this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2026
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FreeBSD is a No-Go for KDE's Plasma Login Manager (itsfoss.com)
submitted 2 days ago by cm0002@libretechni.ca to c/linux@programming.dev
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FreeBSD is a Unix-like operating system that has roots in Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), which itself originated from research conducted at the University of California, Berkeley, in the 1970s.

The OS is known for its advanced networking features, security capabilities, and freedom-focused licensing, finding use in a wide range of hardware ranging from embedded systems to being the backbone of major cloud services.

Unfortunately, it looks like KDE's Plasma Login Manager won't be working on it, as an accepted merge request sees the focus turn to compatibility on Linux systems.

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[–] mmmm@sopuli.xyz 14 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I don't want to move to systemd, I'm happy with OpenRC. And I hope this move doesn't force systemd on those of us using Linux and KDE.

That being said some devs (Gentoo devs?) cherry-picked some tiny parts from systemd and made packages for those parts so that when you want to install something with a hard dependency on systemd but you're using another init system (like Gentoo's default OpenRC) you will be fine without actually installing the whole systemd thing.

Maybe the FreeBSD folks can think of something similar, but I don't know. Last time I looked when there was no official efforts from KDE to bring it to FreeBSD they bitched about it because it was "bloat".

[–] Feyd@programming.dev 12 points 2 days ago

You can keep using sddm. It isn't being discontinued. In fact you can use any login manager you want. Plasma is not going to enforce one.

I personally am happy about the new plasma login manager, because it will allow features they couldn't reasonably implement with sddm.

The people upset about this is a classic case of getting upset about things that won't affect them at all.

[–] Scoopta@programming.dev 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I would think that elogind should work? Is it hard dependent on systemd or logind? I thought it was the latter

[–] Neptr@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 2 days ago (2 children)

PLM is hard dependent on systemd.

[–] mmmm@sopuli.xyz 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

That's the part that confuses me, because allegedly GNOME has a hard dependency on systemd yet in Gentoo you can install GNOME without having to install nor use sytemd. I hope this new KDE login manager can work the same or a similar way, though

[–] refalo@programming.dev 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

gentoo uses elogind to emulate the systemd interfaces required by gnome

[–] khleedril@cyberplace.social 2 points 2 days ago

@refalo @mmmm #guix also follows this philosophy, but uses #shepherd as the root process.

[–] Scoopta@programming.dev 2 points 2 days ago

That's unfortunate

[–] UnfortunateShort@lemmy.world 18 points 2 days ago

I mean, this is of course bad for people using BSD, but you can't really fault devs for not supporting what you want. It's FOSS. You support what you want, or you take what you get. Maybe support will come eventually, until then stick with SDDM or some other alternative.

[–] tomenzgg@midwest.social 2 points 1 day ago

It's not directly related but, on the subject of systemd and BSD, I found this talk really interesting: https://youtu.be/o_AIw9bGogo

[–] kittenzrulz123@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 2 days ago

Afaik KDE doesn't officially support FreeBSD, I'm pretty sure its a community maintained port

[–] lnxtx@sopuli.xyz 10 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Imagine porting systemd to FreeBSD.

[–] Fizz@lemmy.nz 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

BSD ppl could build a logind replacement.

[–] refalo@programming.dev 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I know it's not BSD but, gentoo already does similar with elogind to support all init systems with gnome, so maybe they could use something like that too.

[–] wltr@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I was thinking of this, being not sure whether I should even upvote this post. But then I thought whether it’s possible to design some similar system, interface wise, or would it be just too complex and inferior to what is currently used. I assume the whole systemd thing is a nightmare for FreeBSD architecture and nothing of a kind would be implemented there.

[–] kbal@fedia.io 5 points 2 days ago

It's fucking systemd again isn't it

[–] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

All these articles....

I listened to the Tech over Tea episode with the GNOME guy about their new systemd dependence. Any regular distro uses systemd, everything is free software.

Nobody is forcing anything.

KDE is building new tech, streamlined, minimal, performant. And yeah that uses systemd.

But if people want to generalize components so they can work on OpenRC or worse init systems, I highly doubt that they will block it.

Or that they will block launching startplasma-wayland from any other login manager, which currently already works. This is just their login manager, with way more features that are crucial for making it a windows competitor, like headless RDP support.

Here is the podcast episode btw