Fwd: Add option to sysinstall to install an X desktop, similar to Debian?

[Allan Jude]

On 2016-05-27 05:28, Craig Rodrigues wrote:
> [Resending due to message size restriction of
> freebsd-sysinstall at freebsd.org <mailto:freebsd-sysinstall at freebsd.org>]
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I recently had to install Debian Linux 8.4.0 in a VM to test some things
> I was working on.  I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was
> to use Debian's text-based installer and get a usable desktop system up
> and running very quickly.
> 
> I really liked the menu option that allows you select a desktop environment
> (one of GNOME, Xfce, KDE, Cinnamon, MATE, or LXDE).
> I have a
> screenshot: https://people.freebsd.org/~rodrigc/debian_desktop_installer.png
> 
> Allan, do you think it would be possible to copy a subset of this Debian
> screen to the
> FreeBSD installer, with the option to install a desktop set to OFF by
> default?
> I'm sure that there are lots of opinions about which desktop to choose,
> but having a menu with 6 options to choose from seems quite reasonable
> to start with.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> --
> Craig
> 

I started building something like this after our interview with Alfred.

It has gnome3, MATE, KDE4, and xfce4.

I ran into a few problems with things not working out-of-the-box.

If you install mate and gdm, it defaults to logging you in to a very
very stripped down gnome-shell that is pulled in as a dependency of gdm.
If you actually install the gnome3 metapackage, it adds like 300 more
packages, and then the gnome-shell actually has applications in it.

KDE4 works ok.

xfce doesn't have a login manager. xdm doesn't have a startup script,
you'd have to edit /etc/ttys to make it start at boot. kdm4 can't be
installed as a separate package. gdm will default to starting gnome
instead of xfce, even if the gnome package is not installed. I tried
'slim', but it always launches: 'exec /bin/sh - ~/.xinitrc %session' and
files if that file does not exist in the user's home directory.

So I got a little stalled out on it.

-- 
Allan Jude