# KDE5 and FreeBSD-12.0 RELEASE



## toorski (Dec 14, 2018)

First time I see FreeBSD and KDE working and looking so nice, together 
I'm impressed - GJ!


----------



## garry (Dec 17, 2018)

toorski said:


> First time I see FreeBSD and KDE working and looking so nice, together
> I'm impressed - GJ!



It is working very well ... It's drawing me back to FreeBSD!  (I also love Gnome on OpenBSD).  I see that there have been many contributors to this work who have sustained the effort over many years -- especially thanks to sunpoet (Po-Chuan Hsieh) for massive amounts of recent work getting us an up-to-date Plasma Desktop.  It is very nice indeed and hope that some others will now start doing their *poudriere* or *synth* builds from the FreeBSD KDE development branch and submitting fixes and updates for the ports.


----------



## abishai (Dec 18, 2018)

I found that PIM stuff and konqueror are very buggy.


----------



## garry (Dec 18, 2018)

abishai said:


> I found that PIM stuff and konqueror are very buggy.


You can check KDE PIM Bug Reports and FreeBSD Problem Reports to see if your bugs have already been identified; if not it will help to file a bug report.  I did have one "konqueror has crashed" message when logging out (but not while actually using konqueror).  I was pleased (so far) to find that kmail worked well for me.  Baloo (file extractor) has historically been a pain for many people, but I haven't had any problems there either.

It was also nice to find that the kwin-tiling script works and gives me my fundamentally important tiling mode in KDE.  I really can't use any desktop without some tiling support (shelltile works well for Gnome on OpenBSD).

I expect the occasional mishavior when I use either KDE or Gnome desktops because of their complexity and code churn.  For a bug-free desktop that never fails me over the years I still turn to fluxbox with rox-filer.  Fluxbox supports command-driven tiling via the ArrangeWindows commands.  For example my ~/.fluxbox/keys file contains

```
Mod4 a :ArrangeWindowsStackRight (Layer=Normal)

Mod4 s :ArrangeWindows (Layer=Normal)

Mod4 d :ArrangeWindowsStackBottom (Layer=Normal)

Mod4 space :ShowDesktop
```


----------



## rigoletto@ (Dec 18, 2018)

The Qt and KDE stuff in FreeBSD happens in Freenode #kde-freebsd. Worth joining to talk about bugs etc.


----------



## abishai (Dec 19, 2018)

garry said:


> I did have one "konqueror has crashed" message when logging out (but not while actually using konqueror).


Probably, I have something outdated experience, since I started to use KDE5 ASAP it landed to official ports, I remember this issues with konqueror
1. Start konqueror and close it. It still exists in processes and can't be started anymore (before killall).
2. Embedded AdBlock is not working (probably, subsciptions are not updated).


----------



## Vull (Dec 19, 2018)

I recently started using plasma5-plasma on both 11.2-RELEASE and 12.0-RELEASE. I like it a lot. It's been presented as sort of a lightweight version of KDE/Plasma5/Qt5 without all the frills, and that's the main reason I turned to it. It doesn't include Konquerer in the install, and I haven't installed it seperately. In fact it doesn't even include Dolphin, Firefox, or Konsole, which I do use, and have installed separately with no problems.

If PIM refers to all the personal information management software like kwallet, as I'm guessing it might, well, I don't use any of that either, and am happy to have an alternative in which none of that has been pre-installed.

Many have criticized KDE for being bloated, and the plasma5-plasma alternative seems to be a fairly successful attempt to address such concerns. Even without resorting to the plasma5 alternative, kde5 has reduced memory usage considerably when compared to its predecessor kde4. The odds are pretty even that I'll never find time to build my own DE by reconfiguring lightweight window managers; I respect and admire such efforts, but I just want something that works well, out-of-the-box so to speak, and Plasma5-plasma has given me that. I've tried out a number of DEs on FreeBSD, including MATE, LXDE, Xfce, and Enlightenment. None of them are quite perfect for my needs but so far the Plasma5 desktop is easily my favorite out of that lot.


----------



## toorski (Dec 19, 2018)

Now, imagine *FreeBSD+*  (fer a reasonable monthly donation/subscription ;-) with *GUI Desktop* (?) and in browser, qt or (?)  front-end apps for:
*pkg* - management
*pf or ipfw*  - firewall configuration/management
*jails *- configuration/management

Yeah, I know TrueOS used to do some of that. Tho, I have no clue what's their plan for now or the future, seems to me that they're into too many things with not enough resources to do the right thing. I'd prefer to see FreeBSD+  with just few, but clean and well functioning GUI desktop apps

I pay over $200+ for TCP/IP connectivity over thick copper wire and OTA. So, paying extra 10 bucks a month for *IoT from FreeBSD* wouldn't break my bank.
For me, FreeBSD is about then only good Thing in the IoT that I can think of 

Here's my $9.99 monthly subscription/donation for FreeBSD+ , where do I sign-up?

For now, I'll just do my my best that I can with what I have at:
https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/

Happy Holidays to all!


----------



## Deleted member 30996 (Dec 19, 2018)

toorski said:


> Now, imagine *FreeBSD+*  (fer a reasonable monthly donation/subscription ;-) with *GUI Desktop* (?) and in browser, qt or (?)  front-end apps for:
> *pkg* - management
> *pf or ipfw*  - firewall configuration/management
> *jails *- configuration/management
> ...



With all due respect, I have no idea what you're talking about.

I have everything I want and need on all 7 of my laptops running FreeBSD. Over time I've found the 3rd party apps I like best for what I consider "everyday desktop activities" and build the same limited number of programs from ports every installation with little variation from one machine to the next. I have my desktops configured to what I consider maximum efficiency for my work style and space available.

Trusting someone else to configure pf for me is out of the question.

If I wanted someone else to decide what 3rd party apps I needed I'd use a DE instead of x11-wm/fluxbox. There would be no need to jump ship to another OS or pay someone to decide what's best for me in their opinion.

That's exactly the kind of thing I don't want or think would be a good thing for FreeBSD.


----------



## toorski (Dec 20, 2018)

First you claim:


Trihexagonal said:


> Over time I've found the 3rd party apps I like best for what I consider "everyday desktop activities" and build the same limited number of programs from ports every installation with little variation from one machine to the next. I have my desktops configured to what I consider maximum efficiency for my work style and space available.



Then you state:


Trihexagonal said:


> Trusting someone else to configure pf for me is out of the question.



Many other "someones" are providing  resources for you to try and use,  in /usr/ports and /usr/src with "howto" "README" and man pages. Don't they; do you trust them?



Trihexagonal said:


> If I wanted someone else to decide what 3rd party apps I needed I'd use a DE instead of x11-wm/fluxbox. There would be no need to jump ship to another OS or pay someone to decide what's best for me in their opinion.



I don't care who's done it, what they call their DE or which WM they offer with that DE.  But,  until I learn (and I never will, b'cause I'm too old and too dumb) to develop, code and test my own WM or DE, I'll trust those who know better, share their knowledge, code and ideas, so others can try, test and use. And then, the users who understand the subject matter and have enough knowledge how things work, may even suggest, a thing or two, to make the Free and Open Source software better. And yes, I'm willing to pay or donate for something that I use and enojy, for Free


----------



## toorski (Dec 20, 2018)

Vull said:


> Many have criticized KDE for being bloated, and the plasma5-plasma alternative seems to be a fairly successful attempt to address such concerns. Even without resorting to the plasma5 alternative, kde5 has reduced memory usage considerably when compared to its predecessor kde4. The odds are pretty even that I'll never find time to build my own DE by reconfiguring lightweight window managers; I respect and admire such efforts, but I just want something that works well, out-of-the-box so to speak, and Plasma5-plasma has given me that. I've tried out a number of DEs on FreeBSD, including MATE, LXDE, Xfce, and Enlightenment. None of them are quite perfect for my needs but so far the Plasma5 desktop is easily my favorite out of that lot.



There are too many (nowadays!) kriticks of everyone, anything  and everything on Internet and elsewhere.  Tho, very few can substantiate their kritikal point of view with intelligent explanation. I wonder what were they kritisizing, back then, when *"twm"* was the only choice or make your own, if you know howto 

That said, KDE5 in FreeBSD distribution outdid itself with all the KDE'ish games. Tho, some of them over-challenged my brain cells and made me feel like an underdeveloped 5 yo - lol

Other than that, KDE5 on FreeBSD looks clean and handy ;-)  I always remeber, that no matter which WM&DE, to install en-hunspell to help me with creating English language words - heh


----------



## Deleted member 30996 (Dec 20, 2018)

toorski said:


> Many other "someones" are providing  resources for you to try and use,  in /usr/ports and /usr/src with "howto" "README" and man pages. Don't they; do you trust them?



My trust issues are another story that does not need repeating here to make my point. Suffice it to say if I didn't trust FreeBSD or it didn't live up to my expectations I would already have moved all my machina to OpenBSD and most likely said why on my way out the door.




toorski said:


> I don't care who's done it, what they call their DE or which WM they offer with that DE.  But,  until I learn (and *I never will, b'cause I'm too old and too dumb*) to develop, code and test my own WM or DE, I'll trust those who know better, share their knowledge, code and ideas, so others can try, test and use. And then, the users who understand the subject matter and have enough knowledge how things work, may even suggest, a thing or two, to make the Free and Open Source software better. And yes, I'm willing to pay or donate for something that I use and enojy, for Free.



According to the info shown when I hover my cursor over your name I'm older than you by a few years. So you're telling me you're "too old" to learn new things?



toorski said:


> There are too many (nowadays!) kriticks of everyone, anything  and everything on Internet and elsewhere.  Tho, very few can substantiate their kritikal point of view with intelligent explanation.



You obviously don't consider yourself "too dumb", prohibiting pretentious puffery and apocryphal assumptions.


There's nothing hard about setting up a WM or your choice of 3rd party apps. I explain setting up a x11-wm/fluxbox desktop complete with all but a few apps of your choice like a browser, not to mention editing system and security files, in detail in my tutorial:

https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/...-set-up-a-freebsd-desktop-from-scratch.61659/

Why let someone else do it for you when you can do it yourself to your own specs? I know there have to be programs you already like to use and pkg can be substituted for ports in my wall of text tutorial easily by reading about pkg in the Handbook.


----------



## toorski (Dec 20, 2018)

Trihexagonal

Thank you for your comments, to my comments, with skillful and creative use of English language and the link to your “howto” tutorial(s), wich shall be very helpful for me and all newcomers to FreeBSD. I’ll use your guide, if I ever need  to add something into my systems configuration(s), that I already did, to make FreeBSD fully functional workstation and/or TCP/IP server that runs trouble free for me 

Just so you know and understand; playing UNIX-like systems is only one of many hobbies that I have and enjoy. I’m done with trying to make Xenix do anything useful, installing and recompiling Linux kernel from 30+ 720k floppies, re-making *BSD worlds or customizing any of those: (http://www.gilesorr.com/wm/table.html) to my liking.

I did some of the above then, because I was much younger and willing to learn all that I could while attending College to supplement my education. I chose Unix-like systems, and few other related subjects, because it was helping me to master CATIA CAD/CAM/CAE workstations, which were running UNIX-like OS with X desktop interface. Those days, CATIA was one of my tools at work.

Now that I’m older, bolder and smarter wiser, when I see something in FreeBSD world that fits my needs, I use pkg to install it. Only when I run into issues or trouble with basic functions or configuration options, I go to source of the application, look for and run “make config” script, if there’s one,  or just “make install clean” and try the software application again. If it still have issues, and if I understand the root cause of the issue(s), then I look for developer(s) and/or contributor(s) to let them know about the issues in their creation(s).

Cheers!


----------

