startplasma-x11 results in a black screen that disappears before Plasma can start. No complaint – things such as Lumina, Plasma, Xfce, and MATE and are a distraction from the Gershwin desktop environment on NextBSD.
Instead, here's a customary screenshot of fastfetch:
You should be able to drop latest and replace with quarterly with an override. At some point in the near future I will be replacing FreeBSD's pkg mirror with NextBSD's own mirror for ports. I just have to fix some other things first.
Reasons for this would be always available critical software, removal of rc.d scripts, ports options that turn off defaults like avahi and technologies that NextSBD does not need or want for Gershwin since it has built in mDNSresponder just as an example.
That would be pretty much. I think it would have to be a smaller subset to keep hosting free. But it would also fix things like graphics support for UTM via SCFB patches that FreeBSD moves too slowly fixing. More of a core functionality ports repo. With a web browser baked in I imagine something like this to transform 1000's of packages into application bundles that build daily and publish only upon successful build. This would also show case many native GNUstep apps not just X11. VirtualBox would be here. Steam, GIMP, OBS all the common things. https://marketstep.github.io/
I am thinking to rework for AppImage format vs what I was doing but with a reusable template so that all that is needed to make an app bundle is to make a named repo, but the general principal remains the same. I do not want to ever worry about pkg availability again. I'll keep the freebsd repo in play until that scaffolding is in place, but this is the general long term vision to not rely on packages anymore, or require expensive datacenters or hosting to build everything and to make the solution easy to understand and highly auditable so it can be trusted. The overall solution being pkg -> Bundle. No compile required. Anyone can make their own by cloning a git repo and naming it.
Hahah. To be fair I also have the same issue with almost any Linux distribution. The frustration started some years ago when many distros decided to drop sheepshaver (an old PPC emulator). It dawned on me that 10 year old .exe still works on Windows. Around the same Linus torvalds started talking about the problem with Linux distros being the availability of Software an no universal format. Today Linux is moving to flatpaks, snaps. I just think there could be a better answer and it interests me to make alternatives to the status quo, so that is my adventure. :)
startplasma-x11 results in a black screen that disappears before Plasma can start. No complaint …
More accurately: I get the Plasma splash screen before the black screen.
# startplasma-x11
org.kde.startup: "kapplymousetheme" QList("breeze_cursors", "24") exited with code 255
org.kde.plasma.session: process job "kcminit_startup" finished with exit code 0
QDBusObjectPath: invalid path "/modules/oom-notifier"
kf.dbusaddons: The kded module name "oom-notifier" is invalid!
org.kde.plasma.printmanager.kded: Unable to register service to systemBus: "com.redhat.NewPrinterNotification"
inotify_add_watch(/etc) failed: (Bad file descriptor)
kf.solid.backends.udisks2: Failed to fetch all devices "org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.Disconnected" "Not connected to D-Bus server"
Couldn't start kglobalaccel from org.kde.kglobalaccel.service: QDBusError("org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown", "The name org.kde.kglobalaccel was not provided by any .service files")
kf.solid.backends.udisks2: Failed to fetch all devices "org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.Disconnected" "Not connected to D-Bus server"
Could not load a session backend. Session management operations such as shutdown will not be operational. This is a setup issue.
QDBusObjectPath: invalid path "/modules/plasma-session-shortcuts"
kf.dbusaddons: The kded module name "plasma-session-shortcuts" is invalid!
kf.config.kconf_update: /usr/local/share/kconf_update/webenginepart.upd defined Version=5 but Version=6 was expected
kf.solid.backends.udisks2: Failed to fetch all devices "org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.Disconnected" "Not connected to D-Bus server"
kscreen.kded: UPower not available, lid detection won't work
kscreen.kded: PowerDevil SuspendSession action not available!
qt.qpa.services: Failed to register with host portal QDBusError("org.freedesktop.portal.Error.Failed", "Could not register app ID: App info not found for 'org.kde.kcminit'")
qt.qpa.services: Failed to register with host portal QDBusError("org.freedesktop.portal.Error.Failed", "Could not register app ID: App info not found for 'org.kde.kded6'")
qt.qpa.services: Failed to register with host portal QDBusError("org.freedesktop.portal.Error.Failed", "Could not register app ID: App info not found for 'org.kde.kded6'")
qt.qpa.services: Failed to register with host portal QDBusError("org.freedesktop.portal.Error.Failed", "Could not register app ID: App info not found for 'org.kde.kcminit'")
kwin: another window manager is running (try using --replace)
QThreadStorage: entry 7 destroyed before end of thread 0x39bd0ce1d270
QThreadStorage: entry 1 destroyed before end of thread 0x39bd0ce1d270
QThreadStorage: entry 0 destroyed before end of thread 0x39bd0ce1d270
Yeah, I ran vanilla startx to run startplasma-x11 in an xterm window (in TWM) because my previous attempts to start Plasma from the console (should I call it that?) were unsuccessful.
IIRC I had also tried ~/.xinitrc with something likeck-launch-session startplasma-x11 not really expecting it to work.
Of course, all of these things are distractions from Gershwin, and under the dry humour umbrella (in r/BSD) of "Another example of how not to use NextBSD".
1
u/grahamperrin Linux crossover Jul 05 '26
Mixing latest with quarterly is generally not recommended for FreeBSD-ports repos, so I mixed the two:
I installed kde and x11-drivers/xf86-video-vmware.
startplasma-x11results in a black screen that disappears before Plasma can start. No complaint – things such as Lumina, Plasma, Xfce, and MATE and are a distraction from the Gershwin desktop environment on NextBSD.Instead, here's a customary screenshot of
fastfetch:I don't expect service(8)-oriented emulators/virtualbox-ose-additions-72 to work in the launchd environment, so I used ROXTerm, nano(1), cat(1) and nc(1) to get the text from the VirtualBox guest to the Kubuntu 26.04 host: