Recommended applications

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This page lists applications recommended for use in a graphical environment (X11, Wayland), with suggestions for reliable and easy to install software for common Gentoo Linux needs.

Most of these packages are in the stable branch, but some useful and otherwise high quality software is still in the testing branch. Testing branch packages may be made available for installation by accepting a keyword for a single package, however packages from the testing branch should only be used after taking note of any risks.

In most cases, software designed for one desktop environment will work just as well with another desktop environment, though sometimes with slightly less integration. Installing software from a different desktop environment may pull in more dependencies than an equivalent native application; there is usually no issue at all with this.

To reference a new piece of software here, please read the adding to this page section.

This is a "best of kind" list, much more software is available on Gentoo. Use eix or browse packages.gentoo.org to find all applications available on Gentoo.

See also
See recommended tools for command-line software. There is also the Wayland Desktop Landscape page for Wayland-specific applications.

Desktop environment

See also
See desktop environment article.

Application launchers

Name Package Description
dmenu x11-misc/dmenu Generic, highly customizable, and efficient menu for X11.
Rofi x11-misc/rofi Window switcher, run dialog, and dmenu replacement.
Wofi gui-apps/wofi Launcher/menu program for wlroots based wayland compositors such as sway

Clipboard managers

The X11 clipboard supports multiple selections which may be filled by simply selecting text on the screen or by specifically using a copy function. X11 selections have a coherent operation and applications implement their use by convention, though the conventions are not always fully respected. Clipboard managers generally manage a history of the X11 selections and sometimes modify their behavior.

Name Package Description
Clipman xfce-extra/xfce4-clipman-plugin Clipboard manager for Xfce called Clipman.
CopyQ x11-misc/copyq Advanced clipboard manager with editing and scripting features.
Parcellite x11-misc/parcellite Lightweight GTK based clipboard manager.
Qlipper x11-misc/qlipper Lightweight and cross-platform clipboard history applet.
xclip x11-misc/xclip Copy data from standard input to X clipboard.

Configuration

Name Package Description
MenuLibre x11-misc/menulibre Application menu editor.
QtCurve x11-themes/qtcurve Toolkit theme to provide a common style to GNOME/GTK and KDE/Qt applications. See GTK themes in Qt applications for more information.

Taskbars / Panels

A taskbar is generally a strip on one edge of the screen with a menu, a representation of open windows, shortcuts to launch apps, widgets to display information etc. Desktop environments usually provide a taskbar but the default can often be replaced or complemented according to user preference. A taskbar associated with a window manager can form the basis of a custom desktop environment.

Name Package Description
fbpanel x11-misc/fbpanel Lightweight panel that works with any NETWM compliant window manager (e.g. xfwm4, sawfish, openbox, KDE window manager).
LXPanel lxde-base/lxpanel Lightweight X11 desktop panel for LXDE, also works with other window managers.
Polybar x11-misc/polybar Tool for creating highly customizable status bars for the desktop environment.
Tint2 x11-misc/tint2 Lightweight panel/taskbar specifically made for Openbox, but it can also work with other window managers.
wbar x11-misc/wbar Fast, lightweight, quick-launch bar.
Waybar gui-apps/waybar Highly customizable Wayland bar for Sway and Wlroots based compositors.

Window managers

See also
See the window manager article for a list of window managers available in Gentoo.

Desktop utilities

Archive managers

Theses graphical file archivers support multiple archive formats and should work with any desktop environment. See data compression for more information on archivers in general.

Name Package Description
Ark kde-apps/ark Archive manager by KDE.
Engrampa app-arch/engrampa Official archive manager for the MATE Desktop Environment.
File Roller app-arch/file-roller Archive manager for the GNOME desktop environment.
LXQt Archiver app-arch/lxqt-archiver Simple & lightweight Qt-based but desktop-agnostic file archiver.
Xarchiver app-arch/xarchiver Desktop environment-independent archiver front end based on GTK.

File managers

See also
See file managers for more information.

Optical disk burners

Name Package Description
Brasero app-cdr/brasero CD/DVD burning application for the GNOME desktop.
K3b kde-apps/k3b Fully-featured CD/DVD burner for KDE.
Xfburn app-cdr/xfburn GTK disc burner from Xfce.

See the LiveUSB article for information on writing iso files to USB devices. See CD/DVD/BD writing on burning disks from the command line. See FAQ - How do I burn an ISO file? about burning iso to CD on various OSs.

Documents

E-book readers

Name Package Description
Calibre app-text/calibre Electronic book management tool.
FBReader app-text/fbreader E-book reader supporting many formats.
Foliate app-text/foliate Simple, modern, open-source GTK eBook viewer. Supports EPUB, Mobipocket, Kindle, FictionBook, and comic book archive formats.
Zathura app-text/zathura-cb Extension for Zathura document viewer. No GTK dependency.

General document viewers

Name Package Description
apvlv app-text/apvlv PDF/EPUB viewer with vim like bindings.
Evince app-text/evince Simple document viewer for GNOME.
llpp app-text/llpp Graphical PDF viewer which aims to superficially resemble less.
MuPDF app-text/mupdf Free and open-source software framework written in C that implements a PDF, XPS, and EPUB parsing and rendering engine.
Okular kde-apps/okular KDE universal document viewer.
qpdfview app-text/qpdfview Lightweight tabbed PDF viewer with a Qt5 interface.
Zathura app-text/zathura
app-text/zathura-meta
Free, plugin-based document viewer.

Note taking

Name Package Description
GNote app-misc/gnote Note-taking application for GNOME. (Not to be confused with "GNotes".)
Knotes kde-apps/knotes KDE sticky notes.
Notes xfce-extra/xfce4-notes-plugin Xfce panel sticky notes plugin.
Xournal app-text/xournal Handwritten note-taking, sketching, and keeping a journal using a stylus.
Xournal++ app-text/xournalpp Handwriting note-taking software with PDF annotation support.
Xpad x11-misc/xpad A sticky note application for GTK.
Zim x11-misc/zim Desktop wiki as a graphical text editor used to maintain a collection of wiki pages.

Productivity software

Name Package Description
Abiword app-office/abiword Light and fast cross-platform word processor.
Calligra app-office/calligra The KDE office suite.
LibreOffice app-office/libreoffice
app-office/libreoffice-bin
Full office productivity suite, a successor of the OpenOffice.org that strives to be a better and less bloated office suite.
LyX app-office/lyx WYSIWYM frontend for LaTeX, DocBook, etc.
Pdfbox dev-java/pdfbox pdfbox — an open source Java tool for working with PDF documents.
Scribus app-office/scribus Desktop publishing (DTP) and layout program.
Sigil app-text/sigil Multi-platform WYSIWYG ebook editor for ePub format.

Text editors

See also
See the text editor article.

Internet

Chat clients / video conferencing

Name Package Description
HexChat net-irc/hexchat Graphical IRC client based on XChat.
Konversation net-irc/konversation IRC client by kde.
Pidgin net-im/pidgin Easy to use and free chat client that supports AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, IRC, XMPP, and more chat networks all at once.
Psi net-im/psi Qt Jabber client.
qTox net-im/qtox Qt5-based Tox client.
Quassel net-irc/quassel Daemon/headless IRC client, part of Quassel, that supports 24/7 connectivity.
Signal Desktop net-im/signal-desktop-bin Messaging application geared towards privacy.
WebRTC[1][2] www-client/firefox or www-client/firefox-bin Implemented in Firefox.

Some popular proprietary messaging services can be found in the Gentoo ebuild repository if needed, such as Discord, Skype, or Telegram (open source desktop client with closed source server backend). Some other services can be accessed on Gentoo using their web interface, such as WhatsApp.

See the IRC article for some more IRC clients. See the instant messaging category for more articles on this subject.

Email clients

Name Package Description
Claws Mail mail-client/claws-mail Mail client forked from Sylpheed.
Evolution mail-client/evolution Integrated e-mail and calendar client, particularly useful for connecting to Microsoft Office365 and Exchange servers.
Geary mail-client/geary Geary is an email application built around conversations, for the GNOME desktop.
Thunderbird mail-client/thunderbird
mail-client/thunderbird-bin
Mozilla's solution to the e-mail client.

P2P

Name Package Description
Deluge net-p2p/deluge Open-source, cross platform BitTorrent client.
Freenet net-p2p/freenet An encrypted network without censorship
QBittorrent net-p2p/qbittorrent Qt BitTorrent client.
Transmission net-p2p/transmission BitTorrent client with GTK, Qt, CLI, and web front-ends.

Web browsers

Name Package Description
Brave - Focused on privacy, blocking trackers, and advertisements.
Chromium www-client/chromium Open source version of Google's Chrome web browser.
Epiphany www-client/epiphany Simple web browser tightly integrated with GNOME. Based on WebKit and GTK4.
Falkon www-client/falkon Lightweight web browser based on QtWebEngine.
Firefox www-client/firefox
www-client/firefox-bin
Mozilla's web browser.
Qutebrowser www-client/qutebrowser Web browser with vim-style key bindings based on QtWebEngine.

See also Category:Web browser.

Multimedia

Acquisition

Audio

Name Package Description
Audacity media-sound/audacity Free cross-platform audio recorder and editor.
SoundRecorder media-sound/gnome-sound-recorder Simple sound recorder.

See also music production.

Scanning

Name Package Description
Document Scanner media-gfx/simple-scan Simple document scanning utility for GNOME.
gscan2pdf media-gfx/gscan2pdf Scan documents, perform OCR, produce PDFs and DjVus, gtk based.
Paperwork app-text/paperwork Personal document manager: scan or import documents and find them back in a snap with full text search!
Skanlite kde-misc/skanlite Simple image scanning application based on libksane and KDE Frameworks.
XSane media-gfx/xsane Tried and tested graphical scanning frontend.

See the wiki page on SANE for more information on scanning in Gentoo.

Video

Name Package Description
Cheese media-video/cheese GTK program to take pictures and videos from your webcam, GNOME oriented.
Guvcview media-video/guvcview Simple Qt5 or GTK 3 interface for capturing and viewing video from v4l2 devices.
OBS Studio media-video/obs-studio Free software for video recording and live streaming.
SimpleScreenRecorder media-video/simplescreenrecorder Just as the name implies.

Audio players

Name Package Description
Audacious media-sound/audacious
media-plugins/audacious-plugins
Media player similar to XMMS, and Winamp.
Elisa media-sound/elisa Simple music player for the KDE framework.
gmusicbrowser media-sound/gmusicbrowser Open-source jukebox for large collections of MP3/Ogg/FLAC files.
Guayadeque media-sound/guayadeque Music management program designed for all music enthusiasts.
MOC (music on console) media-sound/moc ncurses interface for playing audio files, Music On Console.
MPD media-sound/mpd Flexible, server-side application for playing music with X11 clients.
Qmmp media-sound/qmmp Qt-based audio player with Winamp/XMMS skins support.
Rhythmbox media-sound/rhythmbox Music playing application for GNOME framework.
Strawberry media-sound/strawberry Music player and library organizer based on Amarok and Qt.

See also Category:Audio player.

Image viewers

Name Package Description
ImageMagick display command media-gfx/imagemagick Collection of tools and libraries for many image formats, including an image viewer.
Eye of GNOME (eog) media-gfx/eog Image viewer and browser for GNOME.
fbida media-gfx/fbida Image viewers for the framebuffer console (fbi) and X11 (ida).
Feh media-gfx/feh Open-source image viewer mainly aimed at command-line users but works as a very lightweight minimal viewer for X11.
Geeqie media-gfx/geeqie Lightweight GTK image viewer.
GPicView media-gfx/gpicview GTK LXDE lightweight image viewer.
gThumb media-gfx/gthumb Image viewer and browser for GNOME.
Gwenview kde-apps/gwenview Fast and easy to use image viewer for browsing and displaying a collection of images in KDE.
nomacs media-gfx/nomacs Lightweight Qt image viewer.
Sxiv media-gfx/sxiv Lightweight, simple image viewer with multiple features. Written in C.
Viewnior media-gfx/viewnior Fast, simple, elegant, minimalist image viewer for X11. Written in C with GTK.

Graphics

Name Package Description
Batik dev-java/batik Batik — Java-based toolkit for applications or applets that want to use images in the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format
Converseen media-gfx/converseen Batch image converter and resizer based on ImageMagick.
Flameshot media-gfx/flameshot Powerful and simple to use screenshot software, with seamless in-place editing capabilities.
GIMP media-gfx/gimp The GNU Image Manipulation Program. It can be used as a simple paint tool, photo retouching and general image manipulation.
G'MIC media-gfx/gmic Framework and script language that allows the creation of complex macros, with GIMP and Krita plugins (enable appropriate use flags).
Inkscape media-gfx/inkscape Powerful, free vector graphics design workshop.
KolourPaint kde-apps/kolourpaint Simple KDE-based painting program, like the traditional MS Paint.
Krita media-gfx/krita Professional open source painting program made by artists.
MyPaint media-gfx/mypaint Fast and easy graphics application for digital painters.
XPaint media-gfx/xpaint Ultra light, bare X11 image editing tool.

Photography

Name Package Description
Darktable media-gfx/darktable Photography workflow application and RAW developer.
digiKam media-gfx/digikam Powerful, feature-rich KDE digital photo management application.
Hugin media-gfx/hugin Graphical user interface for the creation & processing of panoramic images.
Luminance HDR media-gfx/luminance-hdr Graphical user interface for high dynamic range image composition and processing.
RawTherapee media-gfx/rawtherapee Powerful, free, cross-platform raw photo processing system.
Shotwell media-gfx/shotwell Photo manager for GNOME.

Video players

Name Package Description
Mpv media-video/mpv Open source media player with a minimal interface. Supports a wide variety of media formats, has powerful scripting capabilities, and high quality video output.
Celluloid media-video/celluloid A simple GTK+ frontend for media-video/mpv.
SMPlayer media-video/smplayer Fully-featured Qt front-end for media-video/mplayer.
VLC media-video/vlc Wildly popular, cross platform video player and streamer.

See also Category:Video player.

Video editors

Name Package Description
Avidemux media-video/avidemux Free video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and encoding tasks.
Kdenlive kde-apps/kdenlive Non-linear video editing suite by KDE.
OpenShot media-video/openshot Award winning free and open-source non-linear video editor.
Shotcut media-video/shotcut A free, open source, cross-platform video editor (testing branch, as of 2022-11).
Pitivi media-video/pitivi Stable and effective non-linear video editor for low-end systems.

3D

Name Package Description
Blender media-gfx/blender Free and open-source 3D creation suite.

Network

File Sharing

Name Package Description
Nfs-utils net-fs/nfs-utils File system protocol that allows client machines to access network attached filesystems (called exports) from a host system.
Samba net-fs/samba Re-implementation of the SMB/CIFS networking protocol, a Microsoft Windows alternative to Network File System (NFS).

Network Management

Name Package Description
Dhcpcd-ui net-misc/dhcpcd-ui Qt and GTK monitor and configuration graphical user interface for dhcpcd.
Iwd net-wireless/iwd Up-and-coming wireless daemon for Linux.
Netifrc net-misc/netifrc Gentoo's default framework for configuring and managing network interfaces on systems running OpenRC.
systemd-networkd sys-apps/systemd Part of systemd useful for simple configuration of wired network interfaces. Follow article for installation method.
Wpa_supplicant net-wireless/wpa_supplicant Wifi supplicant to handle network authentication.

Science

Astronomy

Name Package Description
Celestia sci-astronomy/celestia Space simulation that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions with a real-time 3D visualization of space.
Stellarium sci-astronomy/stellarium Open source planetarium for your computer with a realistic sky in real-time 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope.

Nanoscience

Name Package Description
Gwyddion sci-visualization/gwyddion View, convert, and analyze scanning microscopy data (e.g. atomic force microscopy).
KLayout sci-electronics/klayout View, edit, and convert electron beam lithography files.

Software development

Diff/Merge tools

Name Package Description
KDiff3 kde-misc/kdiff3 Qt frontend to diff3.
Kompare kde-apps/kompare KDE tool for viewing the differences between files.
Meld dev-util/meld Visual diff and merge tool targeted at developers, under GNOME.
Quilt dev-util/quilt Patch manager to easily manage large numbers of patches by keeping track of the changes each patch makes.
Difftastic dev-util/difftastic A structural diff that understands syntax.

IDEs

Name Package Description
Bluefish app-editors/bluefish GTK HTML editor for the experienced web designer or programmer.
Code::Blocks dev-util/codeblocks Open source, cross platform, free C++ IDE.
Eclipse dev-util/eclipse-sdk-bin from eclipse repository Java based IDE that can be used for other languages via plugins. Not in the Gentoo repository but can be installed from an overlay according to the the instructions.
Geany dev-util/geany GTK based fast and lightweight IDE supporting many different languages.
KDevelop dev-util/kdevelop Supporting KF5/Qt, C/C++ and much more.
Qt Creator dev-qt/qt-creator Lightweight C++/Qt IDE from the Qt Project.
Vscode app-editors/vscode Visual Studio Code is a lightweight but powerful source code editor. Requires accepting the Microsoft-vscode software license before installation.
Vscodium app-editors/vscodium Free/Libre Open Source Software Binaries of Microsoft's VSCode.

System

Hardware management

Name Package Description
Solaar app-misc/solaar Device Manager for Logitech Unifying devices.
USBView app-admin/usbview Display the topology of devices on the USB bus.

See also the article on hardware detection software.

Terminal emulators

See also
See the terminal emulator article for package choices.

Utilities

Name Package Description
Baobab sys-apps/baobab GTK disk usage analyzer.
GParted sys-block/gparted GTK disk partition editor GUI.

Virtualization

See also
See virtualization article for software choices.

Adding to this page

The applications listed here should be widely useful, and of sufficient quality, to merit inclusion.

If you regularly use a desktop software package from the Gentoo repository and can confirm it is of excellent quality, stable and of broad appeal for common tasks, please add it to the list ! The software should at least be maintained (i.e. relatively recent commits to the source; have periodic releases; not have too many reported bugs; most bugs should be getting fixed rather than accumulating, etc.), and preferably be well documented and from the stable branch. Please don't use this page just to promote a package because you like it, are an author or have other interest etc.

For software titles that are of more interest to users of a specific desktop environment, please use or create the meta page (blueprint) for that desktop environment (e.g. Xfce).

It is good practice to create a stub article for any package added here that does not have a page already, as anything notable enough to be listed here will also be notable enough to have a dedicated page.

See also

  • Games — a landing page for many of the games (especially open source variants) available in Gentoo's main ebuild repository.
  • Qt Desktop applications — a list of recommendations for a light-weight, non-KDE, Qt-only desktop environment.
  • Recommended tools — lists system-administration related tools recommended for use in a shell environment (terminal/console)
  • Terminal productivity software — applications designed to run within the constraints of a text-based terminal window that are typically associated with GUI-based office productivity software
  • Wayland Desktop Landscape — various desktop related packages for Wayland

External resources

  • linuxlinks software directory - large, well organized catalogue of software with good descriptions. Software that is not in Portage can sometimes be installed by other means, such as being downloaded and complied after installing the appropriate dependencies.

References