installing desktop environment on FreeBSD

I was looking for lightweight desktop environment for my FreeBSD box, i found Xfce and LXDE The "Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment"

To run these on box you need to install mimimum X.Org server. use following commands to install minumal xorg server

cd /usr/ports/x11/xorg-minimal/
make install clean

Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment for UNIX-like operating systems. To install Xfce 4, use following port `xfce4 4.8`, its a meta-port for installing Xfce

cd /usr/ports/x11-wm/xfce4/
make install clean


LXDE, the 'Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment' is said to be one of the small, extremely fast-performing and energy-saving desktop environment.
to install LXDE use metaport `lxde-meta`

cd /usr/ports/x11/lxde-meta/
make install clean


Once installed need to add following lines into the .xinitrc file

to run Xfce

exec /usr/local/bin/startxfce4

to run LXDE

exec startlxde

For further reading

X.Org Foundation : http://www.x.org/wiki/
Xfce : http://www.xfce.org/
LXDE : http://lxde.org/

Categories