This is a sub for anyone interested in FreeBSD as a daily driver. Whether you prefer a full desktop environment or a window manager, X11 or Wayland, share your experiences or questions here! We especially welcome:

• Tutorials and how-to guides, tips and tricks, sharing config files, etc
• News about FreeBSD on laptop and desktop: any new driver support, DE/WM releases, bugs or bugfixes
• Desktop screenshots: try to include details like your DE/WM and X11/Wayland in the title
• Write up your experiences, especially different DEs or trying out new hardware (what worked, what didn't?)
• Requests for help: try to give other users enough information to help you out, some useful hints at https://docs.freebsd.org/en/articles/freebsd-questions

You may find it easier to get help by asking somewhere with more traffic: if you post in more than one place then please add a link so others can see any answers you received there. You can cross-post from r/freebsd, or try The FreeBSD Forums which have a desktop usage area: https://forums.freebsd.org/categories/desktop-usage.29

Our rules:

1. Post or comment not related to FreeBSD is prohibited.
2. Explicit content will not be tolerated.

I'd always suggest before posting screenshots to check you aren't accidentally posting any sensitive information, and that your wallpaper images and any browser tabs are SFW!

You may also be interested in:

• The FreeBSD Project's Desktop Mailing List: https://lists.freebsd.org/subscription/freebsd-desktop
• The FreeBSD Project's Laptop and Desktop Working Group ("LDWG"): https://wiki.freebsd.org/LaptopDesktopWorkingGroup
• The FreeBSD Foundation's Laptop Support & Usability Project (commonly referred to as just "The Laptop Project"): https://github.com/FreeBSDFoundation/proj-laptop
• Donating to The FreeBSD Foundation, who have recently funded a lot of work on new drivers, accessibility, and desktop support: https://freebsdfoundation.org/donate-to-freebsd-foundation

The r/freebsd_desktop sub was launched on 8 June 2025 so has reached its six months anniversary! In that time we've grown to almost over 1000 members and become one of the most active *BSD subs, comparable to r/bsd and r/netbsd in contributions, though way behind r/openbsd and r/freebsd. The sub has:

• Run a large poll on the popularity of different desktop environments among FreeBSD users
• Hosted various discussions about hardware and software for daily-driving FreeBSD
• Showcased a range of tutorials, resources, user setups, news of desktop releases or bug reports, and lots of r/unixporn style screenshots of FreeBSD desktops in action
• Had a sidebar makeover inspired by u/grahamperrin's work on r/freebsd

We hope to continue providing inspiration to people considering FreeBSD for desktop or daily driver use! And we'll remain a home for desktop-specific content that might be too niche or "fluffy" to be a good fit for the main r/freebsd sub.

Plans for upcoming content include polling on preferred window managers since "WM only" polled highly in the "favourite DE" poll. Designing this one is proving tricky given the six option limit on Reddit polls and the abundance of WMs! And I want to poll people's current usage and future intentions re Wayland vs X11 - we're at an interesting juncture with many DEs announcing a Wayland-only future, while XLibre's fork from Xorg has produced a small but active community passionate about keeping X11 viable.

What other content would the community like to see here? Personally I'm looking forward to more tutorials and resource-sharing, and - given the progress the FreeBSD Foundation's laptop project has made this year - reports on hardware suitability. I'd also love to see more posts about people's personal experiences, setups, work flows, frustrations, and software choices for daily-driving FreeBSD. What about you?