# Installing kde 5



## ProphetOfDoom (Feb 28, 2018)

Hi, I hope someone can help me.
I just installed FreeBSD a few days ago (started with TrueOS but it felt like an impoverished version of Windows 98) I’m really impressed with FreeBSD and just how _cohesive_ it all is compared to Linux. But I’m stuck on this one thing.
I want to install KDE 5 from git. The reason I want KDE 5 and not 4 is because it is more customisable and I want to make it look and feel more like Ubuntu’s Unity (I know, a niche requirement within a niche requirement )
Here’s where I am. The computer is bulk building KDE 5 with poudriere. It is taking hours because it only has a Core i3 processor. But I’ve been reading some poudriere tutorials whilst it has been building and realised too late I should have created a default ports tree with `poudriere ports -c`. Is it too late? Will I have to build KDE 5 again, or is there a command or series of commands I can run when the build finally completes? Thanks. EDIT: just to clarify my question, I want to be able to type `startx` and have KDE 5 run automagically.
PS Yes, I have searched the forum and also googled, but all the results were aimed at network admins. I am not a professor teaching a comp sci course, I’m just a Linux geek who is out of his depth!


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## MarcoB (Feb 28, 2018)

Are you sure you are building kde5? Afaik they are in the process of adding kde5 to the portstree as we speak. A lot of kde4 ports have been renamed from "kde" to "kde4" in order to make room for kde5, but I don't think it's all done yet.


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## ProphetOfDoom (Feb 28, 2018)

Well I cloned this repository: https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-ports-kde
As advised on this page:
https://community.kde.org/FreeBSD/Setup/Area51


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## MarcoB (Feb 28, 2018)

Hmm it all looks a bit tricky to me, and it's certainly not the standard way of installing a port. But if you followed the steps on that page it should work I guess.


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## ProphetOfDoom (Feb 28, 2018)

Hi,
Yeah I often end up doing something weird and non-standard.  Thanks for replying. I just don’t like having a fully-built KDE 5 on my disk and not knowing how to install and run it. I’m going to have a prod around now. Maybe I’ve been overthinking it and I should have just typed “make” lol.


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## ProphetOfDoom (Mar 2, 2018)

Okay i figured out what the problem was. I had to make a new FreeBSD.conf file for pkg (overriding the default FreeBSD.conf) and point it to poudriere’s newly built KDE5 packages ( using “ file” instead of “url”, because everything is happening locally).
Unfortunately after spending 24 hours building KDE5, I discovered I’d compiled it for the wrong ABI! I don’t think I’ve the will to start the process from scratch... but maybe this will help someone.


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## Sensucht94 (Mar 2, 2018)

It'a been a while since I tried this, but l, generally speaking, if you use Area51 repo, you should blacklist the FreeBSD default repository (the way you did already) and build everything from the area51 repo,Xorg included, otherwise chances are high problems may arise


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## rigoletto@ (Mar 2, 2018)

Thread 47280/post-360701

You just do not need to use ports-mgmt/pourdriere-devel anymore because the necessary features are already in the ports-mgmt/pourdriere.

More Poudriere info.


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## ProphetOfDoom (Mar 2, 2018)

Urgh build xorg... okay thanks for the warning! I don’t find all this hacky stuff recreational like some people do. I think maybe I’ll run kde for a few days and just see what happens.
LBDM, yes I just used the binary poudriere. in that thread you linked to, people refer to plasma5, whereas I just built x11/kde5. What’s the difference?


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## rigoletto@ (Mar 2, 2018)

The last time I looked on it, x11/kd5 is just a meta port for the a general Kde5/Plasma5 installation.

Btw, it is not a good idea to mix pre-built packages and ports, you can easily end up with a broken system. If you are using ports-mgmt/poudriere it would be a better idea to build everything you need using it.


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## ProphetOfDoom (Mar 2, 2018)

Hmm FreeBSD is kewl (and the handbook is exemplary) but if it’s that easy to break things I’m tempted to reinstall Linux. When Linux wasn’t so polished (say 10 years ago) I was _always_ mixing .deb packages and programs I had compiled from source. I can’t remember any instances of things going wrong! Certainly I never rendered a system unbootable...


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## rigoletto@ (Mar 3, 2018)

You almost can't get the system unbootable using ports because them rarely (just a very few exceptions) touch kernel/base but things can break lets say what is in /usr/local, specially if you are using the quarterly repository for packages.

I never used Debian, but the FreeBSD packages (ever on the latest repository) almost never are in sync with ports because it changes all the time and the packages are built from time-to-time.

Beyond that you still have other changes you can make while building from ports, like OPTIONS, CPUTYPE etc. With those changes, without rebuilding everything related, you could break Gentoo even easier and really get that unbootable. Not to say mixing packages and "ebuilds" in Sabayon.


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## ProphetOfDoom (Mar 3, 2018)

Hullo,
So I ignored your advice. (I know it was very sound advice; I just ignored it because I wanted the instant gratification of running KDE5). So my area51 KDE5 compiled fine, and installed fine, and started up fine with `startx`. Then I started to see the instability of which you spoke. The Settings Manager thingy crashed after about five minutes. Lots of desktop effects were missing, and Googling only turned up Linux-specific fixes. But the main thing that makes it unusable is the laggy-ness. About a 30-millisecond delay when typing in Konsole. Desktop Cube rotates at about 0.5 frames per second. I have no idea whether this is my hardware (built-in Intel graphics), the FreeBSD graphics driver, or KDE5. I’m even more tempted to go back to Linux now (maybe Kubuntu) but that means binning a FreeBSD install that took about three hours to tweak to how I like it. Sigh.


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## ProphetOfDoom (Mar 3, 2018)

Just installed Kubuntu! Too much drama in my life already. Thanks everyone for your help though.


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