Desktop wallpaper with Konqui and FreeBSD Logo

There is no KDE5. There are KDE Frameworks 5 (releasing monthly, now reaching version 5.45) and KDE Plasma Desktop 5 (releasing quarterly, I think, now 5.12) and KDE Applications (releasing semi-anually, called 18.04).

For the FreeBSD ports tree, there is a x11/kde5. It is a metaport, which means it collects other ports together; in this case, x11/kf5-frameworks (metaport for all the frameworks), x11/plasma5-plasma-desktop and a fistful of KDE Applications metaports (e.g. the metaport for KDE games, and the metaport for KDE graphics applications, and the metaport for what-we-consider-essential KDE applications like konsole, konqueror, dolphin, and okular). So, from a bare FreeBSD installation, installing x11/xorg, x11/sddm, and x11/kde5 should get you close to a working modern KDE Desktop experience. Throw in www/falkon and devel/kdevelop for a developer workstation, or graphics/krita for an artists workstation, and you've got a daily driver.

I'm not really happy with naming the port this way, but it is just an identifier that needs to distinguish it from other bits and pieces on the system. And our naming was historically such a mess that it's taken a long time to sort out; there are still some odd corners like x11/kde-baseapps.

KDE4-style exit button

What this means is that KDE4 users and modern KDE Desktop users can now be separated out effectively with the KDE packages on FreeBSD. Since there's no more upstream releases of KDE4-era code and Qt4 was end-of-lifed long ago, I can see us going the same route as Ubuntu (and Debian, and basically everyone else) soon-ish (in FreeBSD time) and handing the whole unmaintained stack to people with an active interest in maintaining it themselves, or dropping it.

Photo of FOSDEM booth with Tobias The elusive Tobias at FOSDEM

Special and exceptional thanks needs to go to Tobias Berner for pushing the last bits to the official ports tree and for catherding this process over the course of several years (of course, you could run a modern KDE Desktop from Area51 since 2016 or so, but not from the official ports tree).

So, what's next? Well, in no particular order:

  • Qt 5.10 in the official tree. We've pushed it quickly to the KDE-FreeBSD CI systems so that git master can continue to build, but it needs to go to the official ports tree too. Main issue is dealing with WebEngine (no surprise there), so we're looking at Qt 5.10 and the unmodified WebEngine from 5.9 -- a FrankenEngine, which, for all its frightening and unnatural connotations, is probably the right name for it anyway.
  • Improving overall system integration and dealing with papercuts.
  • Chasing our CMake and KDE bug lists.
  • Bringing Wayland to fruition on FreeBSD. This in cooperation with the Mesa and GNOME teams.
  • Fixing ports and things all over the tree as we bump into things (I've spent some time with FreeRDP recently, and should say thanks to Kyle Evans for taking my throw-them-at-the-wall patches and making them stick).

That'll keep us busy through 2018.