
Click to expand...

Yep.

Without wishing to take things further off-topic: do you notice crashing in any particular situation?
 
lonestar said:
Ok. I just had to try.

Well, not a disaster. But in my opinion, it's not ready yet. A few crashes, terrible animations, choppy, slow response times.
Click to expand...
Looks like that kde5 is coming to the ports? There are many "kf5" ports but no instruction in UPDATING how to install KDE5.
 
xfdashboard

Nice, but not as tidy as I'd like:

2017-02-19 09-51 six windows in xfdashboard.png

KDE Plasma 5

fernandel said:
Looks like that kde5 is coming to the ports? …
Click to expand...

I wonder. Toying with a system that's based on FreeBSD-CURRENT,

Code: 
grahamperrin@momh167-gjp4-hpelitebook850g2-trueos ~> sudo pkg update -f
Updating area51 repository catalogue...
Fetching meta.txz: 100%    264 B   0.3kB/s    00:01
Fetching packagesite.txz: 100%  364 KiB 372.6kB/s    00:01
Processing entries:   0%
pkg-static: wrong architecture: freebsd:11:x86:64 instead of FreeBSD:12:amd64
pkg-static: repository area51 contains packages with wrong ABI: freebsd:11:x86:64
…

KDE Plasma 4

A better view of the six windows, compared to xfdashboard:

2017-02-19 09-54 six windows in KDE.png

For the past few months I worked with a sidebar panel including a pager. Screenshots in post 7 under Let's get a desktop screencap thread going - The Lounge - TrueOS Community

This KDE topic, and Installing CDE on FreeBSD, inspired me to make better use of the panel. Essentially, I like an ever-present at-a-glance overview of titles, so I experimented with other things in a separate auto-hiding panel.

I prefer menus to drop down, not up, but Kickoff in a top panel did not work. As I frequently aim for title bars, I found the panel automatically appearing too often. Intrusive.

Experiments with a panel at the foot of the screen:

2017-02-19 09-59 application launcher in panel not responding to keyboard input.png
– I liked the enlarged pager, but the Kickoff menu present by default in the (extraordinarily deep) panel did not respond to keyboard input.

2017-02-19 10-06 time and date messy in a large panel.png
– the combined time, date and calendar works well in some situations but in this case, it was a mess.

Eventually I chose to have the menu between the task manager and the pager.

task manager, application menu, pager.png


It's easy to drag a task from the left to a pager on the right.
 
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