sysutils/desktop-installer is a pretty neat way to quickly install your choice of one of several Desktop Environments on FreeBSD. However, it does have some rough edges.

(In particular, desktop-installer has only seen light testing on non-x86 machines.)

• When you run it for the first time, if you get the following, it is most likely that your clock is set wrong:

Cloning into '/usr/ports'...
fatal: unable to access 'https://git.FreeBSD.org/ports.git/': SSL certificate problem: certificate is not yet valid

• Some functionality assumes that you are logged in on the system console (i.e. not via ssh and/or serial). Examples:
  • restarting moused (actually ok on serial).
  • actually testing x11.

• Error handling, in general, needs to be more robust.

• The code commonly assumes that the following are available and return non-empty answers:
  • dmidecode
  • ACPI sysctls
  • pciconf -lv

The above are simply not true for anything other than amd64/i386. MarkLinimon is looking into this.

• Valid operation of sysutils/polkit is assumed. This introduces a dependency on rust, which may or may not be available.

• If the system console is not implemented yet (e.g. on Rock64), desktop-installer is of limited utility.

• desktop-installer has been tested on an iMac G5, though the resulting system is limited by lack of DRM and some popular ports.

• HDMI is not yet supported under FreeBSD.

• HDMI is not yet supported under FreeBSD.

• What happens when you try to start x11:

(EE) xf86OpenConsole: No console driver found
        Supported drivers: pccons (with X support), syscons, pcvt
        Check your kernel's console driver configuration and /dev entries(EE) 
(EE) 

• TBA

• development home page
• desktop-installer source on github
• desktop-installer issues on github