The crew working on enhancing the FreeBSD laptop support is hoping to have an install option within the installer of FreeBSD 15 that will easily provide a KDE Plasma based desktop environment.
Currently FreeBSD desktop/laptop users need to carry out a base install and then boot into the FreeBSD installation with its console and then proceed to install the desktop of your choice via the package management system. The hope with FreeBSD 15.0, which aims to be released later this calendar year, is to integrate a desktop option into the operating system’s text-based installer that would provide a KDE Plasma based desktop.
When choosing the graphical desktop option, KDE Plasma 6 would be installed along with the SDDM display manager for providing a decent out-of-the-box desktop experience on new FreeBSD installs that would be far better than the status quo. This isn’t as nice though as what was previously available with the likes of PC-BSD and TrueOS prior to the project’s demise.
The FreeBSD laptop team noted in their monthly status update:
“For FreeBSD 15.0, our goal is to extend the FreeBSD installer to offer a minimal KDE-based desktop as an install option. The initial concept is a low-interaction installation process that, upon completion, brings the user directly to a KDE graphical login screen.
We are currently evaluating the required pkg dependencies to automatically select appropriate graphics drivers.”
They have been prototyping the support and for FreeBSD 15.0 hope to have a “bare minimum” desktop available for those wanting to enhance the FreeBSD install process for desktop/laptop users.
The FreeBSD laptop project has also been making progress on updating its kernel graphics drivers from the Linux 6.7~6.8 open-source state, enhance the FreeBSD scheduler for heterogeneous CPU cores, fixing s0ix handling for AMD laptops, continuing to work on better WiFi/wireless hardware support, improving external HDMI monitor hot-plugging, and making other power management improvements.
