How To Install and Configure KDE Plasma On FreeBSD

How To Install and Configure KDE Plasma On FreeBSD

BSD Desktop Env FreeBSD Guide Installation

Abdullah Musa

August 06, 2025

Hello everyone, welcome to MusaBase! In today's article, I'll guide you through installing and configuring a desktop environment on a FreeBSD system. In the previous guide, I showed you how to install FreeBSD, and in this follow-up, we'll continue on installing KDE Plasma on that FreeBSD system. In this guide, you'll learn how to:

• Configure your FreeBSD system to support KDE Plasma
• Download and install the correct KDE Plasma packages for FreeBSD
• Set up graphical and input services needed by KDE
• And finally launching KDE Plasma

By the end of this guide, you'll have a fully functional KDE Plasma desktop running on FreeBSD. So without further ado, let's get started!

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Jump To:

• Prerequisites
• Step 1: Update & Upgrade System Packages
• Step 2: Install KDE Plasma & Xorg
• Step 3: Enable & Start Services

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Prerequisites

This article won't cover the installation of FreeBSD, please visit my FreeBSD Installation guide, and follow all the steps to install a fully functional FreeBSD OS. After completing the installation come back to this guide and continue on installing KDE Plasma.

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Step 1: Update & Upgrade System Packages

Before we installing any pacakge or configure services, its important to update our FreeBSD system. Updating ensure our system has the latest list of available pacakges and their correct dependencies. If we continue without updating, then the package installer might try to pull in outdated or missing packages, resulting in failed installs, missing security concerns or depreciated dependencies. And make sure your user has elevated or sudo privileges before doing any super-user task.

• First we will fetch updates by running:

doas pkg update
# OR
sudo pkg update

sudo pkg update: Will update the local package catalog or package repo metdata. It downloads the latest list of available packages from FreeBSD's official servers. It does not install or upgrade anything with just running pkg update, it just makes sure that our system knows what are the latest packages.

• Next, we will install the new updates with:

doas pkg upgrade
# OR
sudo pkg update

sudo pkg upgrade: Will upgrade all the installed packages on our system to their latest versions if avaiable. It reads our currently installed package's versions with what was fetched with pkg update command, then it downloads and installs updated versions as needed.

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Step 2: Install KDE Plasma and Xorg

Now, we need to install KDE packages, and a X Window System named Xorg. The X Window System also called X11 is the core framework behind building blocks for a GUI on Unix-like operating systems as FreeBSD. It manages windows, graphics output, and user input from devices like a mouse and keyboard. X11 itself is not a full desktop, it just enables applications to draw window and recive input. Desktop environments like KDE, Mate, XFCE or GNOME run on top of X Window System to provide a complete graphical experience.

Install Desktop Environment Packages

• Run the following command to install KDE plasma with its display manager sddm and Xorg:

doas pkg install --yes kde plasma6-sddm-kcm sddm xorg
# OR
sudo pkg install --yes kde plasma6-sddm-kcm sddm xorg

--yes flag automatically answers "yes" to any prompts during installation. It saves time by skipping confirmation messages for each package (e.g., "Do you want to proceed? (y/N)", etc). The other packages installs the follows:

• kde: As the name suggests, it will installs the full KDE Plasma desktop environment with its core apps and tools (e.g., kate, konsole, dolphine, etc).
• plasma6-sddm-kcm: Its a KDE System Settings module for SDDM. The graphical login screen that let us choose users, sessions, and log-in to KDE Plasma. The plasma6 indicates that this package is for KDE Plasma 6.
• sddm: A display manager that allows graphical logins into KDE or other desktop sessions.
• xorg: The X Window System server, the backbone of any Graphical environment for Unix-like operating systems.

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Step 3: Enable & Start Services

Next, we need to enable and start dbus and SDDM.
D-BUS is an IPC system. It allows software applications and system components to talk to each other, exchange messages and request or provide services.

3.1 Enable & Start dbus Service

• Run the following commands consecutively to enable & start dbus:

doas sysrc dbus_enable=YES
doas service dbus start

#OR

sudo sysrc dbus_enable=YES
sudo service dbus start

3.2: Enable & Start SDDM Service

SDDM is a graphical login manager that provides a login screen to log into system then it starts graphical desktop session like KDE Plasma. If we install multiple desktop environments then it will lets us pick one from them to start the session.

• We can enable and start the sddm service with the following commands:

doas sysrc sddm_enable=YES
doas service sddm start

# OR

sudo sysrc sddm_enable=YES
sudo service sddm start

When we start the sddm service, it will automatically picks the KDE Plasma as desktop session and starts it. More specifically it will look for entries like Name=Plasma and Exec=startplasma-x11 in /usr/local/share/xsessions/ and start the session. If there are more than one desktop environments installed then sddm will show a list of desktop session to choose from (the default will be first one).

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Step 4: Login into KDE Plasma Desktop Environment

After starting the sddm service in the last step, we would have the following login screen:

• Enter your password for your user and press ENTER.
• The KDE Palsma desktop session will load and after a few seconds, we will have a similar screen on our display:

Mouse Fix

If you are having problem with mouse not working inside KDE Plasma on FreeBSD, then do the following:

doas pkg install utouch-kmod xf86-input-evdev

• Next, create or edit /boot/loader.conf.
• In the open file we need to add two lines.
• Do the following:

doas nano /boot/loader.conf

• In the open file add:

utouch_load="YES"
kern.vty=vt

• Press CTRL + O to save the changes then press ENTER to apply the changes, then press CTRL + X to exit the file.

• utouch-kmod: Is a FreeBSD Kernel module that supports USB multitouch and HID devices like mice that helps with absolute pointing devices that aren't properly handled by default.
• xf86-input-evdev: Its an Xorg input driver that let X handle input devices via event device (evdev) interfact.
• utouch_load="YES": This tells the FreeBSD bootloader to load the utouch.ko kernel at boot time.
• kern.vty=vt: This sets FreeBSD to use the vt or virtual terminal system. vt allows certain framebuffer and input setups, especially for graphical mouse support under SDDM and KDE.

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Afterwards

Well its done, now we have a fully functional KDE Plasma running on our FreeBSD system. I'm planning on making a series about different desktop environments and other stuff that shows the full potential of BSD systems. Stay tuned for next uploads.

If you hit any error or can't start your desktop session, please let me know in the comments. I will be more than happy to help. If you like this article then subscribe to my newsletter for updates.

1o1 out, I'll see you in the next one!

Abdullah Musa August 06, 2025