Quite some time ago I wrote a how-to to install modern KDE on FreeBSD. Now that the ports are all in the main tree, things are a lot simpler. So I'm writing it out anew.

  1. VM: Let's start over with a fresh VirtualBox VM, with a 30GB zvol for storage, 4GB RAM, 4 cores of my desktop CPU.
  2. Basic Install: Get 11.x, amd64. Don't bother with src or with a ports tree, since this is going to install from packages. I picked auto-UFS, with MBR, the most straightforward setup. IPv4, DHCP, timezone .. for system-hardening options, I added clear /tmp and disable sendmail, nothing else. That whole process took about five minutes.
  3. Initial update: Run pkg once, to install it. Optionally, run freebsd-update to update the installed system to the latest security patches. Optionally, switch to a local pkg repository. Edit: Switch to the non-quarterly package branch, first. Thanks George.
  4. Basic packages: Run pkg repeatedly:
    pkg install xorg xterm twm # basic X
    pkg install sddm kde5 kdevelop kmail # the good stuff (edit: sddm optional!)
    pkg install virtualbox-ose-additions # only if VBox

  5. Service configuration: Add these lines to /etc/rc.conf (as suggested by the pkg-messages):
    dbus_enable="YES"
    sddm_enable="YES" # edit: if you want to
    vboxguest_enable="YES" # only if VBox
    vboxservice_enable="YES" # only if VBox

  6. Sysctl configuration: Add these lines to /etc/sysctl.conf to make sure Akonadi works:
    net.local.stream.recvspace=65536
    net.local.stream.sendspace=65536

  7. Reboot and login
Screenshot

And there's a few gotcha's:

  • In VirtualBox, sometimes the screen may not resize when you resize the VM window. That's not actually a KDE Plasma problem, but you can run randr --output VGA-0 --auto from a konsole to get it to resize.
  • Akonadi may not start. There's a warning about TIMESTAMP with implicit DEFAULT, something you can find in older KDE Forum posts, too. The fix is mkdir -p ~/.local/share/akonadi/db_data ; akonadictl start .
  • You can logout, but not shutdown from Plasma itself; you can shutdown from SDDM, but don't count on any feedback after you click on the big red (er .. monochrome) off button.

Edit: 1. The packages are only built on the regular package branch, not quarterly, so you'll have to switch to that if you want the packages. I didn't catch that because (right, cheating) I have my own poudriere builds from ports HEAD. 2. SDDM is optional; you can of course use any other DM (be sure to run /usr/local/bin/startkde) or use startx and an .xinitrc file (in that case, use ck-launch-session, so that you can unlock in case of general disaster. 3. Logging goes .. somewhere. Gosh, I can't find any useful output; we'll document that on the KDE community wiki once it's been tracked down. In the meantime, kdebugdialog5 --fullmode can help out. 4. As for KDevelop pulling in the old desktop environment, that's probably solved by switching away from quarterly.