Install Mate desktop in FreeBSD 10.1
FreeBSD is fully text mode system, however some times new users might want to use GUI desktop environment. This tutorial will help you to install Mate Desktop in Freebsd 10.1.
Here is my test system details:
root@Freebsd-unixmen:~ # uname -a FreeBSD Freebsd-unixmen 10.1-RELEASE FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE #0 r274401: Tue Nov 11 21:02:49 UTC 2014 root@releng1.nyi.freebsd.org:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC amd64 root@Freebsd-unixmen:~
To start installing Mate desktop in FreeBSD 10.1, the following steps can be used.
pkg install xf86-video-fbdev mate-desktop mate xorg
Add the following lines to /etc/rc.conf
moused_enable="YES" dbus_enable="YES" hald_enable="YES"
Test the installation.
xinit mate-session
Mate doesn’t have a display manager of its own. Hence we can use any other display managers like XDM, GDM, slim etc to use the login manager. Here let’s see how to configure Slim DM with Mate desktop.
Install Slim
pkg install slim
Add the following line to /etc/rc.conf:
slim_enable="YES"
Add the following line to .xinitrc file in the user’s home directory
exec mate-session
Reboot the machine. Now the machine will boot into Slim login where you can login to Mate session.
That’s it. Cheers!
