As part of enhancing the FreeBSD experience on laptops and desktops, FreeBSD developers have been working toward adding a convenient desktop install option to their text-based installer for easily deploying the KDE Plasma desktop along with the necessary GPU drivers. After it didn't get wrapped up in time for the FreeBSD 15.0 release, that desktop installer option is now ready for testing.

The FreeBSD Foundation's Laptop Project published their January 2026 development summary to outline recent advancements in enhancing FreeBSD on laptops. Many of the recent improvements to modern s0ix standby support have now been merged. Plus ongoing work to enhance S4 hibernation, WiFi hardware improvements, updating open-source graphics driver code from Linux, and related work.

Arguably most exciting though for January is that the FreeBSD KDE Desktop Installer Option is now ready for testing. This is the option added to the text-based FreeBSD OS installer for those wanting KDE Plasma to be installed along with SDDM and X.Org and the supported GPU drivers.

A call for testing along with instructions can be found via this mailing list post .

Hopefully this KDE desktop option manages to make it into the FreeBSD 15.1 release in June. More details on these FreeBSD laptop improvements via the January status report .