# Raspberry Pi (original B) & Mate desktop



## ebike (Apr 23, 2016)

Hi All,

I have installed BSD to the Pi by using the image referenced here: http://blog.cochard.me/2013/03/xorg-for-freebsd-on-raspberry-pi.html
I then ran pkg to bootstrap itself, and then installed xorg and after hacking  the scfb driver, managed to get X to come up .... I tested with some basic X apps and the horrible TWM window manager ..

(The scfb driver needed a hack to disable the screen depth check for some reason)

I then wanted to install Mate, so installed mate-desktop mate-utils mate-terminal and although the desktop comes up fine, it seems to be missing a window manager ... what one do I install, and why is there not at least a default one as a Mate dependancy ...

Thanks,

EDIT: It seems I needed at least one theme to be installed to see my window borders etc.
Still missing icons though, even after installing mate-icon-theme

Also, does anyone know if an accelerated screen driver is available, ..... soooo slow ....
Not really usable ...


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## sossego (Apr 24, 2016)

/boot/

Change kern.hertz to a greater value such as 2000.


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## ebike (Apr 24, 2016)

Don't understand, do you have another machine to post with, one with a good keyboard


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## sossego (Apr 24, 2016)

Look in /boot/defaults for the config example and change the kernel hertz value to 2000 in the actual boot.cfg file


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## sossego (Apr 24, 2016)

/boot/loader/defaults.conf The kern.hertz to 2000 to decrease latency


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## ebike (Apr 24, 2016)

Thanks


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## ebike (Apr 24, 2016)

Question remains though, is the hardware GPU accel graphics supported by the driver?


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## Phishfry (Apr 25, 2016)

I would really doubt a driver called "system console framebuffer" would support your ARM GPU  in any accelerated fashion.


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## Phishfry (Apr 25, 2016)

Here is some reference material.
https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics/SCFB


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## ebike (Apr 25, 2016)

Phishfry said:


> I would really doubt a driver called "system console framebuffer" would support your ARM GPU  in any accelerated fashion.


Ha, very funny .... I will re-phrase the question: Is there an accelerated GPU driver available in FreeBSD???
The Pi is pretty much useless without it ...


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## Phishfry (Apr 25, 2016)

No accelerated drivers for ARM.
I had x11-wm/openbox running with gpsd's xGPS and it seemed swell to me on the BeagleBoneBlack(another ARM board).
Lots of broke ports to navigate around until I found Openbox worked. Limited browser support. Took some setup.


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## Phishfry (Apr 26, 2016)

The only ARM platform that offers accelerated drivers is NVidia's Tegra Jetson TK1 offering for Ubuntu that I know of. Maybe some of the Tegra2 chromebooks as well.


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## ebike (Apr 26, 2016)

No, there are plenty more .... ODROID-C1, ODROID-XU3/4 etc by Debian/Ubuntu/ArchLinux, they all have Mali drivers .. 
Raspberry PI-B/2/3 By Debian and others ... and there are many more ...

It is only BSD that is falling behind in this type of support  ... and needs to catch up to make in-roads in the Desktop arena ...
Like I say, RaspberryPI-B is totally unusable as a desktop or any sort of graphics without hardware accel GPU.
I would still want it on RPi-2&3 as well ...


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## Phishfry (Apr 26, 2016)

FreeBSD roots are as a server OS and there is nothing to catch up too...It has already won.


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## ebike (Apr 26, 2016)

Don't get so defensive .... I know all that... I also know that the devs are wanting better desktop support ....

Since you made an incomplete statement about Linux ARM support for GPU hardware , I made an attempt to educate you.
If you don't want educating then fine .... I am only trying to help ...

PS: This thread is about BSD on the DESKTOP not it's server role, which I know is great.


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## sossego (Apr 28, 2016)

There is a github repository for the Pi GPU ; and, Tinyx/XBMC is available to build. 
If someone is willing to compile both for testing on a Raspberry device, then an accelerated graphics driver on a small server/client would be available.


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