Of all the many wonderful and free operating systems out there, few can begin to meet or surpass the quality, stability, and structured operation of FreeBSD. That’s why I like it so much and have used it for years. But out of the box, FreeBSD is and always will be a server OS. That’s the way it’s written. That’s why other groups have come out and created desktop versions of Freebsd, namely FreeBSIE and DesktopBSD, both of which are based on the Freebsd 5.x desktop line and use the XFCE and KDE window managers respectively, to provide users with a viable Freebsd desktop. But despite both of these really good alternatives to the stock Freebsd install, I’ve found that nothing beets setting up your own Freebsd desktop right from scratch, and in this tutorial I plan to show you how to do just that. What you’ll end up with is a desktop environment that is top notch and tailored right to your liking that is pure and uncustomized by anyone else, except you. So it’s a system you can have exactly your way to your liking.

For those who are new or unfamiliar with Freebsd, this will also be a great way for you to learn how to use and troubleshoot the OS, because by going this way, while it is not the easiest and you’ll likely run into at least one snag or problem not listed in this tutorial that you’ll have to troubleshoot and solve, you’ll learn so much about the OS that you’ll either come to love it to death, or hate it without reserve. I’m hoping for the first choice. And lastly, I do admit that there are easier ways to do what I’m about to show you. Mostly via the previously two named desktop oriented Freebsd distributions named before. But that’s not the point of this tutorial. I’ve done this as a teaching tutorial to help you learn Freebsd while creating your own custom built Freebsd install.

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