Just finished updating my laptop to the latest #FreeBSD after an overnight 'make buildworld' and friends. 😊

As always, everything went smoothly. One night later, the laptop is back up and running, and the GUI is ready for another day of work.

#ThePowerToServe #FreeBSDLaptop #FreeBSDDesktop

#UNIX #opensource #GUI #Laptop

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Screenshot of a FreeBSD 16.0-CURRENT desktop running Xfce after a successful overnight source build and system update. Two windows of sysctlview display kernel version information, while a terminal shows neofetch reporting FreeBSD 16.0-CURRENT on an AMD Ryzen laptop with Xfce 4.20. The desktop is fully operational with a panel, application windows, and folders visible in the background.

Finally, I managed to install and configure a graphical environment directly during a #FreeBSD installation session 🎉

Most of the friction was around GPU drivers, but the feedback and suggestions I received were incredibly helpful. A lot of people want to use FreeBSD on their laptops and desktops, and that really shows.

For now, the goal was to provide a simple option to install #KDE Plasma. If there’s interest and more requests, we can definitely expand this in the future with additional desktop environments and options.

Special thanks to the FreeBSD Foundation for their support 🙌

#RUNBSD #FreeBSDDesktop #FreeBSD #BSD #OpenSource #Unix #KDE #KDEPlasma #DesktopEnvironment #GUI #Laptop #Desktop #FOSS #Tech #SysAdmin #DevOps #OperatingSystem

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A screenshot of the FreeBSD Installer on a blue background. The main focus is the 'Final Configuration' window with a list of system configuration options. The option 'Desktop' is highlighted, indicating the choice to install a graphical environment.

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Text-based FreeBSD installer dialog prompting the user to install GPU drivers, Xorg, KDE Plasma, and a display manager. The message notes that this is an experimental feature. Two options, “Yes” and “No,” are shown, with “Yes” currently selected.

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Text-based FreeBSD installer dialog with the title “Desktop installation completed.” The message explains that the SDDM display manager will start automatically at the next system boot and lists configured users. A tip suggests using the VBoxSVGA graphics controller and disabling 3D acceleration in VirtualBox. An “OK” button is highlighted at the bottom.

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Screenshot of a FreeBSD 15.0 system running inside a VirtualBox virtual machine with the KDE Plasma desktop environment. In the foreground, the “About this System” settings window displays software and hardware information, including KDE Plasma version, Qt version, kernel version, and available memory. In the background, a web browser window is open on the FreeBSD official website.

I did enjoy the ease of setup of TkInter, and compatibility with Matplotlib, but I was missing the simplicity of immediate mode libraries. In trying to emulate these, now a few callbacks trigger "given this dataclass with state, the widgets should look like this".
The micro-management gremlin is whining that it's repeating useless work, but more importantly the window is complete and I can go on with the experiment.

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Screenshot of a basic graphical application with settings, showing plots of generated signal to its side.