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Desktop-installer

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Desktop-installer

Desktop-installer is a post-install script for quickly configuring a FreeBSD desktop system.

To use desktop-installer, users should:

  1. Install a basic FreeBSD system using sysinstall (user + full sources recommended).
  2. Install desktop-installer from the latest port. (Development version available in jb_ports)
  3. Run desktop-installer, and follow the instructions on the screen.

Using binary packages on a fast machine, you could have a fully functional desktop system in about an hour. Using ports, or running on a an older machine, the process will take longer, but will still be much easier than manual configuration.

FreeBSD is widely known for its prowess as a server OS, but in reality it makes a very nice desktop system as well. Over many years of using FreeBSD, I've come to realize that most features one might want are in fact supported, and easy enough to configure, but often not well-publicized.

Hence, the main barrier to using FreeBSD as a desktop system is simply gathering the knowledge required to properly configure a desktop system. This is not a trivial task in itself, as it requires configuring X11 + a desktop system, networking, the CUPS print system, power management, battery monitoring, etc. For a newbie, any one of these is a major project.

There are distributions such as PC-BSD and DesktopBSD, which provide a graphical installer and easy GUI-based management. Unfortunately, these distributions only support x86 architectures and the KDE desktop.

The aim of desktop-installer is to provide an option for those who want to build a FreeBSD desktop system with the desktop of their choice (e.g. KDE, Gnome, XFCE, etc.), on the architecture of their choice (x86, Sparc, PowerPC, etc.)

The philosophy is to focus effort on improving functionality rather than appearance. GUI installers and system management tools are nice, but they require a lot of effort to maintain. In our view, sysinstall is easy enough to use, and the FreeBSD command-line tools and GUI tools provided with desktop systems like Gnome, KDE, and XFCE are sufficient for average users to maintain their systems.

Gnome on a ThinkPad T42

[Gnome Desktop]

XFCE4 on an iBook G4

[Full Screen]