$DISPLAY not set

[Lowell Gilbert]

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Paul Cartwright <pbcartwright at gmail.com> writes:

> I have installed freeBSD & have it running. I was trying to install MATE
> & KDE4, but I'm getting an error.
> everytime I try to run exec startkde it logs me out with this message:
>
> $DISPLAY is not set or cannot connect to xserver
>
>
> echo $DISPLAY says
> DISPLAY: undefined variable
>
> I was using this guide to set everything up:
> https://cooltrainer.org/a-freebsd-desktop-howto/#with-radeon-intel-or-otherwise
>
> am I missing something?

Well, you're missing the FreeBSD documentation, which is a lot better
than a random Google result.

https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/x11.html

Or you might want to try PCBSD (www.pcbsd.org) which will require a lot
less understanding of what is going on (at the cost, as usual, of giving
you a lot less choice, at least initially).

The "exec startkde" is supposed to go in your .xinitrc file, in which
case you would start X with the "startx" command.

> I do have an /etc/X11/xorg.conf, I did do the X -configure.

Usually unnecessary, and not a great idea unless it is necessary.