=== KDE on FreeBSD

Links: +
link:https://freebsd.kde.org/[KDE FreeBSD] URL: link:https://freebsd.kde.org/[https://freebsd.kde.org/] +
link:https://community.kde.org/FreeBSD[KDE Community FreeBSD] URL: link:https://community.kde.org/FreeBSD[https://community.kde.org/FreeBSD]

Contact: Adriaan de Groot <kde@FreeBSD.org>

The KDE on FreeBSD project aims to package all of the software produced by the KDE Community for the FreeBSD ports tree.
The software includes a full desktop environment called KDE Plasma, graphics applications, instant messengers, a video-editing suite, as well as a tea timer and hundreds of other applications that can be used on any FreeBSD machine.

The KDE team (kde@) is part of desktop@ and x11@ as well, building the software stack to make FreeBSD beautiful and usable as a daily-driver graphics-based desktop machine.

==== Organisational

The KDE-FreeBSD team has moved its primary communications channel (on IRC) in with the rest of the link:https://wiki.freebsd.org/IRC/Official-FreeBSD-IRC-channels-now-on-Libera-Chat[FreeBSD world].
You can now find us on link:https://libera.chat/[Libera.Chat], in the `#freebsd-desktop` channel.

Why the rename? We've been `#kde-freebsd` since 2003 or so.
However, changes in the IRC Network landscape have caused us to migrate to Libera.Chat and join up with the rest of the desktop folk -- we have a lot of shared concerns, after all.


==== Big Picture

* The new KDE Gear release -- all the KDE software products that are not specifically KDE Frameworks or KDE Plasma, which release in a coordinated fashion on a regular schedule -- arrived in ports the day it was released. Albert Astals Cid has a good link:https://tsdgeos.blogspot.com/2021/04/kde-gear-2104-is-coming-this-week-but.html[blog post] explaining the rationale behind KDE Gear.
* Wayland support has arrived for KDE Plasma. It is now possible to run a KDE Plasma Wayland environment on FreeBSD machines with a DRM-enabled graphics card (Intel iGPU or AMDGPU).
* There is slow-but-steady progress in reducing the dependencies of KDE Applications. Most FreeBSD ports are "batteries included" and that includes all the build-tools to create the application, but really, an IDE should not be a dependency of your photo-gallery application.
* X11 was made optional in some of the Qt ports; this opens up possibilities such as "Wayland-Only" Qt, or "Framebuffer-Only". X11 remains enabled by default.
* Qt6 is stuck in the "it builds, and parts of it run, but not enough" stage and has not landed in ports; it will probably wait until after the next quarterly is cut.

==== Highlights

* Poppler, CMake, polkit .. these underpinnings of the Free Desktop on FreeBSD all received their regular updates.
* `extproc/kdiff3` had some serious issues with 3-way-merges. This was reported by Ed Maste, and turned out to have fixes upstream.
* `x11/konsole`, the terminal emulator, would not accept `/bin/sh` as a shell; this is more of an issue on FreeBSD than on Linux where `bash` is a very common choice. This was resolved upstream and landed in ports.
* The regular KDE Frameworks releases (monthly) and KDE Plasma releases (monthly) and KDE Gear all were announced upstream and landed in FreeBSD ports without a fuss. Upstream CI continues to be updated with the latest FreeBSD ports so that CI reflects well what the KDE-on-FreeBSD team delivers to FreeBSD users.
