Frankly as a Linux user I was always on the Gnome 4x camp of Desktop UIs. This is because that’s the flagship Ubuntu Desktop. On FreeBSD most folks recommend KDE, so I’ve decided to give it a try again. I’ve used it back in the late 90s and early 2000’s, so I wasn’t scared of the thought of using it at all. I just have had no experience since I never had to dip my feet into that area of desktop environments. I use XFCE on my Raspberry Pis and it’s awesome for what it is.
So far on KDE I’m liking what I’m seeing. I’m using Kate as my code editor in lieu of Visual Studio Code which I reluctantly use only for convenience, I’m finding I’m really liking Kate as a GUI code editor. It’s fast and with the right programming language servers it’s quite a good editor so far.
I’ll likely post about how to install the Rust and Typescript language servers later, it’s a handy helper for programming.
The best way to install KDE on FreeBSD I’ve found is KDE’s own FreeBSD Installation Guide
I might record a video or make a screenshot guide of installing KDE if I feel up to it.
There are a few omissions that I think help the quality of life for most folks. Spellcheck is important to me because I’m the king of typos. The guide above doesn’t address this, however simply just installing aspell is all you need to activate spell checking
pkg install en-aspell
Feel free to add or replace the en- above with the language of your choice a full list can be displayed by pkg search aspell
Bonus Tip!
If you want .webp and other image format previews in Dolphin (the KDE File Explorer) install qt5-imageformats via pkg install qt5-imageformats!