Recommended applications

This page is intended to list applications recommended for use in a graphical (X) environment. See Recommended tools for commandline tools.

Desktop environment

 * Enlightenment
 * FVWM-Crystal - transparent desktop for your Linux box
 * GNOME
 * KDE
 * LXDE - light-weight GTK+ DE
 * LXQt - light-weight Qt DE
 * Xfce

Window managers

 * Awesome
 * dwm
 * Fluxbox
 * FVWM
 * i3
 * Openbox
 * Sawfish

Taskbars / Panels

 * - Lightweight X11 desktop panel for LXDE, also works with other WMs
 * - quick launch bar
 * - quick launch bar
 * - quick launch bar

Cross-toolkit themes

 * and

File managers

 * - A KDE file manager focusing on usability
 * - Light-weight Qt file manager
 * - Fast lightweight tabbed file manager
 * - A multi-panel tabbed file manager
 * - Another Xfce based file explorer
 * - Another Xfce based file explorer
 * - Another Xfce based file explorer

Optical disk burners

 * - feature-rich application to manage CD/DVD images
 * - KDE's fully-featured CD/DVD burner
 * - simple GTK+ disc burner
 * - GTK+ disc burner from Xfce

Terminal emulators

 * - KDE's terminal emulator
 * - Quake-style dropdown terminal based on
 * - Lightweight vte-based tabbed terminal emulator for LXDE and other WMs
 * rxvt-unicode
 * - Multiple GNOME terminals in one window

Chat clients

 * WebRTC - implemented in Firefox
 * Lightweight or QT5-based net-im/qtox  - net-libs/tox-based Tox clients from tox-overlay
 * - GTK Instant Messenger client
 * - Qt Jabber client
 * - Graphical IRC client based on XChat
 * - Qt IRC client supporting a remote daemon

Email clients

 * - "All mail clients suck. This one just sucks less."
 * - A fast Qt IMAP e-mail client
 * Claws Mail - An email client (and news reader) based on GTK+
 * Thunderbird

P2P

 * - Qt BitTorrent client
 * - BitTorrent client with GTK+, Qt, CLI, and web front-ends
 * - -based server/client with front-end
 * - -based server/client with GTK+, text console, and web front-ends

Web browsers

 * - open-source version of Google Chrome web browser
 * - lean minimalist web browser for resource-starved systems
 * Firefox - Mozilla's flagship web browser
 * - KDE WebKit web browser
 * - Qt WebKit web browser

Audio

 * MPD - music player daemon
 * - Qt4-based audio player with winamp/xmms skins support
 * - Advanced audio player based on KDE framework
 * - Rhythmbox is a music playing application for GNOME framework
 * - Amarok 1.4 based audio player
 * - An open-source jukebox for large collections of mp3/ogg/flac files
 * - Music management program designed for all music enthusiasts
 * - Music On Console - ncurses interface for playing audio files
 * - Music On Console - ncurses interface for playing audio files

Image viewers

 * - Image viewer and browser for Gnome
 * - KDE image viewer
 * - fast and light-weight image viewer
 * - light-weight GTK+ image viewer
 * - GTK+ lxde light-weight image viewer
 * - Image viewer and browser for Gnome
 * - Image viewers for the framebuffer console (fbi) and X11 (ida)
 * - light-weight Qt image viewer

Photography

 * - powerful, feature-rich KDE digital photo management application
 * - graphical user interface for the creation & processing of panoramic images
 * - graphical user interface for high dynamic range image composition and processing

Video

 * - A GTK+ interface to
 * media-video/mpv - video player successor or fork of MPlayer/mplayer2
 * - fully-featured front-end for
 * media-video/vlc - video player and streamer

3D

 * - 3D Creation/Animation/Publishing System (See Blender on this wiki).

Document readers

 * - Alf's PDF Viewer Like Vim
 * - Simple document viewer for GNOME
 * - ebook reader supporting many formats
 * - Qt CHM viewer
 * - a graphical PDF viewer which aims to superficially resemble less(1)
 * - the heart of llpp
 * - light-weight tabbed PDF viewer
 * - highly customizable, minimalist, keyboard-driven document viewer
 * - KDE universal document viewer

Document management

 * - fully-featured ebook management application

Editors

 * - GUI version of the Vim text editor
 * - A powerful, extensible, self-documenting text editor
 * - A very powerful editor for programmers
 * - WYSIWYM frontend for LaTeX, DocBook, etc.
 * - Desktop publishing (DTP) and layout program
 * - epub editor
 * - KDE text editor
 * - A text editor for the GNOME desktop

Note taking

 * - A note taking application
 * - keep your notes, pictures, ideas, and information in baskets
 * - desktop wiki

Office suites

 * - light and fast cross platform word processor

Diff/Merge tools

 * - quilt patch manager
 * - Qt frontend to diff3
 * - Qt frontend to diff3

IDEs

 * - GTK HTML editor for the experienced web designer or programmer
 * - light-weight C++/Qt IDE from the Qt Project
 * - The open source, cross platform, free C++ IDE
 * - fully-featured Python IDE using PyQt4
 * - GTK+ based fast and lightweight IDE supporting many different languages
 * - Python IDE

Astronomy

 * - OpenGL 3D space simulator
 * - Planetarium for amauter astronomers
 * - renders 3D photo-realistic skies in real time

Nanoscience

 * - View, convert, and analzye scanning microscopy data (e.g. atomic force microscopy)
 * - View, edit, and convert electron beam lithography files

Network Management

 * Dhcpcd-ui
 * Gentoo Network Interface Management Scripts
 * systemd-networkd
 * wpa_supplicant

File Sharing

 * NFS
 * Samba - A re-implementation of the SMB/CIFS networking protocol.