Setting up KDE and Wayland on FreeBSD 15.x

Since X11 has moved to legacy status, it's only a matter of time before the BSDs are going to have to make the move to being Wayland-first as well. This applies particularly to FreeBSD, which has been focusing on improving its suitability for desktop and laptops lately. The good news is that Wayland has been available on FreeBSD for a while now, and setting it up with a KDE desktop is a breeze.

Dolce Far Niente has a quick and easy guide, updated today, that walks you through the steps of setting up KDE with Wayland on a fresh FreeBSD 15.x installation. I'm keeping this on my to-do list, but I'm not committing yet because we're getting quite close to the first incentive of the OSNews fundraiser, where I have to install, run, and use vanilla Windows 11 (including Office and Outlook) for a month. No point in setting up FreeBSD when we're about to hit that incentive.

Regardless, this is going to be the future of FreeBSD for desktop and laptop use, so you if you're already a FreeBSD user, you might as well try and see if Wayland works for you today.