A little over a year ago I published an instant-workstation script for FreeBSD. The idea is to have an installed FreeBSD system, then run a shell script that uses only base-system utilities and installs and configures a workstation setup for you.

Instant Workstation script screenshot
Instant Workstation script screenshot

The script lives on GitHub and has had some pull requests submitted and issues filed over the course of a year. I’ve gone and implemented them, so the script is slightly longer and more involved now.

  • Support for more operating environments has landed
  • Support for application installations has landed (this covers basically my own application needs: I tick all the boxes and go to the races, but the support in general is there if someone wants to add, say, Haskell development to the mix)
  • VMWare support was submitted
  • SDDM / polkit configuration has been introduced so you can shutdown / reboot from inside the KDE Plasma environment via the Leave menu. (That’s a tip from Shurik, slightly adjusted to be less overall-permissive, following the polkit manual)

The script is updated intermittently when new PRs come in, or when I have to reinstall a machine and things do not behave the way I think they should. If you want a quick live KDE Plasma experience with FreeBSD, head on over to FuryBSD which does live ISO images with a variety of environments.