Desktop Distributions | FreeBSD Foundation https://freebsdfoundation.org A non-profit organization dedicated to supporting and building the FreeBSD Project Wed, 28 Jan 2026 10:52:04 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://freebsdfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/favicon.png Desktop Distributions | FreeBSD Foundation https://freebsdfoundation.org 32 32 Guide to FreeBSD Desktop Distributions https://freebsdfoundation.org/resource/guide-to-freebsd-desktop-distributions/ Mon, 15 Aug 2022 19:04:18 +0000 https://freebsdfoundation.org/?post_type=resource&p=11572 A collection of FreeBSD desktop distributions that have taken the FreeBSD operating system in a new direction while still relying on the incredibly powerful and stable base operating system of FreeBSD. From integrated desktop environments, portable USB-based systems, to data recovery tools, FreeBSD has been used by a wide variety of open-source projects. This page hopes to highlight just a few of these projects.

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Updated: May 20, 2021

A collection of FreeBSD desktop distributions that have taken the FreeBSD operating system in a new direction while still relying on the incredibly powerful and stable base operating system of FreeBSD. From integrated desktop environments, portable USB-based systems, to data recovery tools, FreeBSD has been used by a wide variety of open-source projects. This page hopes to highlight just a few of these projects:

MidnightBSD:

 

Novice – Advanced Users

Project Website

“MidnightBSD is a BSD-derived operating system developed with desktop users in mind. It includes all the software you’d expect for your daily tasks — email, web browsing, word processing, gaming, and much more.”

What Makes MidnightBSD Unique:

System attributes:

  • New window and login manager.
  • Initially forked from FreeBSD 6.1 beta.
    • In order to allow customization of ports and system configuration.
    • Includes syncs from later FreeBSD versions.
  • Fully integrated environment with a focus on stability and optimization for desktop users.
  • Scheduling, allocation, security, and app support are uniquely tailored for desktop users.
  • Less emphasis on server optimization.
  • Includes a range of tools and utilities, including:
    • ZFS
    • hast
    • OpenSSH
    • Perl
  • Imported features from DragonFlyBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD
  • Improved security with ipfw and sudo.

User-end attributes:

  • New window and login manager.
  • Centralized system preferences.
  • Emphasis on easy to use graphical interfaces for new users.
  • BSD styled command line.
  • Graphical ports and package manager.
  • Large user community, including mailing lists and community forums.
  • Extensive documentation
  • Bugzilla for troubleshooting.

Notable Future Plans:

  • Expanded security capabilities.
  • Rewriting the package cluster system.
  • Maintaining and updating ports.

GhostBSD:

Novice – Advanced Users

Project Website

“GhostBSD is a simple, user-friendly operating system, based on the legendary security and stability of the FreeBSD operating system. GhostBSD provides all the benefits of the FreeBSD operating system combined with a focus on simplicity for newcomers.”

What Makes GhostBSD Unique:

System attributes:

  • Maintains the stability and security of FreeBSD
  • Optimized for modern workstations, desktop setups.
  • Massively simplified
  • Free and Open with source code on GitHub
  • Optimized codecs for multimedia files.
  • Project release as well as community releases.
  • A GhostBSD package repository with 30,000+ applications.
  • Slow moving rolling release
    • Can be updated by command line.
  • Switched to TrueOS in 2018
    • Built from 12.0-STABLE
    • TrueOS depreciated in 2020

User-end attributes:

  • Shipped with a simplified installer.
  • Choice between desktop environments.
  • Comes with pre-installed commonly used software.
  • Robust community controlled wiki.
  • Easy to contribute to the project/report bugs.
  • Community has full control of the GhostBSD community releases.
  • Community forums for GhostBSD and FreeBSD questions/discussion.

Notable Future Plans:

  • Possibility of a community release around the plasma5 desktop.
  • Movement towards a rolling release schedule.
  • Post TrueOS development.

NomadBSD:

 

Novice – Advanced Users

Project Website

“NomadBSD is a persistent live system for USB flash drives, based on FreeBSD. Together with automatic hardware detection and setup, it is configured to be used as a desktop system that works out of the box, but can also be used for data recovery, for educational purposes, or to test FreeBSD’s hardware compatibility.”

What Makes NomadBSD Unique:

System attributes:

  • Extremely low system requirements.
    • Can be run by computers with a 1.2GHz CPU and 1GB of RAM.
  • A fully integrated desktop environment optimized by the operating system.
  • Further executable programs with some settings adjustments.
  • Requires a more advanced USB, USB3 preferred.
  • The desktop environment is curated specifically for the OS.
  • Tons of support for using the OS as a test environment.
  • Minimal size while including a curated collection of applications.
  • Automatic hardware detection and setup.
  • Because of the boot process, can be used for data recovery.
  • Small development team, more unified vision.
  • Uses a live USB, allowing changes to be saved to a portable system.

End-user attributes:

  • Automated, simplified setup with limited device configuration.
  • Can serve as a tool for FreeBSD developers. (testing/data recovery)
  • Focus on easy to use, guided computing.
  • Innovative desktop features
  • New community forums created in March 2020
  • Extremely portable due to size/live USB setup

helloSystem:

 

Novice – Advanced Users

Project Website

“hello (also known as helloSystem) is a desktop system for creators with a focus on simplicity, elegance, and usability. Its design follows the “Less, but better” philosophy. It is intended as a system for “mere mortals”, welcoming to switchers from the Mac. FreeBSD is used as the core operating system.”

What Makes helloSystem Unique:

System attributes:

  • Live ISO Builder.
  • Continuous builds with multiple experimental releases in addition to stable.
  • Low system requirements.
  • Bare-Metal operating system but virtual machine support.
  • Falkon browser included.
  • Minimal architecture, but each piece has improvements.
  • Custom launch: command.

End-user attributes:

  • Instantly boots into desktop environment.
  • No required set-up, but broad optimization/configuration settings.
  • Focused on an out-of-box FreeBSD experience.
  • Intended for Mac users looking to try other operating systems.
  • Global Menu bar for efficiency.

Notable Future Plans:

  • Significantly lowering RAM requirements.
  • More build builds for other processor architectures
  • Release for general use.
  • Intended for Mac users looking to try other operating systems.
  • Global Menu bar for efficiency.

The post Guide to FreeBSD Desktop Distributions first appeared on FreeBSD Foundation.

]]> Installing GhostBSD https://freebsdfoundation.org/resource/installing-ghostbsd/ Mon, 15 Aug 2022 15:45:04 +0000 https://freebsdfoundation.org/?post_type=resource&p=11546 A quick video guide covering the installation and configuration of GhostBSD.

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The post Installing GhostBSD first appeared on FreeBSD Foundation.

]]> Installing HelloSystem https://freebsdfoundation.org/resource/installing-hellosystem/ Mon, 15 Aug 2022 15:43:44 +0000 https://freebsdfoundation.org/?post_type=resource&p=11544 A quick video guide covering the installation and configuration of HelloSystem.

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The post Installing HelloSystem first appeared on FreeBSD Foundation.

]]> Installing a Desktop Environment on FreeBSD – Video Guide https://freebsdfoundation.org/resource/installing-a-desktop-environment-on-freebsd-video-guide/ Mon, 15 Aug 2022 15:40:52 +0000 https://freebsdfoundation.org/?post_type=resource&p=11541 The FreeBSD ports collection includes a wide range of desktop environments, this video how-to guide focuses on how to set up the Xfce desktop environment.

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The post Installing a Desktop Environment on FreeBSD – Video Guide first appeared on FreeBSD Foundation.

]]> Installing a Desktop Environment on FreeBSD https://freebsdfoundation.org/resource/installing-a-desktop-environment-on-freebsd/ Tue, 09 Aug 2022 18:37:43 +0000 https://freebsdfoundation.org/?post_type=resource&p=11519 The FreeBSD ports collection includes a wide range of desktop environments, this how-to guide focuses on how to set up the Xfce desktop environment.

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Last Updated: January 28th, 2026 with FreeBSD 15.0

There are many choices for desktop environments (DEs) and window managers on FreeBSD, some of which are listed in the handbook. If you’re new to desktop environments, we recommend choosing Plasma by KDE on modern systems with 8gb or more or memory. For older systems, or those with less memory, the lightweight window manager Xfce will be more suitable.

The handbook contains instructions on how to install a number of DEs, but if you’re new and would like some guidance, it’s worth using the desktop-installer package. That’s what we’ll cover here.

This guide can also be viewed as a video:

The simplest way to install a graphical UI on FreeBSD is to use the desktop-installer package. Go through the standard guided installation of FreeBSD, adding a user account for yourself when asked. We’d also recommend choosing ZFS for the filesystem, it will come in handy later.

When the installation is complete, one last dialog will ask if you want to do any manual tasks on the system before rebooting. Say yes, and you’ll be dropped to a shell:

Install the desktop-installer package:

This shell is operating in a chroot in the new system. When finished making configuration changes, type "exit".
# pkg install -y desktop-installer

If you think you’d like to tinker with different desktops at a later stage, it’s also worth making a ‘clean’ boot environment at this point (assuming you chose ZFS for the filesystem). This will be a snapshot of this basic installed system, before you add any more packages or do any configuration work.

# bectl list
BE Active Mountpoint Space Created
default NR /mnt 1.07G 2026-01-28 09:31
# bectl create clean
# bectl list
BE Active Mountpoint Space Created
clean - - 8K 2026-01-28 09:36
default NR /mnt 1.07G 2026-01-28 09:31

In the interest of keeping this guide as brief as possible, we won’t go into details about boot environments. However, if you’d like to learn more about them take a look at the video linked at the start of this article.

Exit the shell and reboot.

Choosing and installing a Desktop Environment

While FreeBSD has a huge collection of desktop environments users can choose from, this guide will focus on installing Xfce using desktop-installer.

Xfce is a lightweight DE. This simple environment is great for lower-specced machines or devices with memory limitations.

Installing and Configuring Xfce

As root on your freshly installed system, run desktop-installer:

root@freebsd:~ # desktop-installer

===========================================================================
Desktop-installer automates the configuration of a FreeBSD desktop/laptop
system. You will be guided through the process and asked some basic
questions, as well as a few that may require some thought and research.

Desktop-installer may fail at some point due to broken ports or changes
in the base system since the last release of desktop-installer. If this
happens, you can manually fix the issue and simply run desktop-installer
again.

Please report any failures of this nature at:

https://www.freebsd.org/support/bugreports/
===========================================================================

Press return to continue…

The script has guidance throughout, it is recommended that you carefully read all the information it prints up — later in the process there are important steps to get right.

When you get to the choice of a desktop, pick “XFCE4”:

When asked about choosing a display manager, for a lightweight machine running Xfce, choose XDM:

 

Follow the rest of the desktop-installer process. The last two steps will inform you about the auto-admin tool, which it’s worth remembering, and present a URL for problem reporting:

You now have a desktop environment on your computer!

Once rebooted, you might like to check out some of the available applications and ports.

Note: This page will be updated again once the standard install gets a desktop option added. In the meantime, you might like to see this video we dropped on YouTube, about the work in progress on adding a GUI installation option to the standard FreeBSD installer.

 

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