Note: FreeBSD 14 is due out in the middle of this year.
Note: FreeBSD has a linux compatibility layer as well as support for wine. It has jails. Jails is a tool similar to containers. BSD does not support LXC as LXC means Linux containers.
The video linked below walks you through downloading and the install FreeBSD and then XORG and then X11 with KDE Plasma. Since the video does this and since I already did it I have not included those steps. The install was near flawless, albeit somewhat dated in the installer’s UX (user experience). As well since the video shows the person installing it into a container it does not cover configuring video hardware acceleration. I added that at the bottom of this guide.
sudo does not appear to be installed by default with BSD so you should install that first.
as root
pkg install sudo
If you are logged in as a user other than root you can sudo -s to get the root login prompt. During your FreeBSD setup you should have been asked whether you wanted to create another user. Do that. You will also be asked which file system to use. I suggest ZFS just to be consistent, and because of the knowledge that it is very stable.
Then execute visudo to add any user to be a sudo user.
visudo
Ensure the user is a member of the group “wheel”
Ensure that the wheel group is set up to execute as sudo. Do this by removing the # tag which uncomments the line.
Exit visudo by exiting edit mode and going to command mode by pressing ESC. Then type :wq!
That will write the file and exit the editor.
Then log out and back in to have the sudo authority take place.
To continue and get plasma up and running you will need to next install xorg.
Do this by running:
sudo -s
That will ensure you are root
Then
pkg install xorg
Let this continue. It downloads a bunch of packages, extracts them and installs them — just like linux.
You can then run startx to test xwindow.
You should then exit out.
At the prompt remain as root
Install x11/kde5
sudo pkg install x11/kde5
This will download and install over 700 packages.
If you are more comfortable with nano install that first before editing the files.
sudo pkg install nano
then you should edit the /etc/fstab file to add a line
The line is as follows:
sudo nano /etc/fstab
proc /proc procfs rw 0 0
Then save and exit.
Then install x11/sddm. This is the display manager.
sudo pkg install x11/sddm
Now you must make it work by editing /etc/rc.conf
sudo nano /etc/rc.conf
At the bottom add a couple of lines
dbus_enable=”YES”
sddm_enable=”YES”
Then save and exit. Then reboot.
You should then be greeted with the SDDM display manager.
ENSURE you switch to X11 by selecting the option on the login screen…in the lower left of the screen.
After logging in you should have plasma 5.
Install a browser.
sudo pkg install firefox
There are some limits but those should not get in the way of using it or playing videos such as youtube, etc.
You can after this add hardware video acceleration.
FreeBSD Enable Graphics Acceleration for your Desktop
Obviously this won’t work if you do this in a VM.
I’ve installed things like: (these are common for me to install)
fusefs-sshfs
krdc
xfreerdp
kodi
mpv
py39 (python – used in things like bpytop (and installed bpytop))
htop
yt-dlp (nice program for downloading videos from youtube)
barrier
rsync
screen
libreoffice
obsidian
thunderbird
yakuake
calibre
flameshot
k3b
ddrescue
apache24
So far I haven’t found a program that I use on linux (at the command line anyway) that I didn’t find the BSD version. I noted that ssh works exactly the same including the .ssh/conf.d/*.ssh along with the jump host.
Apparently the Pithos (streaming music for Pandora) app is also available.