FreeBSD Xfce4 on VMware Installation Guide

A guide to install the Xfce Desktop Environment on FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE running as a guest operating system on VMware (tested on VMware Fusion 13.5.0). This guide includes configuration files and an optional configuration script.

Requirements

• FreeBSD installed as a guest operating system on VMware.
• Installation of sudo to run install script pkg install sudo
• Installation of git to clone this repo sudo pkg install git
• Installation of bash to run install script sudo pkg install bash

Note: Hardware acceleration doesn't currently work with FreeBSD on VMware. The driver was removed

ISOs for Installing FreeBSD

• FreeBSD-14.1-RELEASE
• FreeBSD-13.3-RELEASE

Quick install Xfce 4.18 and required packages

git clone https://github.com/coonrad/FreeBSD-Xfce4-VMware-Install-Guide.git
cd FreeBSD-Xfce4-VMware-Install-Guide
sudo ./xfce-install.sh

Manually install Xfce 4.18 and required packages

Update the pkg repository to latest to install the most recent version of Xfce:

sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos
sudo vi /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/FreeBSD.conf

Add the following to FreeBSD.conf and run pkg update:

FreeBSD: {
  url: "pkg+http://pkg.FreeBSD.org/${ABI}/latest"
}

When you run pkg -vv you should see the following:

Repositories:
  FreeBSD: {
    url             : "pkg+http://pkg.FreeBSD.org/FreeBSD:14:amd64/latest",
    enabled         : yes,
    priority        : 0,
    mirror_type     : "SRV",
    signature_type  : "FINGERPRINTS",
    fingerprints    : "/usr/share/keys/pkg"
  }

Install xorg open-vm-tools and needed drivers:

sudo pkg install xorg open-vm-tools xf86-video-vmware xf86-input-vmmouse

Install Xfce (Meta-port for the Xfce Desktop Environment). This will provide a minimal Xfce Desktop Environement

sudo pkg install xfce

For a more complete desktop install the following additional packages to include Xfce plugins, office software, document viewer and browser:

sudo pkg install xfce4-goodies libreoffice atril firefox

Configure xorg to load the vmware mouse driver:

# if you haven't installed xorg yet make the directory first
sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/
sudo vi /usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/vmware.conf

Inclue the following configuration:

Section "ServerFlags"
       Option             "AutoAddDevices"       "false"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
       Identifier    "Mouse0"
       Driver        "vmmouse"
       Option        "Device"       "/dev/sysmouse"
EndSection

Ass your username to the video group:

sudo pw groupmod video -M $USER

Update rc.conf to start hald and dbus and moused:

sudo sysrc hald_enable="YES"
sudo sysrc dbus_enable="YES"
sudo sysrc moused_enable="YES"

Configure the kernel video output mode to vt:

sudo sh -c "echo kern.vty=vt >> /boot/loader.conf"

At this point you can start xfce with startx or install lightdm. For startx create an .xinitrc and reboot:

echo "exec /usr/local/bin/startxfce4 --with-ck-launch" > ~/.xinitrc

For lightdm install:

sudo pkg install lightdm lightdm-gtk-greeter

Update rc.conf to start lightdm:

sudo sysrc lightdm_enable="YES"

On vmware lightdm defaults to a display size that may not match your screen. To correct this, create a xrandr script that will be executed by lightdm to establish the correct display size. Example /usr/local/etc/lightdm/lightdm-xrandr:

#! /usr/local/bin/bash
xrandr --output default --primary --mode 2560x1440

Now update /usr/local/etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf:

display-setup-script=/usr/local/etc/lightdm/lightdm-xrandr

To enable autologin add to lightdm.conf:

autologin-user=<your username>

Reboot.