Using FreeBSD as Desktop OS

shkhln said:
Not quite, Quake and Quake 2 default to arrow movement. MDK is similar as well. So, it took roughly 2-3 years at least.
Click to expand...
Yeah they certainly defaulted to it but +mlook found its way into many config files for Quake 1. I think it was default in the quakeworld client (a few years later).
What I can't recall is if the original WON version of Half-Life also defaulted to arrow keys or if you had to customize it.
 
When it comes to desktop environments on open source systems, I've always had a soft spot for KDE. However, I will agree that it was bloated, but in a good way. There was a reason. You could not have that much customization and functionality, without it being that way.
I would liken it to the Porsche 911. A car with the engine in the rear. Back in the day, having a fast 911 was dangerous; If you didn't know how to handle it. So getting its full potential and using it at its peak performance levels was only available to a select group of people. One reason why most manufacturers have been using front or mid engine layouts.
But for the past decades, Porsche has been stubbornly working on this that now, the 911 is basically the benchmark that we gauge all the other would-be sports cars on.

For me, this is KDE. KDE has given us so much in terms of customization and choice, it needed to have it all. The developers wanted it all. But it became bloated and it was slow. It was ridiculed; stating why do we have all of this stuff that we don't need. We need minimalist DEs, faster ones like XFCE, etc.
I like XFCE. If I can't run KDE, that is my DE of choice. But much like the Porsche engineers tinkering with the idea of the rear engined sports car, the KDE developers have been tinkering with their DE and in recent years have managed to chip away the bloat and still retain all the same functionality; to the point that many reviewers are saying its comparable to XFCE in terms of system resource usage. That is pretty impressive and hereby makes my top choice as a DE benchmark that all other DEs should be judged.

Running FreeBSD as a desktop seems to becoming something that I may have to do within a while. I've been running a Hackintosh and MacOS on my system because it works the best for me. With the recent announcement from Apple moving over to their own chips, it would seem the days of the Hackintosh are numbered and I don't want to invest in a new system. I'd much rather save up and get a good Apple silicon mac soon.
But in the mean time, what do I use on my current hardware? Well FreeBSD would be by choice. And so comes this video...

View: https://youtu.be/RO0wOW6_u-A



Although he uses Linux, I would be looking to replicate it on FreeBSD.
 
knightjp said:
I've been running a Hackintosh and MacOS on my system because it works the best for me.

But in the mean time, what do I use on my current hardware? Well FreeBSD would be by choice.
Click to expand...

When you like a Mac-alike DE and FreeBSD at the same time, maybe LIVEstep is something to look at:

github.com

GitHub - probonopd/LIVEstep: Experimental Live ISO based on FreeBSD with GNUstep and other components.

Experimental Live ISO based on FreeBSD with GNUstep and other components. - probonopd/LIVEstep
github.com github.com

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOzMgMj72zw&feature=youtu.be
 
FreeBSD with Kde Plasma right now is at least two times faster than the latest Manjaro Kde Plasma release !!!
Lol everything runs slower in manjaro even if it has newer nvidia driver , also everything feels snappier on freebsd from launching applications to using video editors ,office, programming compiling etc.
The only thing that really makes me ungry is pkg downloading its just slow and with constant delays between downloads, please solve this issue.
 
Tried both,
last time i tried to use google's dns and i think it got better i think i have nearly no delays now but ofcourse the download speed is not ok not for the year 2020 for the year 2009 is fine :-)

Alexander88207 said:
This is still an issue on your side, please check your DNS settings or try to use an DNS server outside of your provider.

If you think its a problem of ports-mgmt/pkg, create a bug report here.
Click to expand...
 
Also installing freebsd on an Efi Only bootable Laptop with Amd cpu , Vega Gpu is hell i tried many times with many switches and settings so i can make it work !
Afters searching on the web i finally succeed configuring it ,everything works touchpad, graphics,wifi,sound but it took me too much time i'm gonna backup this installation with dd just to be sure i will never have to do that again !!!!!


Alexander88207 said:
This is still an issue on your side, please check your DNS settings or try to use an DNS server outside of your provider.

If you think its a problem of ports-mgmt/pkg, create a bug report here.
Click to expand...
 
Sorry to raise an old thread.. I've just taken the plunge and removed macOS from my Hackintosh. Its now running FreeBSD.
WhatsApp Image 2020-10-06 at 22.41.11.jpeg
This is my setup. Or rather was my setup running macOS.

These are screenshots of the system now.

screen1.pngscreen2.png

So far it has been a bit of a journey. It took a bit of time to figure out what I was doing wrong to get xorg working. Then came the installation of KDE. It wasn't as daunting or difficult as I remember it being so many years ago.

So far, here are my impressions and issues.

One of the reasons that I choose KDE was because it was so much more insanely customizable that any of the others. My intentions were first to get the same features that I had on mac. The reason being that I prefer the layout in terms of functionality. I like the global menu and so I did that, but unlike macOS, the top bars don't hide even though I've selected the option. I've spent about 24 hours working at this to get it to this level.

The end goal is this..
ironman.png

I thought I would get a guide and so I followed this video.

I faced a number of challenges trying to install themes. Maybe this might not be top priority with many who are on here, but I like my system to look good.
One of the issues was I kept getting these sddm related errors. Apparently I was missing a dependency. I figured that since KDE was primarily developed for Linux, there were going to be issues.
This wasn't the case. I searched online, I couldn't find the answer, except one FreeBSD user had posted on a thread saying, "I told you not to install that Linux stuff".
It turns out that I needed to install ICODE]pkg install plasma5-sddm-kcm[/ICODE] along with sddm.
That help me follow the video perfectly.
I haven't gone through the whole video. And I will be making more changes as it goes on.
I have to adjust a few things and wire myself to do things a bit more differently than on macOS.

For one, I'm not sure how the copy and paste works on KDE. I preferred the way that the shortcuts worked on macOS. Cmd+Z/X/C/V ,etc. is so much more easier than CTRL. That too in order for to open a new window I have to CTRL + Shift + N. That seems more of a hassle than MS Windows.

Another issue is that I have to keep removing and plugging in my glass keyboard. It get detected when booting up, but that is all. I have to remove the plug and plug it back in so that I can log in when sddm comes on the screen.

I have not tried or checked what might happen if I used xdm. I guess that is for another day.

If anyone has any insight to the issues I've mentioned above, please let me know.
 
knightjp said:
… on KDE. I preferred the way that the shortcuts worked on macOS. …
Click to expand...

KDE Plasma is one of a number of desktop environments that default to using the much the same shortcuts as Windows.

You can change the shortcuts, but in my experience it's better to learn (and adopt) the defaults. Better to learn than to repeatedly find the need to change things.

For anyone whose overriding need is Apple-like behaviour, there are FreeBSD-based distros such as helloSystem.

forums.freebsd.org

helloSystem !

Hello ! what do u think about this new freebsd "distro" based on the macOS interface ? https://github.com/helloSystem/hello let's talk about it !
forums.freebsd.org forums.freebsd.org

knightjp said:
… Apparently I was missing a dependency. … pkg install plasma5-sddm-kcm along with sddm. …
Click to expand...

Not exactly a dependency. Under <https://www.freshports.org/deskutils/plasma5-sddm-kcm/#dependencies> "There are no ports dependent upon this port"'.

deskutils/plasma5-sddm-kcm is simply something that adds value, for people who choose to use SDDM, which is unrelated to KDE. I'll add it to the quick start.

Via x11/sddm:

github.com

GitHub - sddm/sddm: QML based X11 and Wayland display manager

QML based X11 and Wayland display manager. Contribute to sddm/sddm development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com github.com
 
grahamperrin said:
KDE Plasma is one of a number of desktop environments that default to using the much the same shortcuts as Windows.

You can change the shortcuts, but in my experience it's better to learn (and adopt) the defaults. Better to learn than to repeatedly find the need to change things.

For anyone whose overriding need is Apple-like behaviour, there are FreeBSD-based distros such as helloSystem.

forums.freebsd.org

helloSystem !

Hello ! what do u think about this new freebsd "distro" based on the macOS interface ? https://github.com/helloSystem/hello let's talk about it !
forums.freebsd.org forums.freebsd.org



Not exactly a dependency. Under <https://www.freshports.org/deskutils/plasma5-sddm-kcm/#dependencies> "There are no ports dependent upon this port"'.

deskutils/plasma5-sddm-kcm is simply something that adds value, for people who choose to use SDDM, which is unrelated to KDE. I'll add it to the quick start.

Via x11/sddm:

github.com

GitHub - sddm/sddm: QML based X11 and Wayland display manager

QML based X11 and Wayland display manager. Contribute to sddm/sddm development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com github.com
Click to expand...
I would have liked to give "RavynOS" a go. The idea of making a free and open source clone of macOS is the same way that ReactOS is for Windows sounds cool. Even "Hello System" is cool, but I wanted to use the standard FreeBSD and customize it into what I wanted it to be.
Even though the default KDE layout lends itself to a Windows style, from what I've learned about KDE in the past couple of days, its is just a default design. Each item that makes up the desktop are nothing more than panels and widgets arranged that way, hence it can be changed into anything that you wish.
This is actually a brilliant way of doing stuff.
I wanted the macOS style layout of the global menu and the dock. I've tried others but this is what I prefer.

Screenshot_20220517_235358.png
Regarding the additional package I needed for sddm, it was only necessary for me to install it in order to install some themes for KDE. That was why I called it a dependency. If was a poor choice in words. My apologies.
It wasn't really necessary for Sddm's normal operation.
 
I have a new issue.

I have some widgets on the desktop in KDE and when my computer goes to sleep and then wakes, the widgets are not all stacked in the left corner. They're not in the position that I arranged them before. How do I keep the arrangement I want?
 
fernandel said:
I came to FreeBSD 6.?? (forgot) from Linux and all the time I use it as desktop. OpenOffice and LibreOffice were/is good for my job (research) and many presentation which I had/have are made with LyX.
GIMP is on my computer from first version, Blender and Mplayer/Vlc and Aqualung...and very helpful community.
Click to expand...
I need to print some forms where each form is labeled with the date it applies to, and various entries come and go based on the day of the week. (It is a form to keep track of medication for a patient.) I used to use Adobe InDesign data-merge, with an Excel spreadsheet that had an entry for each date, and entries for the variable fields on their appropriate dates.

Since I moved the process over to FreeBSD, I create the form with GIMP, importing a libreCAD file for the tables. (I know I could do it with Scribus, but I find just drawing the tables in a CAD program to be easier than adjusting them in either InDesign or Scribus. YMMV.) I export the main PDF, and then PDFs containing only the variable fields. I use date and enscript to create PDFs with the date text. I then use a shell script that creates a copy of the main PDF for each day of the month and uses pdftk to merge in the date and the appropriate variable fields.

It is a bit more hands-on than the InDesign approach, but it is much more flexible, and takes me a lot less time to deal with changes in medication.
 
I've gotten used to some apps like Firefox, LibreOffice, GIMP, Evolution, and mpv after years on Linux, and those exist on every OS including FreeBSD. It was a matter of installing em after setting up Xfce :)

I've used Xfce on Linux as a fallback occasionally after GNOME and Plasma issues and figured it'd be a safe-choice for starting out on FreeBSD. I'm still liking it after a few days. I mainly want a DE that doesn't interfere with the apps I use, and the largest benefit of Xfce for me is being able to disable the compositor (everything is smoother, and games get the best FPS), and they don't seem to be in a rush to completely depreciate Xorg.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top