How to install Gnome-3 and KDE4 on FreeBSD 11

Gnome is one of the most popular desktop Linux environments. Gnome3 is the latest version of this software. In this article, let us look at how to install Gnome 3 on FreeBSD 11.1 and  11.2

Normally There is no Desktop environments installed  with FreeBSD . but still exist  in FreeBSD  repositories , we are talking about Gnome3.18 and KDE4

This  is a Live test  from my Virtual machine Freebsd  11.1

How to install Gnome-3 on FreeBSD 11 ?

First Update and Upgrade your system

Update

[email protected]:~ # pkg update
Updating FreeBSD repository catalogue...
Fetching meta.txz: 100% 944 B 0.9kB/s 00:01
Fetching packagesite.txz: 100% 6 MiB 916.1kB/s 00:07
Processing entries: 100%
FreeBSD repository update completed. 31157 packages processed.
All repositories are up to date.
[email protected]:~ #

Upgrade

[email protected]:~ # pkg upgrade
Updating FreeBSD repository catalogue...
FreeBSD repository is up to date.
All repositories are up to date.
Checking for upgrades (23 candidates): 100%
Processing candidates (23 candidates): 100%
The following 22 package(s) will be affected (of 0 checked):

Install  The needed  packages  for  GNOME3

[email protected]:~ # pkg install gnome-desktop gdm xorg gnome3
Updating FreeBSD repository catalogue...
FreeBSD repository is up to date.
All repositories are up to date.
The following 554 package(s) will be affected (of 0 checked):

New packages to be INSTALLED:

Add the following lines to /etc/rc.conf to enable mouse daemon, dbus daemon and hal daemon.

gnome_enable="YES"
moused_enable="YES"
dbus_enable="YES"
hald_enable="YES"
gdm_enable="YES"

Next, you will need to mount /proc. Add the following line to /etc/fstab using the “vi” command, this will mount /proc on startup:

proc /proc procfs rw 0 0

Reboot the machine.

Now the machine will boot into GDM login screen,

How to install  KDE on FreeBSD 11

Install KDE with the following command

pkg install x11/kde4 

Next, you will need to mount /proc. Add the following line to /etc/fstab using the “vi” command, this will mount /proc on startup:

proc /proc procfs rw 0 0

You will next need to configure KDE to automatically start as FreeBSD boots, this can be done by adding these 3 lines to /etc/rc.conf using the “vi” command. This ensures that KDE and all its dependencies are running on boot:

dbus_enable=”YES” hald_enable=”YES” kdm4_enable=”YES”

Reboot the server

Please enjoy and let us Know if you still need any help !!!