# Black screen after KDE Plasma 5 Installation



## decuser (Feb 3, 2021)

I just installed KDE and sddm as part of an initial install on Virtualbox:

sudo pkg install xorg x11/kde5 sddm plasma5-sddm-kcm

/etc/rc.conf
dbus_enable="YES"
hald_enable="YES"
sddm_enable="YES"

Now, when my VM fires up, SDDM starts and after I provide my credentials, KDE starts with a black screen with an X cursor and just sits there:






I'm able to switch virtual terminals and everything else seems fine, but not KDE. It's been a while, but I have used these notes to install to metal, just fine.

Thoughts?


----------



## decuser (Feb 3, 2021)

Sheesh. Well, I'm answering my own question here for posterity, in case some other chump gets nailed by this nonsense. It turns out the the Desktop Session defaults to Plasma (Wayland)?!!! I just changed it to Plasma and it worked fine. Is Wayland even working sufficiently well in FreeBSD for this to be a rational default?


----------



## focus (Oct 31, 2022)

decuser said:


> Sheesh. Well, I'm answering my own question here for posterity, in case some other chump gets nailed by this nonsense. It turns out the the Desktop Session defaults to Plasma (Wayland)?!!! I just changed it to Plasma and it worked fine. Is Wayland even working sufficiently well in FreeBSD for this to be a rational default?


I ran into a similar same issue on a new install of FreeBSD13.1 w KDE5/sddm. In my case though, sddm fails to even present a proper graphical login prompt. Instead, that same screen you posted appears. 

Update: Strange. I rebooted to switch to another OS. Later I rebooted back into freebsd and the sddm login screen showed up this time. Selected Plasma on x11 option, and kde DE started up without any issues on login.


----------

