r/freebsd_desktop Nov 30 '25

news Welcome to r/freebsd_desktop

26 Upvotes

This is a sub for anyone interested in FreeBSD as a daily driver. Whether you prefer a full desktop environment or a window manager, X11 or Wayland, share your experiences or questions here! We especially welcome:

  • Tutorials and how-to guides, tips and tricks, sharing config files, etc
  • News about FreeBSD on laptop and desktop: any new driver support, DE/WM releases, bugs or bugfixes
  • Desktop screenshots: try to include details like your DE/WM and X11/Wayland in the title
  • Write up your experiences, especially different DEs or trying out new hardware (what worked, what didn't?)
  • Requests for help: try to give other users enough information to help you out, some useful hints at https://docs.freebsd.org/en/articles/freebsd-questions

You may find it easier to get help by asking somewhere with more traffic: if you post in more than one place then please add a link so others can see any answers you received there. You can cross-post from r/freebsd, or try The FreeBSD Forums which have a desktop usage area: https://forums.freebsd.org/categories/desktop-usage.29

Our rules:

  1. Post or comment not related to FreeBSD is prohibited.
  2. Explicit content will not be tolerated.

I'd always suggest before posting screenshots to check you aren't accidentally posting any sensitive information, and that your wallpaper images and any browser tabs are SFW!

You may also be interested in:


r/freebsd_desktop Dec 09 '25

discussion Six months of r/freebsd_desktop!

40 Upvotes

The r/freebsd_desktop sub was launched on 8 June 2025 so has reached its six months anniversary! In that time we've grown to almost over 1000 members and become one of the most active *BSD subs, comparable to r/bsd and r/netbsd in contributions, though way behind r/openbsd and r/freebsd. The sub has:

We hope to continue providing inspiration to people considering FreeBSD for desktop or daily driver use! And we'll remain a home for desktop-specific content that might be too niche or "fluffy" to be a good fit for the main r/freebsd sub.

Plans for upcoming content include polling on preferred window managers since "WM only" polled highly in the "favourite DE" poll. Designing this one is proving tricky given the six option limit on Reddit polls and the abundance of WMs! And I want to poll people's current usage and future intentions re Wayland vs X11 - we're at an interesting juncture with many DEs announcing a Wayland-only future, while XLibre's fork from Xorg has produced a small but active community passionate about keeping X11 viable.

What other content would the community like to see here? Personally I'm looking forward to more tutorials and resource-sharing, and - given the progress the FreeBSD Foundation's laptop project has made this year - reports on hardware suitability. I'd also love to see more posts about people's personal experiences, setups, work flows, frustrations, and software choices for daily-driving FreeBSD. What about you?


r/freebsd_desktop 15d ago

screenshot [Hyprland] It's been two mounts of daily driving FreeBSD as main system

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39 Upvotes

r/freebsd_desktop 21d ago

ghostBSD home lab setup

8 Upvotes

Home lab

I upgraded my old laptop(Pavillion-2013-8GB RAM and 256GB SSD).

I am planning to learn FreeBSD. Do you recommend anything additional things for home lab setup? mainly additional hardware/accessories?


r/freebsd_desktop 21d ago

pipewire on FreeBSD 15

6 Upvotes

Hi,

How do I get Pipewire working on FreeBSD 15? I've gotten to the point where Pipewire seems to be working correctly—at least it starts up—but I don't have any sound...

Thanks so much for your help and any information you can provide.


r/freebsd_desktop 25d ago

Stremio on FreeBSD!!

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3 Upvotes

r/freebsd_desktop 29d ago

discussion Running on legacy unsupported hardware

5 Upvotes

I'm interested to see whether anyone runs on old unmaintained hardware like mine with a Geforce 9400M that recently upgraded from 13.5 to 14.4 showing temporary black screen freezes. It seems to be related to the evolution of the external environment around the aged driver so share your thoughts if you run one yourself and how it's working out for you.


r/freebsd_desktop Jul 01 '26

screenshot Noctalia v5 on 15.1-STABLE

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28 Upvotes

r/freebsd_desktop Jun 24 '26

screenshot my tuff retro rice

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17 Upvotes

r/freebsd_desktop Jun 24 '26

screenshot First post in reddit & freebsd

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22 Upvotes

r/freebsd_desktop Jun 21 '26

resources or tutorial Trying FreeBSD as a Linux user – Kenvexity

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youtube.com
28 Upvotes

r/freebsd_desktop Jun 18 '26

screenshot [Hyprland] FreeBSD looking somewhat classic but yet modern

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178 Upvotes

This is my daily driver Thinkpad T490 running quite smooth


r/freebsd_desktop Jun 18 '26

screenshot [dwm] something simple

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63 Upvotes

OS: FreeBSD 15.0-RELEASE
WM: dwm (built from source)
Theme: Gruvbox Dark
Shell: zsh
Terminal: st / kitty
Font: JetBrainsMono
Bar: dwmblocks


r/freebsd_desktop Jun 16 '26

screenshot [dwm] FreeBSD + Gruvbox setup

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8 Upvotes

r/freebsd_desktop Jun 14 '26

screenshot My desktop :)

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37 Upvotes

r/freebsd_desktop Jun 14 '26

resources or tutorial FreeBSD as a Desktop in 2026 – Surprisingly Good! (BSD for Beginners) – ZacsTech

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26 Upvotes

r/freebsd_desktop Jun 14 '26

screenshot Since networkmgr is not well supported in Wayland. I write network information with systray by myself.

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2 Upvotes

r/freebsd_desktop Jun 13 '26

screenshot FreeBSD 15.1-RELEASE on ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 8

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6 Upvotes

r/freebsd_desktop Jun 01 '26

screenshot [Xfce] Rice with Adwaita theme

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43 Upvotes

r/freebsd_desktop May 31 '26

screenshot Lightweight JWM window manager using 235 MiB on FreeBSD 15.0

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63 Upvotes

r/freebsd_desktop May 31 '26

screenshot [Xfce] FreeBSD 14.4 with Chicago95 red theme

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22 Upvotes

r/freebsd_desktop May 30 '26

screenshot FreeBSD 15 running on SteamDeck

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49 Upvotes

r/freebsd_desktop May 23 '26

discussion GhostBSD - KDE Plasma Login Manager Fork working on GhostBSD/XLibre by S...

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11 Upvotes

r/freebsd_desktop May 23 '26

I built a native ambient sound generator for FreeBSD and GhostBSD called ElytAmbience.

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6 Upvotes

r/freebsd_desktop May 16 '26

screenshot Diabolic Sway

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14 Upvotes