KDE on FreeBSD

[CougTek]

I was wondering if KDE would run on FreeBSD and a quick Google research led me to this page. James certainly already knows about it, but just in case anyone else would like to try it, I thought it would be a good ressource.

There's something about BSD I still haven't figured out : ports. Ports on BSD seem far more prominent than on other OSes I have tried. Why does the user have to mess with ports on BSD and not much on other OSes? Maybe Google will tell me next time I visit it.

Also, why GCC 3.2 isn't part of FreeBSD 4.7? It has been released well before and is supposed to produce an output that is quite a bit faster than previous 2.9.x versions. Disapointing.

And I'm still trying to find out if the F@h client for Linux would work on a FreeBSD box...

 

[CougTek]

And I'm still trying to find out if the F@h client for Linux would work on a FreeBSD box...

Found! It works.

 

[ihsan]

I'm using KDE on FreeBSD and it worked fine but the fonts AA are ugly for my taste. I'm even using Microsoft's TTF font packs.

A query on the mailing list probably answered your question. GCC 3.2 won't compile properly on buildword processes. That's why it is shipped with 2.9.x. The upcoming 5.0 will have 3.2 as the de facto compiler.

 

[ihsan]

Speaking of ports, I simply love them. Genius creation.

The most appreciated feature of ports is that, the makefile will pull in every package that is a dependency of the to be installed port. If that port, especially php-4.2.3 requires 10 dependency packages to be installed before it can, the ports will automatically do it for you. No crap EULAs yesses and nos will stall the installation which I find very pleasing.

If you need to keep track of the latest and greatest ports and have the system upgrade them, cvsup and a portupgrade are the one-two punch for doing that.

 

[Cliptin]

As ihsan hinted around about, ports is the default BSD package managment system. I understand it to be superior to RPMs and even apt-get. In fact, the GNU/Linux distro Gentoo uses a package managment system based directly on the BSD ports model.

BSD development tends to progress a little slower than GNU/Linux, Coug. They like to take their time to make sure the version will be solid.

Apparently folks are also implementing a ports system for OSX:
http://www.osxfaq.com/Editorial/port/index.ws

 

[James]

Looks like my work here is done already (by others, no less). :wink:

I too think the Ports collection is one of the highlights of FreeBSD. Just cd to /usr/ports/category/app, type "make all" and it will retrieve the latest source code (and any dependancies), apply the FreeBSD patches, compile, and install everything for you. Huge time saver.

I'm a little ashamed to admit it - but I hardly ever use an X-Windows environment at all on FreeBSD, I'm strictly a console-type guy. So I'm afraid I can't actually help you Coug with your questions about KDE. But feel free to ask about most other things, I've been running FreeBSD off and on since about 0.9 so I've got longevity on my side at least.

 

[CougTek]

Thank you all for your input. I'm not yet ready to replace my Mandrake installation by FreeBSD, but I plan to try this OS in the next few weeks. Right now, I'm merely gathering information to foresee what I'm going to face when I'll make the move.

An X-window environment is essential for me. My main goal while I'm trying many non-Winblows OSes is to find a replacement desktop OS. Since their latest EULA, I've I have decided that Win2K would be the last OS from Redmont I would use. I've only installed WinXP a few times and never for myself. I feel that many others are in the same quest as I am since there are a lot more Linux and BSD interest everywhere recently.

 

[Mercutio]

There's no shame in being a console kind of guy, James. I am, too. I also
spend far more time in console apps than I do using X.

If you've got local access to all the source code, one really cool benchmark for your *BSD machine is doing a 'make world'. It's kind of pathetic on my HP715 but I'll bet it's unreal on a 2GHz machine. I remember it taking days on 486s.