This information comes from FreeBSD/Gnome FAQ
There are two ways to install GNOME 2.14 on FreeBSD. One way is to use packages, and the other way is to use ports. Before doing either installation, you should first familiarize yourself with the GNOME 2.14 release notes.
Install GNOME 2.14 from packages.
To install GNOME 2.14 from packages, use the command:
# pkg_add -r gnome2
This will download the latest GNOME 2.14 packages from the FreeBSD FTP site, and proceed to install them on your system.
Up-to-date GNOME packages for i386 and amd64 for all supported versions of FreeBSD are also available from the GNOME Tinderbox.
To build GNOME 2.14, you must first obtain the latest ports tree skeleton. This is most easily accomplished with portsnap(8) or cvsup. Then:
# cd /usr/ports/x11/gnome2
# make clean
# make install clean
Enable File Alteration Monitor (FAM) support for your 2.14 desktop.
GNOME includes support for the File Alteration Monitor (devel/gamin) by default, in order to improve the GNOME desktop’s ability to respond to files being added, deleted, or modified by other programs.
Make GNOME 2.14 start when X starts.
Once you have the GNOME 2.14 desktop installed, GNOME 2.14 can be started by adding the following line to ~/.xsession or ~/.xinitrc, as appropriate:
exec gnome-session
Important Note
Only the core desktop is included in the gnome2 package. Here are some other GNOME meta-ports that offer convenient groupings of popular GNOME 2 software.
- GNOME 2 Fifth Toe (x11/gnome2-fifth-toe) consists of stable GNOME 2 applications that many users expect to find in a functional desktop environment. This includes image manipulation applications, chat and instant messenger applications, and music and multimedia players.
- GNOME 2 Hacker Tools (devel/gnome2-hacker-tools) consists of applications developers would need to create and maintain GNOME software projects. This includes IDEs, interface builders, “hacker” editors, and code generation tools.
- GNOME 2 Office (editors/gnome2-office) consists of applications that are commonly found in office or productivity suites. This includes a spreadsheet application, word processor, project management application, database access application, groupware suite, and diagramming application.
- GNOME 2 Power Tools (x11/gnome2-power-tools) consists of utilities and applets for the technically-minded GNOME user. It also contains many useful add-on utilities for some of the applications found in the Desktop and Fifth Toe.
To install any of these from packages:
# pkg_add -r meta-port
For example, to install the GNOME 2 Fifth Toe from packages:
# pkg_add -r gnome2-fifth-toe
To install any of these from ports:
# cd /usr/ports/category/meta-port
# make clean
# make install clean
For example, to install the GNOME 2 Fifth Toe from ports:
# cd /usr/ports/x11/gnome2-fifth-toe
# make clean
# make install clean