# Fresh Installation Of FreeBSD 11.2--Mate Not Working Properly



## Quarter Wave Vertical (Dec 2, 2018)

Yesterday, I wanted to upgrade one of my machines to 12.0-RC3 and ended up trashing my system.

I tried several times to re-install 11.0 (upgrading to 11.2 afterward) with Mate and Slim and I couldn't get the desktop to work properly. The best I could do is to log on through Slim, even after I made a fresh installation of 11.2 directly.  I get the Mate desktop but none of the utilities (such as Mate Terminal) in the menu bar work.

I don't know what to do next.  I'm wondering if something's not set up properly, but I don't think I missed any of the steps.

One possibility is to swap the HD as it's over 10 years old.

Does anyone have any suggestions?  Thank you.


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## Vull (Dec 2, 2018)

How much memory do you have? Starting with a fresh install made from FreeBSD-11.2-RELEASE-i386-memstick.img, I've installed mate on an approximately 10 year old Intel Pentium 4 i386 machine with 3 GB of RAM. It's very sluggish and slow, but everything works okay, I guess. Still, I find that it's just barely passable, performance-wise. This Dell Dimension 4700 machine does have the improvement of a newer 1TB SATA hard drive replacement, and all IDE devices have been removed physically and in the BIOS.
It works okay, but just barely, with only `pkg install xorg mate sddm` added, but it's too slow, which seems odd since the same machine runs pretty briskly with kde5, xfce, lxde, or enlightenment installed on it (FreeBSD), and it can also run the Debian and Ubuntu versions of mate at reasonable speeds, and without the same sluggishness. In /etc/rc.conf I only had to add `dbus_enable="YES"` and `sddm_enable="YES"`. Many people also add `hald_enable="YES"` but I'm trying to avoid using HAL since it's been deprecated for several years, and using HAL doesn't affect the speed at all as far as I can tell.

Because of the slowdown in performance, I've opted not to use mate on this machine, but instead prefer kde5 for desktop/entertainment usage, or one of lxde, xfce, or enlightenment for a lighter-weight server-style front-end.


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## Quarter Wave Vertical (Dec 2, 2018)

Vull said:


> How much memory do you have? Starting with a fresh install made from FreeBSD-11.2-RELEASE-i386-memstick.img, I've installed mate on an approximately 10 year old Intel Pentium 4 i386 machine with 3 GB of RAM. It's very sluggish and slow, but everything works okay, I guess. Still, I find that it's just barely passable, performance-wise. This Dell Dimension 4700 machine does have the improvement of a newer 1TB SATA hard drive replacement, and all IDE devices have been removed physically and in the BIOS.
> It works okay, but just barely, with only `pkg install xorg mate sddm` added, but it's too slow, which seems odd since the same machine runs pretty briskly with kde5, xfce, lxde, or enlightenment installed on it (FreeBSD), and it can also run the Debian and Ubuntu versions of mate at reasonable speeds, and without the same sluggishness. In /etc/rc.conf I only had to add `dbus_enable="YES"` and `sddm_enable="YES"`. Many people also add `hald_enable="YES"` but I'm trying to avoid using HAL since it's been deprecated for several years, and using HAL doesn't affect the speed at all as far as I can tell.
> 
> Because of the slowdown in performance, I've opted not to use mate on this machine, but instead prefer kde5 for desktop/entertainment usage, or one of lxde, xfce, or enlightenment for a lighter-weight server-style front-end.


Thanks for your reply.

One thing that baffles me is that I've got almost the identical system installed on another drive on the same machine and it runs fine.  (I figured I might need it as a backup.)

My machine is an older Compaq Presario running a Pentium D.  I've got 4 GB installed, so memory's not a problem.

I don't know if this has anything to do with it, but I believe I installed the original system when it was FreeBSD 10.x and upgraded it whenever a new release was available.

That being said, I edited /etc/rc.conf like you did but, instead of `sddm_enable="YES"` I used `hald_enable="YES"` and  `slim_enable="YES"`.

I prefer Mate as I became accustomed to Gnome.  I've been running xcfe on a laptop but I'm not all that fond of it.  KDE never particularly impressed me, either.

I might try what you've done with /etc/rc.conf and see what happens.  The problem I'm dealing with right now is that running xorg by itself gives me a dark screen.

Fortunately, I've got another machine with the same setup, so I'm not out of action.


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## Vull (Dec 2, 2018)

I'm guessing HAL isn't the issue, but maybe your hard drive is, especially since you say the same config is working okay on a different drive. Maybe the mate port for FreeBSD 10.x was different than the one for 11.2, but that's just another guess. IIRC I had previously installed mate on a 64 bit Acer Aspire laptop with 6 GB RAM, and didn't see the same performance lags that I have on the i386. There might be a difference in the i386 vs. the amd64 ports (just another guess, obviously). My only problems with the Acer laptop had to do with driver support for the Radeon graphics card and the wifi, which never worked for me, but fortunately it had a wired internet connection.

Good luck with it. I like mate a lot too, but fortunately I like kde5 just as much if not more. If your previous kde experience was with kde4, you might consider giving kde5 a shot, since it actually is quite a bit different, quite a bit more modern, and offers some noteworthy improvements.


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## Quarter Wave Vertical (Dec 3, 2018)

Vull said:


> I'm guessing HAL isn't the issue, but maybe your hard drive is, especially since you say the same config is working okay on a different drive. Maybe the mate port for FreeBSD 10.x was different than the one for 11.2, but that's just another guess.


That's what I suspect.  The machine uses an Intel processor and I installed the FreeBSD version specifically for that.  Later on, the versions were for the AMD only but I was able to successfully upgrade the OS.



> IIRC I had previously installed mate on a 64 bit Acer Aspire laptop with 6 GB RAM, and didn't see the same performance lags that I have on the i386. There might be a difference in the i386 vs. the amd64 ports (just another guess, obviously). My only problems with the Acer laptop had to do with driver support for the Radeon graphics card and the wifi, which never worked for me, but fortunately it had a wired internet connection.
> 
> Good luck with it. I like mate a lot too, but fortunately I like kde5 just as much if not more. If your previous kde experience was with kde4, you might consider giving kde5 a shot, since it actually is quite a bit different, quite a bit more modern, and offers some noteworthy improvements.


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## Quarter Wave Vertical (Dec 3, 2018)

I tried several different variations in installing Mate in order to get it to work on my machine, but I consistently got the same results.  I'm wondering if it's reached its limit with that desktop.  It's not the first time it's happened to one of my computers.

Since I'm already familiar with it, I installed Xfce and it's working so I can still use the machine, but not quite the way I had hoped.


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## Vull (Dec 3, 2018)

Your thread got me thinking that I could try to compile everything from ports using a fresh 11.2-RELEASE install on this old machine, just to see if that gave me any improvement in Mate's performance. It's taking many hours; I started it yesterday evening and right now it's on [3821/4594] of the xorg port compilation. I'll let you know how it works out whenever it gets through; it might be a few days though hah since I know that the mate port is also pretty big. I've never attempted such a big compile before so thanks for stimulating my thinking and inspiring me to do this.


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## Quarter Wave Vertical (Dec 5, 2018)

Vull said:


> Your thread got me thinking that I could try to compile everything from ports using a fresh 11.2-RELEASE install on this old machine, just to see if that gave me any improvement in Mate's performance. It's taking many hours; I started it yesterday evening and right now it's on [3821/4594] of the xorg port compilation. I'll let you know how it works out whenever it gets through; it might be a few days though hah since I know that the mate port is also pretty big. I've never attempted such a big compile before so thanks for stimulating my thinking and inspiring me to do this.


You're welcome.

I'm still tinkering with it and, so far, I haven't figured out what I might have missed.


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## kpedersen (Dec 5, 2018)

I have done this just recently in a jail to test and needed to remember the following:

1) dbus_enable="YES" in *rc.local*
2) hald_enable="YES" in *rc.local*
3) procfs mounted on /proc
4) pkg install mate
5) start with *mate-session*

It generally works. Marco (metacity) the window manager coredumps due to some libgtop error or some other untested crap. I just ran openbox instead for this test and the rest of the DE was relatively fine.


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## Quarter Wave Vertical (Dec 6, 2018)

Thanks for your response.



kpedersen said:


> I have done this just recently in a jail to test and needed to remember the following:
> 
> 1) dbus_enable="YES" in *rc.local*
> 2) hald_enable="YES" in *rc.local*



I added those to /etc/rc.conf



> 3) procfs mounted on /proc



I added that to /etc/fstab, but I'm not sure if it made any difference.  I recall, though, having to add something like that in early versions of FreeBSD/Gnome, but I never needed it for the other FreeBSD/Mate installations I have.



> 4) pkg install mate
> 5) start with *mate-session*
> 
> It generally works. Marco (metacity) the window manager coredumps due to some libgtop error or some other untested crap. I just ran openbox instead for this test and the rest of the DE was relatively fine.


The pull-down menus appear to work and I can change settings through Control Center.

The display defaults to 1280 x 1024 instead of 1024 x 768, which is what it's supposed to be.

I still can't mount external drives, such as a USB stick, which, in Mate happens automatically.

I was able to run a number of applications, such as Firefox and VLC, but those were set up on that HD under Xfce.

I can drag windows, files, and directories, but the response is slow, which isn't supposed to be.

When I log on and run `startx`, xterm starts up.  After running `exec mate-session`, I get an error message about setting QT_SCALE_FACTOR=1 and having to recompile libgtop if there are problems.

I seem to be making progress, but, as they say, close but no cigar.  I'm not sure what to do next.


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## Vull (Dec 6, 2018)

Using startx from my non-root user account, I get fewer errors when I put 

`exec ck-launch-session dbus-launch --exit-with-session mate-session`

in my $HOME/.xinitrc file, instead of just the plain `exec mate-session` command. It has something to do with helping dbus to communicate. Do you have Power Management and Screensaver in your Control Center? It almost sounds like you have the "mate-base" package instead of the "mate" meta-port, but that can't be the case, since you do have the Mate Terminal program icon. Mate Terminal doesn't come with the "mate-base" package, nor do Power Management and Screensaver. If you do have those icons, do they work? Does your machine have ACPI? Mine doesn't but I can still set the timeouts and suspend sessions using APM, which it does have.


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## kpedersen (Dec 6, 2018)

Attached is a screenshot of my experiences.
I am running mine inside a Jail but perhaps I seem to be getting similar to you?
You can see that my xterm has no window border or title bar.




I think the libgtop (i386) package is broken causing Marco (the Mate Window Manager) to crash.
Perhaps recompile just that package from ports?

These kind of errors really do show just how little these large desktop environments are used and maintained on FreeBSD. I am in the market for a simple to use desktop environments for my students and so far I am having much more success with Xfce4 currently. Though I am sure in a week or two that will be broken somehow


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## Vull (Dec 6, 2018)

I'm now on my 3rd attempt at compiling Mate from ports, after 2 unsuccessful tries. By comparison, I had no problems compiling xorg from ports, although it took many hours. This ties up my development machine so that I can't use it for much of anything else, but in between compiles yesterday, I took the opportunity to install mate-base on a separate partition using `pkg install mate-base`, and it's working okay, same as my previous Mate installs using pkg have worked. If it ultimately turns out that I can get the x11/mate-base compile to work, I'll post the results and the procedure here. One thing I noticed during this endeavor is that the packages for mate and mate-base are for Mate version 1.20.0, whereas the port was updated to Mate version 1.20.3 on Nov. 5 (Guy Fawkes Day, ha). I'm guessing that this latest update has something to do with the ongoing efforts to make these Gnome-based desktops integrate better with Wayland, and it all begs the question of why they haven't upgraded the mate package to 1.20.3 as well, since a whole month has now passed since the port was upgraded. Also for comparision, my Debian 9.6 laptop's version of Mate, which I'm posting this from, seems to be Mate version 1.16.0 - if I had the port or package for Mate 1.16.0 on FreeBSD I'd try installing it instead, but, ah whell...

Last night I compiled graphics/cairo overnight, and it took about 12-1/2 hours to compile, so it's no small part of this Mate port. Cairo is a Wayland dependency and it seems to be one of the ports that keeps bombing my efforts to compile x11/mate-1.20.3, so I compiled it first, this time around, and it did manage to get through the compile without blowing up, this time. I'm probably doing it all wrong; I'm not using portmaster, but I'm open to suggestions if anybody has a better idea. Thanks.


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## Quarter Wave Vertical (Dec 7, 2018)

Vull said:


> Using startx from my non-root user account, I get fewer errors when I put
> 
> `exec ck-launch-session dbus-launch --exit-with-session mate-session`
> 
> in my $HOME/.xinitrc file, instead of just the plain `exec mate-session` command. It has something to do with helping dbus to communicate. Do you have Power Management and Screensaver in your Control Center?



Yes, and they appear to be working.



> It almost sounds like you have the "mate-base" package instead of the "mate" meta-port, but that can't be the case, since you do have the Mate Terminal program icon. Mate Terminal doesn't come with the "mate-base" package, nor do Power Management and Screensaver. If you do have those icons, do they work? Does your machine have ACPI?



Yes.



> Mine doesn't but I can still set the timeouts and suspend sessions using APM, which it does have.


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## Quarter Wave Vertical (Dec 7, 2018)

kpedersen said:


> Attached is a screenshot of my experiences.
> I am running mine inside a Jail but perhaps I seem to be getting similar to you?
> You can see that my xterm has no window border or title bar.
> 
> ...



I keep getting a message about that on xterm.  I was thinking about recompiling it from ports.  The worst that can happen is that I have to start a brand-new installation.



> These kind of errors really do show just how little these large desktop environments are used and maintained on FreeBSD. I am in the market for a simple to use desktop environments for my students and so far I am having much more success with Xfce4 currently. Though I am sure in a week or two that will be broken somehow



I have a laptop that runs Xfce as, apparently, it couldn't handle a Mate installation.  It's worked for me for nearly 2 years so far.


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## Quarter Wave Vertical (Dec 7, 2018)

I thought that perhaps the hard drive (which is about as old as the computer) might be going wobbly, so I made a fresh installation on an external unit to see if that made a difference.

I got the identical performance.  For example, I can't drag and place windows as quickly and easily as I can on my other installations.  I get the same errors with xterm as well.

Something somewhere must have been fiddled since I originally installed this system on my other drives.  The question is what.

Maybe it's time to consider a different desktop.  KDE, maybe?


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## kpedersen (Dec 7, 2018)

Are you in the position to try to test it on an amd64 install of FreeBSD?
I still think it is due to a breakage in the i386 build of libgtop.

Perhaps the Mate maintainer only runs 64-bit as their test machine.


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## Vull (Dec 8, 2018)

I was finally able to get mate-base 1.20.3 to compile from ports. It was problematic, and this is a bit off topic, but, briefly, and in case anyone's interested, to make it compile successfully, I had to compile the dependency ports graphics/cairo and net/samba47 first and second, using `make install clean`. This was apparently because those two ports need to use python27 before it gets upgraded to python36 by the other ports. Then, thirdly, I compiled mate-base using `make DISABLE_VULNERABILITIES=yes install clean`, because of vulnerabilities in graphics/openjpeg which would cause the compile to abort otherwise. Finally, I compiled x11/xorg with `make install clean`. And it works. I'm sure there are other ways of doing it, but this worked for me. For comparisons, I also installed approximately the same things using packages on another partition of the same machine, except that version has mate-base version 1.20.0 instead of 1.20.3 because of the differences between available packages and ports.

Oddly, the compiled-from-ports 1.20.3 version shows the same problem with gtop you reported, whereas the control version of mate-base 1.20.0 I installed from packages does not. I don't know exactly why this is so, and otherwise they appear to be identical. I would have guessed it would have been the other way around.

To summarize from the postings above, my main reason for compiling mate-base from ports was to try to eliminate the lag-time in dragging windows, which I've long experienced, and which Quarter Wave Vertical also reported. This unfortunately did not work, and I still have the same lag time latency problem that I had experienced on the installed-from-packages version. Fooey. Ah whell.

About your problem with discovering and mounting USB drives, I had sort of forgotten some of this, but going through the compiler options reminded me, and, as I understand it, because the HAL Hardware Abstraction Layer (i.e., `hald_enable="YES"`) is deprecated in FreeBSD, these versions of Mate have a default option selection to use devd instead of hald for device discovery. Some people use autofs as a workaround for this, but I've opted to use sysutils/automount instead. Briefly, all you should need to do to get device discovery to work properly is `pkg install automount`. Then, from the root account, copy /usr/local/etc/automount.conf.sample to /usr/local/etc/automount.conf and use your favorite text editor to change the setting for USER in automount.conf to whatever the name of your non-root account happens to be. After a reboot, the system should then be able to automatically mount any USB stick you insert and automatically open the file manager for you. You can then use the caja file manager or the command prompt to copy files with read/write privileges to and from the USB stick, and also you'll be able to unmount the drive from caja or from the non-root user's command prompt using the `umount` command. I tried this using the hald daemon alone, and it did not work for me. I have thus disabled hald in this and in all of my other desktop configurations in FreeBSD, and only use devd and sysutils/automount for device discovery and automount needs.

I like kde5 and wouldn't discourage anyone from trying it. It's a bit more flexible, IIRC, with regards to being able to use either hald or devd plus automount for device discovery and automounting. I still used automount instead of hald on kde5, but you might prefer to just use hald instead, and, if I'm not mistaken, it will remain your choice on kde5, but only for as long as hald is still being supported therein. HAL has been deprecated for several years, and is reportedly no longer being upgraded, but is still being used and maintained, so who knows when, if ever, it will actually ever go away completely.

Thanks & best regards.

Edited to add: In automount.conf I also changed:

```
ENCODING=pl_PL.ISO8859-2
CODEPAGE=cp852
```
to

```
ENCODING=en_US.UTF-8
```


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## Quarter Wave Vertical (Dec 8, 2018)

kpedersen said:


> Are you in the position to try to test it on an amd64 install of FreeBSD?
> I still think it is due to a breakage in the i386 build of libgtop.
> 
> Perhaps the Mate maintainer only runs 64-bit as their test machine.


I've run into that before.  I tried installing a certain third-party program several  years ago and I couldn't get it to work until after I switched over to the AMD64 version of FreeBSD (the i386 version was still being supported at the time).

I've been using the AMD64 version ever since and it's only now that I've been having problems doing a fresh installation on my Intel machine.  That's why I made the earlier comment about wondering if my computer is reaching its limits as far as FreeBSD is concerned.

That, however, doesn't explain the fact that I can run FreeBSD in command-line mode without any problems (yet) as well as being able to use Xfce as a desktop.

I do, however, have another machine that is 64 bits and haven't had any problems with the installations I've got on it, though I have to admit that I haven't attempted a fresh installation on that one.

Now that I think I've ruled out the HD as the problem, I plan on installing KDE5 on the external test drive and see how that works.


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## Quarter Wave Vertical (Dec 8, 2018)

Vull said:


> I was finally able to get mate-base 1.20.3 to compile from ports. It was problematic, and this is a bit off topic, but, briefly, and in case anyone's interested, to make it compile successfully, I had to compile the dependency ports graphics/cairo and net/samba47 first and second, using `make install clean`. This was apparently because those two ports need to use python27 before it gets upgraded to python36 by the other ports. Then, thirdly, I compiled mate-base using `make DISABLE_VULNERABILITIES=yes install clean`, because of vulnerabilities in graphics/openjpeg which would cause the compile to abort otherwise. Finally, I compiled x11/xorg with `make install clean`. And it works. I'm sure there are other ways of doing it, but this worked for me. For comparisons, I also installed approximately the same things using packages on another partition of the same machine, except that version has mate-base version 1.20.0 instead of 1.20.3 because of the differences between available packages and ports.
> 
> Oddly, the compiled-from-ports 1.20.3 version shows the same problem with gtop you reported, whereas the control version of mate-base 1.20.0 I installed from packages does not. I don't know exactly why this is so, and otherwise they appear to be identical. I would have guessed it would have been the other way around.
> 
> ...


Thanks for your comments.  The slow response in dragging windows appears to be a bug in the current setup.

How long did it take for the installation from ports?  It seems each time I do that, I could go do something else as some of them could require several hours.  That's assuming that there's no error in compiling, along with a listing of several cryptic messages.  (That sort of thing reminds me of when I learned FORTRAN programming as an undergraduate using WATFOR/WATFIV.)


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## Vull (Dec 8, 2018)

The fix suggested by this compiler output made the libgtop errors go away for me:

```
===>  Installing for libgtop-2.38.0_1
===>  Checking if libgtop already installed
===>   Registering installation for libgtop-2.38.0_1 as automatic
Installing libgtop-2.38.0_1...
===============================================================================

In order to use the File System read/write monitor, you must chmod
/dev/devstat so that all users can open it read-only.  For example:

# chmod 0444 /dev/devstat

In order for this to persist across reboots, add the following to
/etc/devfs.conf:

perm    devstat 0444

===============================================================================

===> SECURITY REPORT:
      This port has installed the following files which may act as network
      servers and may therefore pose a remote security risk to the system.
/usr/local/bin/libgtop_daemon2

      If there are vulnerabilities in these programs there may be a security
      risk to the system. FreeBSD makes no guarantee about the security of
      ports included in the Ports Collection. Please type 'make deinstall'
      to deinstall the port if this is a concern.
===>   marco-1.20.2 depends on shared library: libgtop-2.0.so - found (/usr/loca
l/lib/libgtop-2.0.so)
===>   Returning to build of marco-1.20.2
```




Quarter Wave Vertical said:


> Thanks for your comments.  The slow response in dragging windows appears to be a bug in the current setup.
> 
> How long did it take for the installation from ports?  It seems each time I do that, I could go do something else as some of them could require several hours.  That's assuming that there's no error in compiling, along with a listing of several cryptic messages.  (That sort of thing reminds me of when I learned FORTRAN programming as an undergraduate using WATFOR/WATFIV.)



Not counting the time spent on redoing things after cryptic error messages, I got a clean start-over as described above, and everything went smoothly afterwards. So then, from that point onwards, the first compile (cairo) ran for about 12.5 hours, and took care of a lot of the dependencies for the other compiles. The samba47 compile then ran for a little over 1.5 hours, the mate-base compile then took just under 4.0 hours, and the xorg compile took about 1.5 hours. Note that this is for mate-base and not the complete mate "meta" package. I still need to add mate-terminal to get what I want, and maybe a few other things, and I'm still not sure if I'm even going to use it. As I mentioned before, I like kde5 and the only reason I'm not using it instead of Mate is because it's too memory hungry for a server front-end. For a server-less desktop-only system I would definitely use kde5 instead. There is no window-dragging latency problem with kde5 on my machine, and in fact of all the DEs I've tried, including xfce, lxde, and Enlightenment, only Mate has exhibited this latency problem. As for kde5 it's accurately described as a bit of a cpu and memory hog but it still runs remarkably well on this ancient i386 machine with only 2 cpus, 3 GB RAM, a 2.8 GHz processor speed and 800 Mhz bus speed. Great DE, and I really like the look and feel using the Oxygen theme.

Edit to add: one more thing, when I did the compiles I used `make config-recursive` before running `make install clean` in order to set all the options in advance. It would take much longer if I omitted that step. Out of time for now, good luck & ttyl


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## Quarter Wave Vertical (Dec 8, 2018)

Vull said:


> The fix suggested by this compiler output made the libgtop errors go away for me:
> 
> ```
> ===>  Installing for libgtop-2.38.0_1
> ...


So, by the time you were finished, it took some 20 hours.  It makes one wonder whether it's worth installing Mate that way.  Of course, one could run the machine with a different desktop and build Mate in the background in a terminal window after signing on as a superuser.

I'll take a look at KDE5.  It's been a number of years since I last tried KDE so I'm not familiar with what it's like now.

It's too bad that installing Mate using pkg has gone wobbly.  I really liked it after using Gnome2 for quite a while when my computer was running Linux.


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## Vull (Dec 9, 2018)

Since my main hope was to work around the delayed window dragging problem and it didn't work,  I suppose it wasn't worth it in that sense, but it didn't really cost me anything but a little time, and I gained a little experience at compiling things from ports, and learned a few things about the inner workings of Mate. The security hole created by graphics/openjpeg for instance. I have another machine I can use when this one's busy, so I just compiled everything straight from the console. All in all I thought the whole experiment was pretty interesting and worth a try anyway.


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## Quarter Wave Vertical (Dec 30, 2018)

I bought a refurbished laptop a few days ago and made a fresh installation of 11.2 and upgrading to 12.0 afterward.  It took a few tries, but FreeBSD seems to be working on it.

I installed Xfce and it's running with no apparent problems.  I also tried Mate, but it's wobbly.  It doesn't like me switching between my account and root and vice-versa.  (The second account won't work properly.)

Even if I use only my account, I can't shut down the machine from the System menu, which might indicate missing permissions.  I can shut it down if I go through a terminal or if I use a keyboard shortcut, but if I use the latter, I have to wait a minute.

Moving windows around in Mate is smoother now, but not quite as fast as on my tower machines.  Maybe it's because this new installation is on a laptop.


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## Vull (Dec 30, 2018)

Xfce seems to be one of the less troublesome desktop environments on FreeBSD; I just don't like it much for aesthetic reasons and have at this point pretty well settled on using either Plasma 5/KDE or LXDE. I've read in several places that we shouldn't log into X using the root account so I never do it.

Regarding the issue of shutting down or rebooting from the desktop, I still have one and only one old test installation of KDE which allows me to do it. I can't remember exactly how I made it work on that install, but I think it had something to do with either autofs, /usr/local/etc/PolicyKit/PolicyKit.conf, or maybe both. However I sometimes get errors shutting down that way, so I've made it a habit to always log out first, and then shut down using either the login/display manager or a text console. Also I've noticed that whenever I start the DE using startx instead of a login manager, I have the shutdown and reboot buttons on the desktop, but when I start the exact same DE using the login manager (usually sddm), then I don't see those buttons on the desktop. Not really sure exactly why.


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## rsronin (Dec 30, 2018)

Vull said:


> Xfce seems to be one of the less troublesome desktop environments on FreeBSD; I just don't like it much for aesthetic reasons and have at this point pretty well settled on using either Plasma 5/KDE or LXDE. I've read in several places that we shouldn't log into X using the root account so I never do it.
> 
> Regarding the issue of shutting down or rebooting from the desktop, I still have one and only one old test installation of KDE which allows me to do it. I can't remember exactly how I made it work on that install, but I think it had something to do with either autofs, /usr/local/etc/PolicyKit/PolicyKit.conf, or maybe both. However I sometimes get errors shutting down that way, so I've made it a habit to always log out first, and then shut down using either the login/display manager or a text console. Also I've noticed that whenever I start the DE using startx instead of a login manager, I have the shutdown and reboot buttons on the desktop, but when I start the exact same DE using the login manager (usually sddm), then I don't see those buttons on the desktop. Not really sure exactly why.



I just did a clean install of 11.2 and KDE5 using SDDM and have the logout, reboot and shut down buttons. I am using dsbmc and dsbmd for mounting 'exotic' stuff. I created devfs.rules based on the information from 'cooltrainers' website. It was a full install of KDE5 so I think it pulled the right dependencies. The only trouble I have now is Kodi not playing nice with KDE5/Dolphin. Xfce also runs great (although only logout button available, need to adjust /usr/local/etc/PolicyKit/PolicyKit.conf). Plasma feels as snappy as Xfce, although memory consumption is higher.


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## Quarter Wave Vertical (Dec 30, 2018)

Vull said:


> Xfce seems to be one of the less troublesome desktop environments on FreeBSD; I just don't like it much for aesthetic reasons and have at this point pretty well settled on using either Plasma 5/KDE or LXDE. I've read in several places that we shouldn't log into X using the root account so I never do it.
> 
> Regarding the issue of shutting down or rebooting from the desktop, I still have one and only one old test installation of KDE which allows me to do it. I can't remember exactly how I made it work on that install, but I think it had something to do with either autofs, /usr/local/etc/PolicyKit/PolicyKit.conf, or maybe both. However I sometimes get errors shutting down that way, so I've made it a habit to always log out first, and then shut down using either the login/display manager or a text console. Also I've noticed that whenever I start the DE using startx instead of a login manager, I have the shutdown and reboot buttons on the desktop, but when I start the exact same DE using the login manager (usually sddm), then I don't see those buttons on the desktop. Not really sure exactly why.


Thanks for your comments.  I'll likely do some more tinkering with it to see what happens.

Mind you, this is the first laptop that I've been able to install Mate on.  I tried it with some others that I have and either the installer or the system itself didn't like that.  Maybe it has to do with the fact that the laptop I bought a few days ago came with more RAM.

I'm not crazy about Xfce, either, but it's the closest to Mate, for my purposes, of the other desktops I've tried.  I never got the hang of KDE.  I found it too convoluted for my liking and even more so now with the current version.

One thing I've noticed is that it appears that what I get from an installation seems to vary from one machine to another.  It's just little things like, for example, the alert window that opens when one is unmounting a USB drive after having stored something on it.  On one laptop, it was of a different size and colour than it was on a different computer.  Go figure.


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## Quarter Wave Vertical (Dec 31, 2018)

Quarter Wave Vertical said:


> Thanks for your comments.  I'll likely do some more tinkering with it to see what happens.
> 
> Mind you, this is the first laptop that I've been able to install Mate on.  I tried it with some others that I have and either the installer or the system itself didn't like that.  Maybe it has to do with the fact that the laptop I bought a few days ago came with more RAM.
> 
> ...


I tweaked my laptop earlier this evening to allow it to run Mate after logging in through Slim.

The System menu allowed me to shut down the machine, but moving windows was a touch slower than when I was running Mate after typing `startx` with `exec mate-session` in .xinitrc. 

Now this is on a laptop with only 3 GB RAM and a 60 GB hard drive.  I'll have to see what happens when I try the same thing on the original system after upgrading it to FreeBSD 12.0.  That system is on one of my tower machines, which has more RAM and a larger HD than the laptop.


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## Vull (Dec 31, 2018)

I also have 3 GB ram but my machine is 32-bit. I'm guessing your laptop might be 64-bit. My Acer Aspire laptop with amd64 and 6 GB RAM ran Mate okay, and I didn't notice the window dragging lag, but I probably wouldn't notice it unless it was pretty severe... a little bit of lag is pretty common in my experience and doesn't really bother me much. Least amount of lag I get is probably with LXDE. Could easily be wrong but I tend t oassociate the window lag problem with this one particular FreeBSD 32-bit Mate port, and not with the amd64 port.
Thanks for keeping us in the loop regarding your progress.


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## Quarter Wave Vertical (Jan 1, 2019)

Vull said:


> I also have 3 GB ram but my machine is 32-bit. I'm guessing your laptop might be 64-bit. My Acer Aspire laptop with amd64 and 6 GB RAM ran Mate okay, and I didn't notice the window dragging lag, but I probably wouldn't notice it unless it was pretty severe... a little bit of lag is pretty common in my experience and doesn't really bother me much. Least amount of lag I get is probably with LXDE. Could easily be wrong but I tend t oassociate the window lag problem with this one particular FreeBSD 32-bit Mate port, and not with the amd64 port.
> Thanks for keeping us in the loop regarding your progress.


I'm running FreeBSD 12 with Mate on the wobbly system on my tower machine right now.

There is quite a lag in dragging windows in this installation, though I'm not sure if it's because I'm running a 64-bit OS on a 32-bit machine.  As well, there seems to be something running in the background that makes the desktop behave erratically.

Maybe what I should do is delete the entire installation and start over again from scratch.


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## Quarter Wave Vertical (Jan 3, 2019)

Quarter Wave Vertical said:


> <snip>
> 
> Maybe what I should do is delete the entire installation and start over again from scratch.


Never knowing when to leave well enough alone, I did just that.

I started by installing FreeBSD 11.2 AMD64 on my 32-bit machine.  I figured it's worked before, so it should this time.  I then upgraded to 12.0.

I then installed Mate and it behaves exactly the way it did when this whole situation started several weeks ago.  I might try tweaking Mate a bit further, but I don't think I want to spend much more time on it right now.  

As much as I don't particularly like it, Xfce might be my best option.


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## Vull (Jan 3, 2019)

I'd probably be using xfce if I wasn't so stubborn; I've seen several posts here where people seem to be using it without many problems. I'm still on plasma5-plasma with baloo file search options and a few other features turned off, and shall probably stick with it, even though, now, I can't seem to get the power management options to work quite the way I want. When (and if) the port maintainers update the mate ports and or packages again, I'll probably give mate another try just to see how it goes, but shall probably be sticking with plasma5 for my working FreeBSD installs for the foreseeable future, if for no better reason than because it seems a little less "linux-centric" than either Mate or LXDE/LXQT-- neither of which seem to be getting much attention or putting much focus on FreeBSD. Even KDE/Plasma seems to be slowly slipping into the GNU/Linux camp, but I've always associated KDE with FreeBSD ever since the old XFree86 days-- when, if I recall correctly, it was sort of like the main supported desktop environment for FreeBSD. Plus I've just always liked the colors, look, and feel of it, especially when using the Oxygen/Elarun theme and widget styles.


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## Quarter Wave Vertical (Jan 3, 2019)

Vull said:


> I'd probably be using xfce if I wasn't so stubborn; I've seen several posts here where people seem to be using it without many problems. I'm still on plasma5-plasma with baloo file search options and a few other features turned off, and shall probably stick with it, even though, now, I can't seem to get the power management options to work quite the way I want. When (and if) the port maintainers update the mate ports and or packages again, I'll probably give mate another try just to see how it goes, but shall probably be sticking with plasma5 for my working FreeBSD installs for the foreseeable future, if for no better reason than because it seems a little less "linux-centric" than either Mate or LXDE/LXQT-- neither of which seem to be getting much attention or putting much focus on FreeBSD. Even KDE/Plasma seems to be slowly slipping into the GNU/Linux camp, but I've always associated KDE with FreeBSD ever since the old XFree86 days-- when, if I recall correctly, it was sort of like the main supported desktop environment for FreeBSD. Plus I've just always liked the colors, look, and feel of it, especially when using the Oxygen/Elarun theme and widget styles.


I used Scientific Linux for a number of years.  It was, as I recall, based on Red Hat and had a Gnome desktop.  Another reason was that FreeBSD wasn't terribly stable on the machines I installed it on, frequently freezing and requiring rebooting.

I eventually switched to FreeBSD when I found that the previous problems I had with it rarely occurred.  In addition, the SL repository was rather limited and adding new packages proved to be rather convoluted.

I guess I became enamoured with Gnome because it was a lot like Solaris on the old Sun workstations I used while I was still a grad student some 20 years ago.


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## Vull (Jan 3, 2019)

In the late 90s my employers chose Red Hat (version 6.2 I think) over FreeBSD, after I introduced them to both systems-- they knew nothing whatsoever about FOSS at that time-- but later we all regretted it when they split Red Hat into Fedora and Enterprise Edition, which got all the routing and ipchains/iptables features we wanted (for some kind of fee, I forget how much). We continued using 6.2 for routers and gateways only long after the support for it started running dry. These were all headless machines with no desktop environments, and RH also had a buggy but usable IMSBASIC implementation which we used to support legacy BASIC software for a few live customers. Personally I experimented with X-windows features at home, using the FreeBSD documentation, which was much better and more comprehensive than anything I could find easily for Red Hat. I personally went dry on all GNU/Linux after that, until a few years ago when I started using Linux Mint to replace Windows on a few of my friends' boxes which were unable to keep up with the ever-growing hardware requirements for Windows, but whose hardware was not supported by FreeBSD. I've hated Windows for decades and haven't used it personally since Sun successfully sued M$ for-- what was it-- around $14 million back around the turn of the century, when M$ more or less killed Java applets on the desktop through blatantly illegal contract violations and anti-competitive business practices. They were laughing all the way to the bank I'm sure when they paid off the $14 million which was chump change for them. Playing around with Linux Mint sent me running back to FreeBSD again right away-- I had been using MacOS X for several years, and played around with Debian in 2011 for a server implementation-- anything but Windows for me ha, bad enough that I still had to support Windows for several years, for customers running PowerTerm, putty, and the one and only M$ app we had written in Borland C++ for Windows.


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## Quarter Wave Vertical (Jan 3, 2019)

Vull said:


> In the late 90s my employers chose Red Hat (version 6.2 I think) over FreeBSD, after I introduced them to both systems-- they knew nothing whatsoever about FOSS at that time-- but later we all regretted it when they split Red Hat into Fedora and Enterprise Edition, which got all the routing and ipchains/iptables features we wanted (for some kind of fee, I forget how much). We continued using 6.2 for routers and gateways only long after the support for it started running dry. These were all headless machines with no desktop environments, and RH also had a buggy but usable IMSBASIC implementation which we used to support legacy BASIC software for a few live customers. Personally I experimented with X-windows features at home, using the FreeBSD documentation, which was much better and more comprehensive than anything I could find easily for Red Hat. I personally went dry on all GNU/Linux after that, until a few years ago when I started using Linux Mint to replace Windows on a few of my friends' boxes which were unable to keep up with the ever-growing hardware requirements for Windows, but whose hardware was not supported by FreeBSD. I've hated Windows for decades and haven't used it personally since Sun successfully sued M$ for-- what was it-- around $14 million back around the turn of the century, when M$ more or less killed Java applets on the desktop through blatantly illegal contract violations and anti-competitive business practices. They were laughing all the way to the bank I'm sure when they paid off the $14 million which was chump change for them. Playing around with Linux Mint sent me running back to FreeBSD again right away-- I had been using MacOS X for several years, and played around with Debian in 2011 for a server implementation-- anything but Windows for me ha, bad enough that I still had to support Windows for several years, for customers running PowerTerm, putty, and the one and only M$ app we had written in Borland C++ for Windows.


I became interested in FreeBSD through OS X when I bought what was back then Apple's top-of-the-line G4 machine.  I had been an avid Apple user for several years by then, but when I started having problems with the hardware and Apple gave me the runaround, I started looking at Linux and FreeBSD.

I also moved to either refurbished or homebrew computers.  With that hardware, there was a chance I could get spare parts as there weren't any readily available for my Apple.  I spent quite a lot of money on that last setup and I hated the idea of having to put it up on blocks simply because the manufacturer didn't want to repair it or sell me replacement components, and I certainly wasn't going to buy brand new machinery.  ("We only support it for xxx number of years.  That time has passed.  G'bye.")  By going to second-hand or custom-built units, I could either fix them myself or, since they were often a lot cheaper than buying new stuff off the shelf, I could scrap them or strip them for spare parts.

I certainly wasn't going over to Windows.  I've hated that OS from the very beginning and even more so when the institution I used to teach at dumped a perfectly good Unix system some 20 years ago and adopted M$.


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## Vull (Jan 3, 2019)

I try to run all computers to the drop dead point whenever possible and practical to do so. It's alarming how much metal and plastic junk I've already scrapped over the years and I'm just one person. The computers we consider to be junk today are still technological marvels when compared with what we've had decades past or even just a few years ago. Running FreeBSD with a new disk drive, this 12 year old computer I'm typing on right now is even more powerful than it was when it was brand new and probably cost over $K. It's only practical to drive it 'til it drops.


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## Quarter Wave Vertical (Jan 20, 2019)

Never content to let slumbering canines doze in peace, I did some more tinkering.

I reconfigured the machine that's been so troublesome.  The hard drive with the wobbly Mate was replaced by a larger one and I installed FreeBSD 12/Mate on that, starting with the AMD64 version.  Mate still didn't work like I expected it to.

I deleted the installation and replaced it with the i386 version with the same result, leading me to believe that the FreeBSD/Mate combination might not be compatible with the processor.

By comparison, I have a quad-core machine and, before I tried my latest tricks with the original computer, I took that second drive, and connected it.  I then installed FreeBSD/Mate on it, and Mate runs.  The only thing I noticed that's not quite the same as what's on my other machines is that, when dragging windows, it's slower with the mouse pointer leading by a split second.

Now that I've answered some questions I've had, I think I'll leave things be because I can't think of what else I can do.  On that larger drive, I'm running Xfce and there doesn't seem to be any problems with the installation.


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## Vull (Jan 20, 2019)

I came to a similar point and am now using plasma5-plasma on my i386 Dell. No longer testing other DEs on FreeBSD, at least not for the time being, but still using Mate on Debian, where it works well. I'll probably give Mate on FreeBSD another try whenever the next Mate port is made -- mainly just out of curiosity though, since I'm really pretty content at this point to keep running a customized version of plasma5-plasma 5.14.4 with no HAL daemon and BSDISKS enabled.


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## Quarter Wave Vertical (Feb 3, 2019)

As I believe I mentioned before, I have two tower machines, one of which has the wobbly installation on one of its hard drives.  The remainder of the drives on those computers have the original Mate installation and I upgraded those to FreeBSD 12.0 over the past few days.

Now that the upgrading is finished, the original Mate setup runs off the respective drives.

When I trashed the one installation, I was trying to update to an RC of 12.  I think I might have neglected to upgrade all the packages and ports, which the upgrading process for 12.0-RELEASE suggests should be done.


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## gop (Feb 23, 2019)

Hello to all...

I need your kind help. I am trying to get to the desktop (MATE) without any success.  The installation in *on bare metal*. The steps I follow are:


Clean FreeBSD installation
Login as root
(a) # pkg update
(b) # pkg upgrade
(c) # pkg install xorg mate slim slim-themes
(d) # sysrc dbus_enable=YES
     # sysrc hald_enable=YES
     # sysrc slim_enable=YES
(e) # vi .xinitrc and I put "exec mate-session" inside
(f) # cp .xinitrc /home/USERNAME/.xinitrc

3) I reboot

and I get the screen of step 2) !!! (again).

Any ideas/suggestions/help would be more than welcome.


Thank you all in advance.


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## mickey (Feb 23, 2019)

gop said:


> and I get the screen of step 2) !!! (again).
> 
> Any ideas/suggestions/help would be more than welcome.


Check /var/log/Xorg.0.log for any warnings (WW) or errors (EE) that might occur during starting the X server. What graphics hardware do you use and are the drivers correctly installed?


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## gop (Feb 23, 2019)

mickey said:


> Check /var/log/Xorg.0.log for any warnings (WW) or errors (EE) that might occur during starting the X server. What graphics hardware do you use and are the drivers correctly installed?



I have an integrated Intel card. Should I install anything relevant?


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## mickey (Feb 24, 2019)

gop said:


> I have an integrated Intel card. Should I install anything relevant?


I think you are going to need graphics/drm-kmod.


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## gop (Feb 24, 2019)

mickey said:


> I think you are going to need graphics/drm-kmod.


Hello again..

I made the following:
(a1) # echo kern.vty=vt >> /etc/loader.conf
(a2) # pkg install drm-kmod
(a3) # I added the line

kld_list="/boot/modules/i915kms.ko"

in /etc/rc.conf

The result is pretty much the same... see attached picture (/var/log/Xorg...)


PS. DO I NEED something like xf86-video-intel AS WELL?


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## gop (Feb 24, 2019)

I solved the problem... xf86-video-intel was needed as well.

Yet there is something strange. Although I change the .xinitrc content to 
"exec ck-launch-session mate-session"
I do not have the shutdown/reboot/etc options.


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## mickey (Feb 24, 2019)

gop said:


> (a1) # echo kern.vty=vt >> /etc/loader.conf


That needs to go into /boot/loader.conf.



gop said:


> kld_list="/boot/modules/i915kms.ko"


Try without leading path and without the .ko, i.e.

```
kld_list="i915kms"
```
Then reboot the machine. After reboot check `dmesg` for any messages from the driver if it loaded up correctly.


gop said:


> The result is pretty much the same... see attached picture (/var/log/Xorg...)
> PS. DO I NEED something like xf86-video-intel AS WELL?


I don't think you need that one. It seems to be for older chipsets and only offers 2D acceleration, according to the pkg-descr file.


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## gop (Feb 24, 2019)

mickey said:


> That needs to go into /boot/loader.conf.
> 
> 
> Try without leading path and without the .ko, i.e.
> ...


Thank you very much. May I ask you something else? How to load some drivers upon booting from a USB stick with the image of a new current edition?


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## mickey (Feb 24, 2019)

gop said:


> How to load some drivers upon booting from a USB stick with the image of a new current edition?


That question is pretty vague. I believe 13-current if that's what you mean is not supported here. Probably the same way as in 12.0 I guess, via `kld_list` in /etc/rc.conf. That's the preferred way for loading up kernel modules, unless the module is needed early in the boot stage i.e. for mounting filesystems, then it still needs to be loaded from /boot/loader.conf.


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## gop (Feb 24, 2019)

mickey said:


> That question is pretty vague. I believe 13-current if that's what you mean is not supported here. Probably the same way as in 12.0 I guess, via `kld_list` in /etc/rc.conf. That's the preferred way for loading up kernel modules, unless the module is needed early in the boot stage i.e. for mounting filesystems, then it still needs to be loaded from /boot/loader.conf.


I would like to perform an installation in a nvme ssd and upon booting of the USB stick I get the message "nvme interrupt" so I guess I need to load the nvme driver early. Yet I do not know how to do it.


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## mickey (Feb 24, 2019)

gop said:


> I would like to perform an installation in a nvme ssd and upon booting of the USB stick I get the message "nvme interrupt" so I guess I need to load the nvme driver early. Yet I do not know how to do it.


The required drivers should already be included in the GENERIC kernel:

```
$ grep "nvme" /sys/amd64/conf/GENERIC
device          nvme                    # base NVMe driver
device          nvd                     # expose NVMe namespaces as disks, depends on nvme
```
So i guess the problem lies somewhere else.


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## gop (Feb 24, 2019)

mickey said:


> The required drivers should already be included in the GENERIC kernel:
> 
> ```
> $ grep "nvme" /sys/amd64/conf/GENERIC
> ...



Any ideas concerning this?


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