FreeBSD The Power to Serve

KDE on FreeBSD

Links:
KDE/FreeBSD initiative URL: https://freebsd.kde.org/
FreeBSD — KDE Community Wiki URL: https://community.kde.org/FreeBSD

Contact: KDE on FreeBSD Mailing List <kde@FreeBSD.org>

The KDE on FreeBSD project packages CMake, Qt, and software from the KDE Community, for the FreeBSD ports tree. The software includes a full desktop environment called KDE Plasma (for both X11 and Wayland) and hundreds of applications that can be used on any FreeBSD machine. The KDE team is part of desktop@, building the software stack to make FreeBSD beautiful and usable as a daily driver graphical desktop workstation.

It Goes to 6!

The KDE ports have caught up with the current generation of upstream development and now deliver up-to-date KDE Frameworks 6, KDE Plasma 6, and KDE Gear. Where possible, the default version of every KDE application has been updated to a recent one that uses KDE Frameworks 6. Many Qt-based applications have also been updated to default to a Qt6 flavor.

This positions FreeBSD alongside OpenBSD and Linux distributions with a modern KDE experience.

Qt5 remains in the ports tree. KDE Frameworks 5 remain in the ports tree for some consumers. Qt5 reaches end-of-life from its upstream on May 26, 2025, so it is not recommended for use. KDE Frameworks 5 is in a similar security-only maintenance mode.

Thanks to makc@, arrowd@, and kenrap@ for landing this KDE update in ports.

Infrastructure

  • CMake received several patch-level updates

  • Qt and PySide (the Python bindings for Qt) were updated to 6.8.2

Last modified on: April 8, 2025 by Adriaan de Groot