This year, 2025, the KDE Community held its yearly conference in Berlin, Germany. On the way I reinstalled FreeBSD on my Frame.work 13 laptop in another attempt to get KDE Plasma 6 Wayland working. Short story: yes, KDE Plasma 6 Wayland on FreeBSD works.

This time I followed the instructions from thesaigoneer on Codeberg. It did not feel different from any previous attempt of mine. However, it did work instead of hang, so that’s an important difference.

Here is my summary of those instructions:

  • Install FreeBSD 14.3 from the ISO
  • Change the package repositories to the latest branch
  • Install pkg install pkg and then update the base system with freebsd-update
  • Install the graphics drivers, pkg install drm-kmod
  • Adjust startup (loader.conf, rc.conf) configuration (with future settings):
    • sysrc kld_list+=amdgpu
    • sysrc dbus_enable="YES"
    • sysrc seatd_enable="YES"
    • sysctl net.local.stream.recvspace=65536
    • sysctl net.local.stream.sendspace=65536
    • Edit loader.conf
  • Install KDE Plasma 6 in a minimal way: pkg install seatd plasma6-plasma konsole
  • Ensure that your graphical users are members of video group
  • Reboot and login
  • Create a script for running KDE Plasma 6, with this content and make it mode 0755: 
    #! /bin/sh
/usr/local/bin/ck-launch-session \
  /usr/local/lib/libexec/plasma-dbus-run-session-if-needed \
  /usr/local/bin/startplasma-wayland

After logging in in text mode, run the script and enjoy a modern KDE Plasma desktop with your favorite desktop operating system (that’s FreeBSD, you know) underneath.