How can I add a desktop environment to FreeBSD and make FreeBSD boot with GUI?

soup_sam

I wanted to try FreeBSD, I was aware FreeBSD doesn't come with a desktop environment by default, and I really would like to use a desktop environment, so I installed one, but it just doesn't work. I installed FreeBSD to a HDD (There are multiple storage devices inside my computer's case, one 1TB Samsung SSD on which I installed Windows 10, and 3 Seagate HDDs), I wrote FreeBSD-12.2-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso to a USB pen drive and installed FreeBSD...

Originally asked by user461874 on Stack Exchange (unix) (CC BY-SA 4.0).

uphilltech

Great question — answering as the UphillTech team:

Not intended to answer your question entirely, but worth noting: hald_enable="YES" HAL died around a month before you asked the question here: 2001 is a distant memory. HAL is retired. : freebsd kdm4_enable="YES" That's probably much more archaic. 2018 points of reference: https://www.freshports.org/x11/kde4/#history https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-ports/commit/93d2c4e4f7c7f836b76f793c0f3871201feffe5c . I echo the suggestion to use SDDM . It's consistent with the quick start for KDE Plasma on FreeBSD : https://community.kde.org/FreeBSD/Setup#Quick_start – Graphics first … KDE and the rest … KDE defaults to "Plasma (Wayland)" … That's a known issue; please see the quick start.

Full answer by Graham Perrin: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/694001 (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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