DragonflyBSD DE recommendation.

[sgt_learn]

I tried installing Xfce4 from source, to no avail. It appears that DF 3.0.2 is preloaded with packages that might conflict with installation of additional packages.
Can someone recommend a remedy or alternate desktop environment?

[daemonfowl]

Hi sgt_learn !
xfce4 is no longet that lightweight wm it used to be :-) .. how about trying golem ? since DF uses pkgsrc .. I find golem (on NetBSD) really coooooooool .. if you want something zen clean : CWM definitely ! & There is also fvwm ..

[thirdm]

I'm using ratpoison on DragonFly without problem, though that sounds not like what you're asking for, given that you asked for a "desktop environment."

Instead of building from source yourself can you try the pkgsrc version? They probably had to make patches to fit it to DragonFly. Xfce is not in the list of top 10 problematic ports John Marino listed in his recent email on the users mailing list, nor is it in this report of unsuccessful builds Justin Sherrill linked to in his latest post on DragonFly BSD Digest: http://avalon.dragonflybsd.org/repor...ta/report.html for pkgsrc-2012Q2. If you want to stick with whatever pkgsrc version you're at, assuming it's an earlier one, I suspect that would work too.

[sgt_learn]

I am grateful for your response; your input helps to make me a better DF user.

I was looking for an alternative to resource hungry GNOME, and KDE (WOW! What a hog.).

Xfce has been around for awhile, is easy to use, feature packed, and it's development is continuing; however, it is not lightweight.
I tried installing Xfce4 from pkgsrc-2012Q2 source but the build kept bombing out in DF 3.0.2. My hunch is that there is a package conflict.

LXDE is easy to use and modest with resources but not well supported in pkgsrc (it's in WIP).

It appears DF 3.0.2 now comes equipped with FVWM and Fluxbox, among many other packages. Fluxbox is fine. I am familiar with it, it is frugal and fast.
Fluxbox exists in the lower realms of DEs: in fact, it is not a DE. It is a DIY DE.
When you use Fluxbox, you become a DE integrator; ergo Xfce and LXDE.

If you get a chance to install Xfce4 from pkgsrc, let me know your results.
I'm learning as I go.

[thirdm]

Originally Posted by sgt_learn

If you get a chance to install Xfce4 from pkgsrc, let me know your results.
I'm learning as I go.

It built okay for me. I got an error first try about libexif having security vulnerabilities, but when I continued with ALLOW_VULNERABLE_PACKAGES defined the rest built fine. This was on amd64 with with a recent pull of pkgsrc-2012Q2, make install run from /usr/pkgsrc/x11/xfce4-desktop:

# git show pkgsrc-2012Q2 | head
commit 8361a0a6228f6e228c614f17212c3a992f6e95d2
Author: pkgsrc fixup <pkgsrc@dragonflybsd.org>
Date:   Mon Aug 13 13:28:03 2012 -0700

    Fixup fromcvs/togit conversion

diff --git a/doc/CHANGES-pkgsrc-2012Q2 b/doc/CHANGES-pkgsrc-2012Q2
index dcd866f..6462ee6 100644
--- a/doc/CHANGES-pkgsrc-2012Q2
+++ b/doc/CHANGES-pkgsrc-2012Q2

What error were you getting?

[sgt_learn]

As for build time error messages, I seem to remember complaints about pcre or libpcre being out of date and the build unable to continue. Using "make update" in these dependencies didn't help get Xfce4 built. Doing pkg_delete -f of pcre or libpcre exacerbated the problem.

This build problem occurs in the i386 version of DF-3.0.2.

I thank you for your advise.

[Trihexagonal]

Originally Posted by sgt_learn

Fluxbox exists in the lower realms of DEs: in fact, it is not a DE. It is a DIY DE.

In fact, it is a Window Manager.