Using FreeBSD as Desktop OS

KDE/Plasma/qt5 solved my problem nicely. My problem was finding a GUI frontend for my web app server software, so that any office worker who was casually familiar with computers could access the server console securely (i.e., with a password), for routine info after a networking panic, or for routine maintenance if it was ever necessary. Rather than, y'know, having to write detailed instructions on how to login to a text terminal and type commands that would be like Greek to them, at a command prompt. Writing such documentation is time-consuming and what-I-don't-like. This was easy enough on Debian using the Mate Desktop, which is remarkably Windows-like and familiar enough to most Windows users.

I read here where several users are using the Mate port for FreeBSD successfully, and at first aspired to be one of them, but when I switch over to the main text-based virtual terminal on my console (ttyv0 i.e. CTRL-ALT-F1), after any reasonable period of desktop activity on the graphical terminal at CTRL-ALT-F9, I see gobs of error messages from something like gnome-keyring-daemon (or whatever it's called), and also from Firefox, which shouldn't be there, and which I don't see when using the "kde5" KDE/Plasma/qt5 port for the same purposes.

The gnome-keyring thing seems to be a Linux thing, nobody is doing any kind of social networking password-remembering type of thing on the server console, I can't seem to figure out how to disable it properly (although I have no problem disabling it on Debian or Ubuntu), and I'd like to simply delete it and be done with it, but it can't be removed without taking the whole of the Mate port with it, because of the dependencies. I have no analysis of the Firefox problem and am not pursuing one.

On top of that, on the older hardware I'm using for server development, a simple task like moving a terminal window is unreasonably slow and sluggish, like trying to drag a bit of tissue paper through molasses. I don't know what the problem is here really because I have no such sluggishness using kde5, LXDE, or XFCE on the same hardware.

The kde5 port has solved all these problems for me, and has thus supplanted the mate port on my FreeBSD machines, although I do like the Mate Desktop on Linux, and I'm still using it for the Debian implementation of my web app server software development. My gut impression (without much research to back it up, really) is that Mate is "native" to Linux, whereas KDE aspires to be better, and probably, arguably, succeeds at being better, at cross-platform portability. KDE seems more "native" to FreeBSD to me, moreso, even than it seems native on Linux. I've tried KDE on Debian, Kubuntu, and even on Linux Mint 19, and on all those platforms I still prefer Mate, but for FreeBSD, so far at least, it's definitely gonna be KDE all the way for me. :)
 
Glad you got that working - KDE was fine for me on Linux but since my switch to FreeBSD, I have gone the opposite direction and gone minimalist. KDE plasma 5 was buggy at the time I tried it on FreeBSD so have gone back to the basics. My desktop now is perfect for me.
 
If I wasn't so enamored of kde5 I'd probably go with LXDE as a more minimalist approach, but admittedly I've been nostalgic about KDE ever since I first discovered it back in the install-freebsd-from-a-series-of-CDs days.
 
I have always been a Gnome user, since v1.0 back in the 90's, but since the 3.0 "upgrade", I dumped it and jumped around, finally settling on KDE. That was on Linux. On FreeBSD I have never used a DE, only window managers, for whatever reason...I don't need all of the functionality a full DE brings - I have the tools I need and I am happy. Currently using x11-wm/windowmaker and x11-fm/xfe for file duties and everything works just fine. I can go even more "minimal" with a tiling wm, or the various other flavors of x11-wm/evilwm that I like. Windowmaker is working well for me so trying to stick with it.

I am just glad we have choices!
 
Tried FreeBSD again. This time I took pictures to show the issues.
The first issue is the errors starting just before the FreeBSD screen.
The second is what happens 1/2 way during the boot where it freezes. This happened 5 times. After 5 presses of the reset button, it came to the third.
The third is where it boots up but takes a long time and has issues with the name of my computer.

After which I installed Openbox and xdm. After which my mouse ceased to work. It worked before. I’ve done the hald & dbus adds to /etc/rc.conf

I’m gonna try again, this time with KDE and SDDM.. let’s see what happens.
 

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Phishfry said:
knightjp your first screen looks like you have a ZFS problem. Have you considered trying UFS. ZFS is a very powerful filesystem but I feel it is good to learn on UFS first. It is much simpler.

I see you have 7 hard drives connected. Why not start with just one.
Click to expand...
It is just one HDD.. I chose the auto-ZFS when installing. I only have two hard drives in the system and one is formatted to APFS and isn’t even touched during the install.
I don’t quite understand why it shows 7. Perhaps I should try UFS, but ZFS is a main feature of why people like FreeBSD and I thought that it would be the best choice then.

Right now I’m having an issue installing Xorg. Didn’t have it before. It stalls on fetching llvm60 when using pkg install method.
 
knightjp said:
Perhaps I should try UFS, but ZFS is a main feature of why people like FreeBSD and I thought that it would be the best choice then..
Click to expand...

I prefer UFS over ZFS. It suits my needs and is easy to work with. The attraction for me is the base system, being able to build my own desktop from scratch and get a rock-solid custom desktop every time without fail.
 
Hm. I think the first one--maybe two--are hardware errors; the first complaining about the disk drive. The last one is only complaining because it doesn't have a FQDN. In 16 years, I've never had any issues installing FreeBSD on any hardware I've had.
 
knightjp said:
It is just one HDD.. I chose the auto-ZFS when installing. I only have two hard drives in the system and one is formatted to APFS and isn’t even touched during the install.
I don’t quite understand why it shows 7.
Click to expand...
Perhaps these are BIOS partitions/BSD slices. Since you have 2 disks, one must have 4 partitions and the other 3.

knightjp said:
Perhaps I should try UFS, but ZFS is a main feature of why people like FreeBSD and I thought that it would be the best choice then.
Click to expand...
Some may staunchly disagree, but IMHO ZFS is overkill for most people. And no, I don't like FreeBSD because of ZFS; in fact I've never used ZFS.
 
Beastie said:
Some may staunchly disagree, but IMHO ZFS is overkill for most people. And no, I don't like FreeBSD because of ZFS; in fact I've never used ZFS.
Click to expand...

And I'll do just that if we are trading IMHOs as that can possibly affect the choice for knightjp :) IMHO, ZFS should be used everywhere unless UFS is strictly required.
 
Call me an end user, but I can’t help thinking if you notice your file system, something has gone seriously wrong. Windows Vista was the only OS I’ve ever used on which the file system was so awful it became noticeable.
 
Ok... This is getting annoying. 3 hours of trying and pkg install has failed about 30 - 40 times. I’m trying to post the picture of the “Operation Timed Out” error and photos keep being loaded upside down.

I have to keep on typing pkg install kde5 for it continue from the place where it stopped fetching.

It did the same thing for the same amount of time when installing Xorg.
What is going on?

I give someone else instructions on installing FreeBSD and KDE and they sail through it. I can get it to even “pkg install” anything without it failing.
 

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I'm seeing the same here at the moment (pkg download timeouts) which could mean it's a general problem with FreeBSD pkg repository, and not your local one.
 
I've also had problems with ZFS, and have gone back to using UFS instead. I tend to blame it on my hardware, but I don't really know why I had these problems.

I haven't done a 64 bit install for awhile, but I always use at least 3 partitions, one for EFI, one for freebsd-swap, and one for freebsd-ufs with its mount point set to "/". The guided UFS partitioning option has worked for me too, in some of my past installs.

I've had problems with timezones which I didn't really understand, but they went away when I set my hardware clock to UTC (Greenwich Mean Time, or 5-6 hours ahead of my local time zone, which is either Central Standard (UTC-6) or Central Daylight Savings (UTC-5). Every time I ever answered the question "Is your clock set to UTC?" with "No" instead of "Yes", I've had a botched install.

I've also seen the error where it complains about an unqualified hostname and tries to send me mail, which then fails, because I disabled the Sendmail service in the System Hardening options. Sendmail then fails, but keeps retrying repeatedly. I read vermaden's installation guide the other day and I noticed that he appends ".local" to his hostname, which I'm guessing might be his workaround for that problem. I usually don't append ".local" to my hostname, but I did try doing it once, and had no problems with it. Alternatively, you might try just not disabling Sendmail... it's possible that whatever message it's trying to send you might be informative. Good luck with it, I'm sure you can get it to work eventually. I had a lot of botched installs until I found a formula that works and stuck with it.
 
I finally got everything installed. On reboot the system stated an uptime of 5 hrs and 38 mins. That’s how long I was at it. The last 30 downloads needed for KDE5 completed in record time; just after I threatened to install Windows 10 if it gave me one more timed out.
Guess my computer hates Windows as much as I do.

I seriously like KDE and all its configurable options. I could make it into the desktop I want.
There is only one issue.. I can’t get my keyboard working with the system now. It will use a generic wireless keyboard I borrowed from my sister, but not my Bastron Glass Keyboard.
Don’t get it. It detected the keyboard during startup and boot. It just doesn’t work after the OS is completely booted.

Hence the reason I’m typing this on MacOS right now.
 
Vull said:
I've also seen the error where it complains about an unqualified hostname and tries to send me mail, which then fails, because I disabled the Sendmail service in the System Hardening options. Sendmail then fails, but keeps retrying repeatedly. I read vermaden's installation guide the other day and I noticed that he appends ".local" to his hostname, which I'm guessing might be his workaround for that problem. I usually don't append ".local" to my hostname, but I did try doing it once, and had no problems with it. Alternatively, you might try just not disabling Sendmail... it's possible that whatever message it's trying to send you might be informative.
Click to expand...

With all due respect, disabling Sendmail because you can't fix the problem sounds like a Linuxism to me and not the way we do things in the Land of the FreeBSD.

All have for my local address in /etc/aliases is this. jitte is my username and unmei my machine. I get my daily mail with no problem:

Code: 
root:    jitte@unmei

Don't feel bad. It took me a long time to figure out something simple as that. I never read the Handbook back then for some reason other than "refusal to do so when advised" and learned things the hard way.
 
Trihexagonal said:
With all due respect, disabling Sendmail because you can't fix the problem sounds like a Linuxism to me and not the way we do things in the Land of the FreeBSD.

All have for my local address in /etc/aliases is this. jitte is my username and unmei my machine. I get my daily mail with no problem:

Code: 
root:    jitte@unmei

Don't feel bad. It took me a long time to figure out something simple as that. I never read the Handbook back then for some reason other than "refusal to do so when advised" and learned things the hard way.
Click to expand...
Thanks, but I never disable sendmail to fix any problem, but rather, because it's offered as a System Hardening option. I normally set all the System Hardening options as security measures. What I was actually recommending in the snippet you quoted was to NOT disable sendmail. I'm not a Linux devotee although I don't dis it, and started using FreeBSD in the late 1990s after reading The Complete FreeBSD by Greg Lehey, before I had even tried Linux.
 
I stand corrected, Sir. I misread what you said.

I don't set all the Hardening Options during setup. These are what I use:

Code: 
Disable process dubugging facilities for unprivledged users
Ramndomize the PID for newly created processes
Insert stack guard page ahead of the growable segments

"Disable reading kernel message buffer for unprivledged users" disables your ability as a user to run dmesg. I set one other regarding tmp files manually in /etc/rc.conf.

I based my statement of it being a Linuxism on recent discussion of how they dealt with, or opinion of, certain with things on thieir dicso of choice that influenced my opinion as a FreeBSD user.
 
Trihexagonal said:
I stand corrected, Sir. I misread what you said.

I don't set all the Hardening Options during setup. These are what I use:

Code: 
Disable process dubugging facilities for unprivledged users
Ramndomize the PID for newly created processes
Insert stack guard page ahead of the growable segments

"Disable reading kernel message buffer for unprivledged users" disables your ability as a user to run dmesg. I set one other regarding tmp files manually in /etc/rc.conf.

I based my statement of it being a Linuxism on recent discussion of how they dealt with, or opinion of, certain with things on thieir dicso of choice that influenced my opinion as a FreeBSD user.
Click to expand...
I prefer FreeBSD myself but I've used GNU/Linux whenever my employers insisted on it, mostly Red Hat in the days before Fedora, and there are still times when I use Debian because the hardware at hand has trouble running FreeBSD. The only OS I really try to avoid is Windows but I'll use whatever people want as long as it gets the job done.
 
Have been using FreeBSD as a daily driver for about a week now. Everything worked out of the box except a couple of things.
I couldn't get x11/nvidia-driver working (I wanna use an external monitor), but solved the problem simply installing nvidia-driver-340 instead of -390.

And I had to add this line to /etc/login.conf to get character encoding work properly.
Code: 
:charset=UTF-8:\

---EDIT
@yuripv Right, thanks. Seems to work the same, still displays the characters properly, but LC_* have changed, so I'll give you that!
 
kstef said:
Have been using FreeBSD as a daily driver for about a week now. Everything worked out of the box except a couple of things.
I couldn't get x11/nvidia-driver working (I wanna use an external monitor), but solved the problem simply installing nvidia-driver-340 instead of -390.

And I had to add this line to /etc/login.conf to get character encoding work properly.
Code: 
:charset=UTF-8:\
Click to expand...

The charset keyword doesn't really do much except for settting the MM_CHARSET environment variable; what you really need is set the lang keyword to anything UTF-8, e.g. en_US.UTF-8.
 
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