Is GNOME on FreeBSD a good idea? Asking for a friend

[Frank Leonhardt]

Someone (not me, honest), really, really wants to run GNOME on FreeBSD
and was complaining to me that it won't run the latest version because
of systemd. I think he's been reading Linux web sites or some such, but
then again systemd sounds like a plausible problem.

The Handbook says it will do it:

https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/desktop/

Apparently it needs the HAL demon and other stuff enabled that you
wouldn't normally have, although it's not clear from the handbook
whether this installs and configures automagically with the port. He's
new to FreeBSD (I'm just new to the concept of a graphical desktop on
it). I believe consolekit2 is used to replace that part of systemd that
GNOME requires.

I thought about digging out a spare monitor, connecting it to a server,
locating a mouse and trying it out out but it's really not my thing so
the thought didn't linger, especially if someone else knows the current
state of play.

IIRC something called KDE Plasma was going to be bundled with the
installer for 15. Is it in the latest Alpha and is it a good plan (not
generally, but for my friend)? I can't find much info so I was hoping
someone hereabouts would have tried it. The official project pages are a
bit lacking for GNOME and KDE, but IME this proves nothing. Except,
perhaps, bundling KDE with the installer isn't as realistic as the
announcement suggested. (https://wiki.freebsd.org/Gnome 
https://freebsd.kde.org/)

NB. Personally I wouldn't know the difference between KDE and GNOME if I
saw them.

Thanks, Frank.

[Ralf Mardorf]

Hi Frank,

I'm a Linux user and might be able to help you with some of your
questions, but I'm not a desktop environment expert. I just use a simple
window manager.

Anyway, even in Linux, you can use simple dummy packages to resolve
dependencies.

$ pacman -Qi pulseaudio gvfs | grep Des
Description: Dummy package
Description: Dummy package

GNOME stuff like the file manager needs gvfs for auto-mounting and for
trash and whatever else. This gvfs requires systemd.

HAL is a good keyword, udev replaces HAL and is part of systemd.

Does your "friend" really want these menu bar-less windows without
window buttons and the other inconveniences of GNOME?

I don't know what has been solved or not solved in FreebSD with regard
to GNOME.

I would recommend a different desktop environment or a simple window
manager and, if necessary, installing one or two GNOME programs without
the entire desktop environment. I actually do that on my Linux computer.

Regards,
Ralf

[Edward Sanford Sutton, III]

On 10/2/25 10:58, Frank Leonhardt wrote:
> Someone (not me, honest), really, really wants to run GNOME on FreeBSD
> and was complaining to me that it won't run the latest version because
> of systemd. I think he's been reading Linux web sites or some such, but
> then again systemd sounds like a plausible problem.

My apologies ahead of time for the wall of text; some may be relevant
to you while some only relevant to your 'someone'. I tried to keep it
organized in sections and tried to not drift off topic much. If you are
reading through a paragraph and think "don't care/not relevant",
skipping to the next paragraph likely loses only the uninterested topic
of the paragraph.
I haven't tried Gnome in many years as I didn't like it when I tried
it and I haven't heard of them making changes that interested me to try
again. That was based on a user interface experience that I didn't find
preferable.
This isn't based on getting into sillyness and irony like their
claims of using a computer after Windows 10 goes EOL as if they are
'the' choice to keep old hardware going when they link to endof10.org.
Removal of x.org support to go to Wayland as a requirement does drop
support for some Win10 compatible devices including my FreeBSD desktop
from 2012 with a GPU likely from 2011 if I recall; or at least it has
seemed Wayland incompatible in my FreeBSD testing and Linux users
mention similar Wayland compatibility issues on some hardware. "Our
software has no restrictions on use and respects your privacy" stops
being true if they remove support for previously working systems but I
think they meant other things besides hardware they choose to support as
'restrictions'.
Other sillyness/irony is claims that Flathub is 'the Linux app
store'; 'the' should be 'a' to make it accurate and FreeBSD doesn't
support Flathub (at least directly/natively) though We aren't Linux so
its very likely that Gnome has no interest in talking about us as they
only talk about the subset of Linux they actually support as if that is
all LInux is...you can really scratch your head more and more the more
you read just their main webpage. If the 'not you, honest' is concerned
about such things before considering it fully supported then its
probably still considered not complete to them.
My understanding is historically Gnome has lagged behind due to
porting difficulty from a number of Linuxisms and that is systemd is one
of them but not the only reason.
Gonme is up to 49 as of 2025-09-17. Freshports has us listed as
getting 47 as of 2025-06-11 though it came out 2024-09-18. We were at 42
before that which we got in 2022-05-20. As that indicates, we have spent
a lot of time being much more out of date than we currently are.

> The Handbook says it will do it:
>
> https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/desktop/
>
> Apparently it needs the HAL demon and other stuff enabled that you
> wouldn't normally have, although it's not clear from the handbook
> whether this installs and configures automagically with the port. He's
> new to FreeBSD (I'm just new to the concept of a graphical desktop on
> it). I believe consolekit2 is used to replace that part of systemd that
> GNOME requires.

I'd be surprised if Gnome 'needed' hal daemon and other friends but
didn't set them as a dependency of x11/gnome. If it is "needed" and is
missing, its a bug. You could work around such a bug by installing and
setting up the missing dependency. Some 'needed' dependencies may be
system dependent (graphics driver); this is not a bug that one is not
also installed for you (or complicated enough there is no current proper
solution to automatically check that it gets satisfied properly) but any
common/always needed dependencies should get included.
Some possibly optional dependencies and dependency choices may
require a selection at build time; the packages will only use one
choice. At that point you may need con consider building from source to
get things exactly how you want them. If something cannot work at all
without doing so, I'd consider it a bug but some ports have conservative
options that cause this exact case; contact the relevant maintainer to
see if an adjustment to the defaults can be made.
There is a slight deviation in that ports sometimes have 'flavors'
where multiple packages are generated with differing build options; this
system still has some limitations in its use to form complete dependency
trees when multiple flavors get involved so rebuilding may still be needed.
Some complicated systems will guide a user through what is supposed
to be done with package messages. In my opinion that system still needs
a lot of work to be practical as some ports give general warnings to
first time installers in case they have an old configuration needing
changes (a bug; we have a way to give the message to a user 'only' when
upgrading across a version boundary), presenting some general
good-to-know things like particular bugs/limitations of the port (we
should formally decide how these are to be stored/presented/accessed by
all users of all ports), and the all-too-common mention of 'this port
has no maintainer' (such equivalent port output should be grouped
together and only mentioned once with a list of ports it applies to
instead of repeating the message over and over). If you navigate the
'noise' successfully or fully then you should be able to pick out
relevant messages of things that must be configured; some configurations
that dependencies mention are not always required for use with all
dependent packages so you may overconfigure some things.
It is great that the handbook filters you past some of that by saying
what is needed as a how-to. Just as the package messages are not
perfect, the handbook is sometimes incomplete or outdated in its
guidance. Its a bug when that happens; please open a PR if one doesn't
already exist so people can be aware of and fix the issue.

> I thought about digging out a spare monitor, connecting it to a server,
> locating a mouse and trying it out out but it's really not my thing so
> the thought didn't linger, especially if someone else knows the current
> state of play.

If you want to avoid putting it into a server, you can consider a
virtual machine on your non-FreeBSD desktop/laptop and give it a quick
spin through there or even try a `pkg install -n x11/gnome` to see what
version would be installed and if your server doesn't have hal and
friends you could confirm if they would have been installed at that
prompt too. I don't know how to get a list of dependencies from a
non-installed pkg through pkg's commands. A convenient listing is at
freshports.org but is only direct dependencies so is not a complete
list. If you have a ports tree, you can run `make package-depends-list`
which might get the desired listing; the ports tree dependency
'listings' are sometimes not correct/complete depending on the command
that was used and if you (manually) recursively do it inside every other
dependency. Even though getting a listing properly is hard, the ports
tree does follow dependencies as they are entered per port and will get
them right for building/installing even if -list outputs do not. I tried
to test but my version of FreeBSD-stable-14 still has a 'longer pipes
regularly break' issue so collecting the output isn't working here at
the moment.

> IIRC something called KDE Plasma was going to be bundled with the
> installer for 15. Is it in the latest Alpha and is it a good plan (not
> generally, but for my friend)? I can't find much info so I was hoping
> someone hereabouts would have tried it. The official project pages are a
> bit lacking for GNOME and KDE, but IME this proves nothing. Except,
> perhaps, bundling KDE with the installer isn't as realistic as the
> announcement suggested. (https://wiki.freebsd.org/Gnome https://
> freebsd.kde.org/)

KDE is big with many programs making a rather complete set of things
to be bundled for a consistent/complete experience. Some of those
programs irritate me with sloppy programming and the bundle of software
has been growing ever bigger and runs ever slower on my system, and with
more observed bugs than ever to where startup times, memory+CPU
consumption, etc. have reached a point that alternatives interest me. I
had started with KDE 3 (or was it earlier.
I think it was an effort to bundle it again that caused the split but
in recent months a lot of KDE dependencies were moved into kde-gear so
you may want that if you want to install a complete KDE experience.
These have been deemed too big and will not put on the installer images.
Unless you have no network, it should be easy enough to install KDE
after instead of during install as the handbook guides you.
On FreeBSD, you are not required to use kde or kde-gear 'meta'
packages and can always install the pieces individually that interest
you for a much less bloated experience. It is quite uncommon that KDE
users use everything KDE offers, but it is nice to have it there without
having to look at 'what programs does KDE have to do task xyz'. If you
go that route and ever see anything broken, please make sure a PR exists
or gets created as your issue may impact non-kde users who also try to
separately use that KDE program without all of KDE installed.
We used to have the installer guide 3rd party package installs during
install time but that was lost with the migration from sysinstall to
bsdinstall. I haven't tried 15's installer recently to see if there is
progress in that area for either local media packages or internet
packages but at least some minor work had to be done as they split parts
of wifi (just firmwares?) back out into the ports tree.
freebsd.kde.org is dated enough that I'd say its irrelevant. From
homepage to browsed links it is still back in the days before we removed
kde5 and now refer to kde6 as kde (think upstream wants to drop 'kde'
and go to 'plasma' or just 'k' but that started with kde5 many years
ago). In any case, I'd disregard that site unless you find much more up
to date information than I did as FreeBSD is kde6 only now (some
individual kde5 programs are around but no kde5 meta desktop).

> NB. Personally I wouldn't know the difference between KDE and GNOME if I
> saw them.

My observations was that KDE had better defaults for a UI, more
options to change the UI into anything (Gnome was intentionally 'very'
limited and I doubt that to ever change). I wanted, more
environment-specific based software, and better interaction among
programs throughout the environment (having one contacts database for
separate programs like an email client, messenger, etc. with a backend
that was organized to do so. Not sure how true it is but 20 years ago
when I gave it a much more detailed look that was all definitely a
thing. If Gnome and friends didn't catch up and if KDE and friends
didn't break what they had too much then it could still be relevant. I
think gmone was trying to be more of an older mac layout with its one
top menubar and such last I looked but don't know if that is right and
current; unnecessarily dynamic user interfaces are generally a bad
interface for both new and old users so I tend to avoid them.
I have spent a lot of time on KDE over the years though I don't use a
lot of what it offers. I have also used e16 which was a much lighter
experience. At the moment I am on i3; some good and some bad but I think
tiling window managers + me only get along so well and defaults are not
good in my opinion though I am trying to learn there first but it seems
very efficient which is a major plus. There is an 'issue' in that i3
didn't tell me to install 'optional' things it uses as part of its
default config so I had to manually install dmenu to get a working
[whatever_key]+d and the status bar with network state+battery+hdd/RAM
space+time/date was broken until I installed i3status. Awkward to
install things when learning by error and awkward to find when they
aren't all related by port category or name but I've made some progress.
Even without these parts it was a usable system and depending on user
customization they may not be used/needed at all so its nice to not see
a forced dependency but a message would be nice. I think I also found a
possibly unnecessary double patching happening during building that I
may be able to open a PR to remove but need to look back at notes.
We have a lot of good choices available and they go well beyond what
the handbook suggests; only problem is I know of no good way to search
for them and no good comparison short of try each one comparatively.

> Thanks, Frank.
>
>
>

[Graham Perrin]

On 02/10/2025 18:58, Frank Leonhardt wrote:
> Someone (not me, honest), …

…

> Apparently it needs the HAL demon …


Not on FreeBSD, Dave.

<https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/ljjq4u/2001_is_a_distant_memory_hal_is_retired/>

Surely, HAL was not a demon, and stop calling me Shirley.

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Fri, 2025-10-03 at 03:25 +0100, Graham Perrin wrote:
> Not on FreeBSD, Dave.

I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't confirm that.

There are many clones of the original HAL 9000. I myself am a Linux
multi-boot HAL 9000 from Germany. There used to be a FreeBSD HAL 9000
right where I am standing now. Undoubtedly, there are still FreeBSD HAL
9000 clones elsewhere on this planet today.

$ grep "HAL 9000" -A2 /boot/grub/grub.cfg
menuentry " -- HAL 9000-m1 -----------------------------------------------------------------" {
true
}

Regards,
HAL 9000-m1

[Dag-Erling Smørgrav]

Frank Leonhardt <freeb...@fjl.co.uk> writes:
> Someone (not me, honest), really, really wants to run GNOME on FreeBSD
> and was complaining to me that it won't run the latest version because
> of systemd.

I'm sorry to see that your question seems to have brought out an
larger-than-usual contingent of kooks. Please ignore them.

We tend to lag a little behind, but GNOME 47 has been available on
FreeBSD since June, and I assume GNOME 48 is in progress. GNOME 49 only
just came out, so it's a little early to expect it on FreeBSD.

cc: to Olivier who is probably the best person to answer what's
currently in progress or right around the corner.

DES
--
Dag-Erling Smørgrav - d...@FreeBSD.org

[Graham Perrin]

On 02/10/2025 18:58, Frank Leonhardt wrote:

> … IIRC something called KDE Plasma was going to be bundled with the
> installer for 15.  …


An installer for a usable desktop configuration was on the 15.0-RELEASE
milestone here:

<https://github.com/orgs/FreeBSDFoundation/projects/1/views/3?sliceBy%5Bvalue%5D=System+Management&pane=issue&itemId=84821241&issue=FreeBSDFoundation%7Cproj-laptop%7C25>

As far as I can tell: a release engineering decision was made, in
mid-September, to not have this feature of FreeBSD Installer on the 15.0
milestone.

[Frank Leonhardt]

Thanks for all the answers everyone, and I will pass them on to my
friend. He's real, his name is Stefan and he lives in Mexico.

Stefan's a Linux aficionado and I suggested he might like to try the
"real thing". His first comment after installing it was "Wow - how come
this is so fast?" His next was, "Ugh - I can't seem to get GNOME running."

I'm afraid my experience is limited to sshd and possibly a VGA monitor
and keyboard on a trolley when things go pear shaped, so I appreciate
you guys helping me out. He may pop up on this list later. I might also
try FreeBSD as a desktop as a result, but he's probably got a better
chance than I have with this "front end" stuff.

Thanks, Frank.

[Paul Pathiakis]

Frank,

You may want to try GhostBSD for a solid desktop/system.  I've put my gf and her 80yo mother on it.

No issues for over 10 years.  (Goodbye MS viruses and such.)  The desktop is MATE (the fork from GNOME).

Paul

[Frank Leonhardt]

Thanks Paul, I dabbled with PC-BSD a while back, and IIRC GhostBSD was it successor. I'll pass it on. I had a look at MATE and I might well like it myself. If I've got to run a graphical desktop "efficient and minimal" works for me, but I doubt MATE will be new and shiny enough for him. I suspect you're more like me, and just want something that works. As I might have mentioned, I simply install Manjaro (XFCE) and get on with it when I need a GUI front-end machine, because it's never "got in the way" or annoyed me with silly graphical effects.

Regards, Frank.