# The state of FreeBSD desktop



## Friend Of Jolly Devil (Feb 1, 2022)

I think it could be used as a meaningful feedback. Multiple choices are allowed.


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## drhowarddrfine (Feb 1, 2022)

This is not meaningful or helpful at all. It's ill defined.


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## Friend Of Jolly Devil (Feb 1, 2022)

Why ill defined? It's the best one can get on simple poll to see general picture - what works, what doesn't.


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## hodong (Feb 1, 2022)

It will get better with time.


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## Cthulhux (Feb 1, 2022)

[X] I could use it, but the systems I use instead are not worse.


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## drhowarddrfine (Feb 1, 2022)

Friend Of Jolly Devil said:


> It's the best one can get on simple poll to see general picture - what works, what doesn't.


Nowhere in that poll is "what" defined. This guy will say it works great for what he uses while another will complain about how difficult it is for what he uses.


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## ralphbsz (Feb 2, 2022)

drhowarddrfine said:


> This is not meaningful or helpful at all. It's ill defined.


The option that is missing here is: "I don't use it, because there are much better desktop environments available". One could break that down by various reasons for "better".


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## Geezer (Feb 3, 2022)

There is no 'FreeBSD desktop'.

On my desktop machine and laptop I use a DE, and have done so for a long while.

On data centre servers across the world, there is no need.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Feb 3, 2022)

I teach people to use it:






This message is awaiting moderator approval, and is invisible to normal visitors.


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## john_rambo (Feb 3, 2022)

The only problem in my case is lack of proper Bluetooth support. I have 2 bluetooth headphones. The first which I almost never use is a Bluetooth 4.0 and the second one which I want to connect with my FreeBSD desktop is Bluetooth 5.0

After a lot of effort and typing a lot of commands I was finally able to connect the 4.0 headset but unfortunately Bluetooth 5.0 is not supported at all.


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## eternal_noob (Feb 3, 2022)

To be honest, the FreeBSD "desktop" sucks for me. 

I use a Raspberry Pi 400 and i don't have sound. No hardware accelerated graphics. No WiFi.

Fortunately, i can use L*inux on which this all just works, just by changing the SD card.


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## john_rambo (Feb 3, 2022)

eternal_noob said:


> To be honest, the FreeBSD "desktop" sucks for me.


I am using FreeBSD on my desktop. At the moment I have no web cam installed but my plan is to buy one. I just searched about availability of video conferencing apps on FreeBSD and found none are available.

As I said I don't need video calling apps like zoom, skype, etc for now. But I don't think there's any alternative left for me but to move back to Linux once I need zoom, skype, etc.


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## jbo (Feb 3, 2022)

john_rambo said:


> I am using FreeBSD on my desktop. At the moment I have no web cam installed but my plan is to buy one. I just searched about availability of video conferencing apps on FreeBSD and found none are available.


net-im/zoom, www/jitsi-meet, net-im/pidgin-skype, ...
Not to mention all the web-browser based solutions...


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## john_rambo (Feb 3, 2022)

jbodenmann said:


> net-im/zoom, www/jitsi-meet, net-im/pidgin-skype, ...
> Not to mention all the web-browser based solutions...


Honestly I don't have much experience about video conferencing tools. I had used skype for a brief period like 10 years ago.
I almost never compile stuff. After reading your reply I searched for zoom and found this


```
pkg search zoom
p5-Net-Z3950-ZOOM-1.30_3       Perl interface to the Z39.50 Object-Orientation Model (ZOOM)
xzoom-0.4                      Magnify, rotate, mirror the image on the X11 screen
zoom-1.1.5_3                   Z-Interpreter for X with full V6 support
zoom-video-conferencing-client-5.3.465578.0920_1 Zoom videoconferencing client (CAVEAT: Sound doesn't yet work)
```
If sound doesn't work its useless. I have zoom installed on my android phone but I never used their web interface. I know skype offers a web interface. If I am able to use both zoom and skype via Firefox then no issues at all.

The challenge now is to find a web cam which is atleast 720p and is compatible with both FreeBSD and Linux. I don't use Windows or Mac.


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## Tieks (Feb 3, 2022)

john_rambo said:


> The challenge now is to find a web cam which is atleast 720p and is compatible with both FreeBSD and Linux.


Take a look at multimedia/webcamd.


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## dbdemon (Feb 3, 2022)

eternal_noob said:


> To be honest, the FreeBSD "desktop" sucks for me.
> 
> I use a Raspberry Pi 400 and i don't have sound. No hardware accelerated graphics. No WiFi.
> 
> Fortunately, i can use L*inux on which this all just works, just by changing the SD card.


Same. I purchased a USB WiFi adapter which does work, but it feels very slow, presumably because the FreeBSD WiFi driver doesn't yet support some important speedup features in the wireless protocol.


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## drhowarddrfine (Feb 3, 2022)

dbdemon  It's being worked on as we speak.


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## dbdemon (Feb 3, 2022)

drhowarddrfine said:


> dbdemon  It's being worked on as we speak.


Yes, I have read about that somewhere. Do you know if any of this work has been made available to users yet? I've got 13.0-RELEASE installed on the RPi-400, but happy to try out something more bleeding edge if that has any of the new WiFi driver code.


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## drhowarddrfine (Feb 3, 2022)

dbdemon I have no new update on it and nothing is available yet.


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## eternal_noob (Feb 3, 2022)

Since the Raspberry Pi 400 has an Ethernet port, having no WiFi (except with additional hardware) is less of a problem.
The missing sound is the thing what disqualifies it for desktop use.


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## Friend Of Jolly Devil (Feb 10, 2022)

Thank you all for your participation. Now some explanations:
1. Poll can have maximum 10 questions, I couldn't add any more questions.
2. The "what" of this poll is community (statistical) view on FreeBSD Desktop, so more precise questions were impossible/not needed.
3. The (temporal) results:
27 out of 48 votes (56.25%) think it's perfect "as it is", so any change will be a change for worse.
There are 19 non-critical issues (39.6%) out of which the biggest problem are bugs 9 (18.75%).
2 votes (4.17%) have critical issues, that make FreeBSD Desktop unusable, but there are no critical bugs.
5 issues with missing software and 5 with missing drivers (each 10.42%).

Conclusion: FreeBSD Desktop works for 46 out of 48 cases (95.83%).  If something needs to change, it's the way of handling bugs, it would make 75% of cases "solved". Of course, it is a small sample, but some trends can be already visible.


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## grahamperrin@ (Feb 10, 2022)

Friend Of Jolly Devil said:


> perfect "as it is", so any change will be a change for worse.



I shouldn't draw that conclusion. Change is inevitable.


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## kpedersen (Feb 10, 2022)

grahamperrin said:


> I shouldn't draw that conclusion. Change is inevitable.


Yeah, for the worse. He just said that.


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## wb7odyfred (Feb 11, 2022)

You might view some *www.youtube.com/c/robonuggie*  channel videos about setting up FreeBSD desktop top with* AWESOME, MATE, GNOME*, *KDE, XFCE4   *desktop environments on the Pi 400 and Pi 3B+, also for  FreeBSD x86_64 architecture.





_View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ldov4l0n8dk_
   FreeBSD Desktop Part 1 or 4




_View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuoMPP_178U_
  FreeBSD Desktop for Raspberry Pi 400 & 4B




_View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cx7_zvh-b6k_
 A Viable Alternative, FreeBSD 13, Not RPIOS on the Pi



 19:33 Now playing
 



 
   Watch later
   Add to queue


                        A Viable Alternative! - FreeBSD 13.0 not RPiOS on the PI          ​



_View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6kyOHsvrsg_
  FreeBSD 13.0 on a PI , Quick Look

Yes, getting HDMI sound or analog audio working on the Raspberry Pi 400, should be a priority.
I found on the Rapberry Pi 400, plugging in Logitcech H390 USB Headphones, just worked on FreeBSD 14.0 Current.  There is NOT a driver for the USB dongle volume controls on this H390 Model and it does squeal cause the microphone is on.   I am testing some config.txt file setups to activate the HDMI sound on the RPi 4B with 8 gigs of dram.


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## hselasky@ (Feb 12, 2022)

Tieks said:


> Take a look at multimedia/webcamd.



I recommend USB 3.0 (Super speed) compatible webcams for higher quality video.


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## grahamperrin@ (Feb 21, 2022)

Thanks again, Friend Of Jolly Devil.

Another poll (this one is not multiple choice): 

Do you run FreeBSD as desktop os?


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## drhowarddrfine (Feb 21, 2022)

grahamperrin As if that poll means anything to anybody. It does not.


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## Friend Of Jolly Devil (Feb 23, 2022)

drhowarddrfine said:


> As if that poll means anything to anybody. It does not.


Thank you for your most precious and kind comment, much appreciated.

Nobody.


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## grahamperrin@ (Mar 9, 2022)

grahamperrin said:


> Another poll (this one is not multiple choice):



Voting closed in /r/freebsd with *twenty-nine percent of 597 respondents* making desktop use of FreeBSD on their main computer:







Friend Of Jolly Devil thanks again for the poll here.

For the benefit of readers who may be new to FreeBSD Forums:

the poll at the head of this page is still open
there's also a poll about preferred desktop environments and window managers …


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## drhowarddrfine (Mar 9, 2022)

grahamperrin said:


> Voting closed in /r/freebsd


This means nothing and has no value. There is no confirmation of the votes and the voters are mostly nonsense users.


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## Vull (Mar 9, 2022)

This whole nonsense thread could readily be moved to another forum where most of us would have no access to it.

If you want. It's up to you.


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## Beastie7 (Mar 9, 2022)

Has anyone had success running GNOME? Last time i've toyed with it _(ver. 3.36 I believe) _I had issues with GDM failing miserably. How did the port maintainers manage to handle systemd dependencies anyway?


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## Menelkir (Mar 9, 2022)

Beastie7 said:


> Has anyone had success running GNOME? Last time i've toyed with it _(ver. 3.36 I believe) _I had issues with GDM failing miserably. How did the port maintainers manage to handle systemd dependencies anyway?


AFAIK, gentoo have an effort to use gnome without systemd, and not so long ago, consolekit was part of this effort, maybe it's where they get the ideas?


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## grahamperrin@ (Mar 9, 2022)

Beastie7 said:


> … GDM failing miserably. …



Freeze-frame effect? Like, frame-by-frame for each switch away from, then back to, ttyv8?


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## Beastie7 (Mar 10, 2022)

I can't find the thread but I had an issue where logging into GDM would throw a weird error and lock up. Then the widgets would become unresponsive.


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## grahamperrin@ (Mar 10, 2022)

Beastie7 said:


> I can't find the thread but I had an issue where logging into GDM would throw a weird error and lock up.



You're present here: 









						GNOME 3 locking after login
					

I am running FreeBSD 12.2-RELEASE. After I login to GNOME 3, it locks the screen. Then when I enter my password, it says authentication failure. Then when I try and enter my password again, I can't enter my password - I type but nothing shows up.  What could be causing this problem?




					forums.freebsd.org
				




– not easily found. This was memorable: 

FreeBSD bug 256454 – x11/gdm: No users shown in login screen, and unable to unlock once locked
– then I sought _256454_ to find the topic. 


For me, the show-stopper to testing GNOME is probably this: 

FreeBSD bug 257810 – x11/gnome3(-lite) & x11/gdm lags significantly on amdgpu


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## Geezer (Mar 10, 2022)

+1 for didn't vote.


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