Recommended applications

This page lists X11, Wayland).]] These applications should be widely useful and of sufficient quality to merit inclusion.

In most cases, software designed for one desktop environment will work just as well with another desktop environment, though sometimes with 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.

Most software here is in the stable branch, but some useful and otherwise high quality software is still in the testing branch. In that case packages may be made available for installation, however packages from the testing branch should only be used after taking notice of any risks.

Desktop environment

 * Enlightenment - an eye-candy, compositing and stacking window manager that is released under the permissive BSD License.
 * FVWM-Crystal - an easy to use, powerful and pretty desktop environment.
 * GNOME - a feature-rich desktop environment provided by the GNOME project.
 * KDE - a free software community, producing a wide range of applications including the popular Plasma desktop environment.
 * Lumina - a lightweight desktop environment, free of D-Bus and *kit, designed to have as few system dependencies and requirements as possible.
 * LXDE - a free desktop environment with comparatively low resource requirements.
 * LXQt - a lightweight desktop environment based on the [Qt] toolkit.
 * MATE - a fork of the GNOME 2 desktop environment.
 * Xfce - a lightweight desktop environment for Unix-like operating systems.

Cross-toolkit themes

 * - a 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 lightweight panel, works with any NETWM compliant window manager (e.g. xfwm4, sawfish, openbox, KDE window manager).
 * - a lightweight X11 desktop panel for LXDE, also works with other window managers.
 * Tint2 - a lightweight panel/taskbar specifically made for Openbox, but it can also work with other window managers.
 * - a fast, lightweight, quick launch bar.

Window managers

 * Awesome - a highly configurable, next generation, dynamic window manager for X11.
 * Bspwm - a lightweight, tiling, minimalist window manager that is written in C and represents its windows as leaves on a binary tree.
 * Dwm - a dynamic window manager for X11.
 * Fluxbox - an open-source stacking window manager for X11 that was originally forked from Blackbox.
 * FVWM - a stacking window manager for X11.
 * I3 - a minimalist tiling window manager, completely written from scratch.
 * Openbox - a highly configurable, next generation, stacking window manager for X11 with extensive standards support.
 * Sawfish - an extensible window manager using a Lisp-based scripting language.
 * Sway - an open-source Wayland compositor that is designed to be compatible with the i3 window manager.

Application launchers

 * dmenu - a generic, highly customisable, and efficient menu for X11.
 * - a window switcher, run dialog and replacement.

Archive managers

 * - the official  archive  manager  for  the MATE Desktop Environment.
 * - an archive manager for the GNOME desktop environment.
 * - a simple & lightweight Qt-based but desktop-agnostic file archiver.
 * - a desktop environment-independent archiver front end based on GTK.

Clipboard managers

 * - an advanced clipboard manager with editing and scripting features.
 * - a lightweight GTK based clipboard manager.
 * - a lightweight and cross-platform clipboard history applet.
 * - a clipboard manager for Xfce called Clipman.

File managers

 * - a KDE file manager focusing on usability.
 * - a web browser and file manager based on KDE Frameworks.
 * - an advanced twin-panel (commander-style) file-manager with many extras.
 * PCManFM - a powerful yet lightweight file manager application, default file manager of LXDE.
 * - a multi-panel, tabbed file manager.
 * - a modern file manager for the Xfce desktop environment.
 * - an MS-Explorer-like minimalist file manager for X11.

Optical disk burners

 * - a CD/DVD burning application for the GNOME desktop.
 * - a fully-featured CD/DVD burner for KDE.
 * - a GTK disc burner from Xfce.

System

 * - GTK disk usage analyzer.
 * - GTK disk partition editor GUI.
 * - application menu editor.
 * - device Manager for Logitech Unifying devices.

Terminal emulators

 * alacritty - a terminal emulator focused on simplicity and performance.
 * - a modern, hackable, featureful, OpenGL-based terminal emulator written in Python and C.
 * - a terminal emulator for KDE.
 * - a lightweight, vte-based, tabbed terminal emulator for LXDE and other WMs.
 * Rxvt-unicode - a fast and lightweight terminal emulator with Xft and Unicode support.
 * - a terminal emulator arranging multiple terminals in one window, Python based, for GNOME.
 * - a feature rich terminal emulator using the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries.
 * - a drop down terminal, similar to the consoles found in first person shooters.
 * - a terminal emulator for the Xfce desktop environment.
 * - a Quake-style dropdown terminal based on.

Document management

 * Calibre - an electronic book management tool.

Document readers

 * - a PDF/EPUB viewer with vim like bindings.
 * - an e-book reader with a Qt interface.
 * - a simple document viewer for GNOME.
 * - an e-book reader supporting many formats.
 * Foliate - a free and open-source eBook reader that supports EPUB, Mobipocket, Kindle, FictionBook, and comic book archive formats.
 * - a graphical PDF viewer which aims to superficially resemble.
 * MuPDF - a free and open-source software framework written in C that implements a PDF, XPS, and EPUB parsing and rendering engine.
 * – KDE universal document viewer.
 * - a lightweight tabbed PDF viewer with a Qt5 interface.
 * Zathura - a free, plugin-based document viewer.

Note taking

 * - a desktop wiki as a graphical text editor used to maintain a collection of wiki pages.

Prodctivity software

 * - a light and fast cross platform word processor.
 * - the KDE office suite.
 * LibreOffice - a full office productivity suite, a successor of the OpenOffice.org that strives to be a better and less bloated office suite.
 * - a WYSIWYM frontend for LaTeX, DocBook, etc.
 * - a desktop publishing (DTP) and layout program.
 * - a multi-platform WYSIWYG ebook editor for ePub format.

Text editors

 * - a text editor for the GNOME desktop.
 * - a bare-bones text editor for Xfce that starts up extremely quickly.
 * - a small and lightweight UTF-8 text editor for the MATE environment.

Chat clients

 * HexChat - a graphical IRC client based on XChat.
 * Pidgin - an easy to use and free chat client that supports AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, IRC, XMPP, and more chat networks all at once.
 * - a Qt Jabber client.
 * - a Qt5-based Tox client.
 * Quassel Core - a daemon/headless IRC client, part of Quassel, that supports 24/7 connectivity.
 * WebRTC - implemented in Firefox.

Email clients

 * Claws Mail - a mail client forked from Sylpheed.
 * Thunderbird - Mozilla's solution to the e-mail client.
 * - a fast Qt IMAP e-mail client.

P2P

 * Deluge - an open-source, cross platform BitTorrent client.
 * - a Qt BitTorrent client.
 * RTorrent - a highly configurable torrent client based on libtorrent and ncurses.
 * - a BitTorrent client with GTK, Qt, CLI, and web front-ends.

Web browsers

 * Chromium - the open source version of Google's Chrome web browser.
 * - a lean, minimalist, web browser for resource-starved systems.
 * Falkon - a lightweight web browser based on QtWebEngine.
 * Firefox - Mozilla's web browser.
 * Qutebrowser - a web browser with vim-style key bindings based off the QtWebKit (or the QtWebEngine in its latest release).

Audio players

 * Audacious - a media player similar to XMMS, and Winamp.
 * - a music player and library organizer based on Amarok and Qt.
 * - an open-source jukebox for large collections of MP3/Ogg/FLAC files.
 * - a music management program designed for all music enthusiasts.
 * - an ncurses interface for playing audio files, Music On Console.
 * MPD - a flexible, server-side application for playing music.
 * - a Qt-based audio player with Winamp/XMMS skins support.
 * - a music playing application for GNOME framework.

Image viewers

 * - part of (a collection of tools and libraries for many image formats).
 * - an image viewer and browser for GNOME.
 * - image viewers for the framebuffer console (fbi) and X11 (ida).
 * Feh - open-source image viewer mainly aimed at command-line users but works as a very lightweight minimal viewer for X11.
 * - a lightweight GTK image viewer.
 * - a GTK LXDE lightweight image viewer.
 * - an image viewer and browser for GNOME.
 * - a fast and easy to use image viewer for browsing and displaying a collection of images in KDE.
 * - a lightweight Qt image viewer.
 * - a fast, simple, elegant, minimalistic image viewer for X11. Written in C with GTK.

Graphics

 * - batch image converter and resizer based on ImageMagick.
 * GIMP - the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It can be used as a simple paint tool, photo retouching and general image manipulation.
 * - framework and script language that allows the creation of complex macros, with GIMP and Krita plugins (enable appropriate use flags).
 * - powerful, free vector graphics design workshop.
 * - simple KDE-based painting program, like the traditonal MS Paint.
 * - professional open source painting program made by artists.
 * - fast and easy graphics application for digital painters.
 * - ultra light, bare X11 image editing tool.

Photography

 * Darktable - a photography workflow application and RAW developer.
 * - a powerful, feature-rich KDE digital photo management application.
 * - a graphical user interface for the creation & processing of panoramic images.
 * - a graphical user interface for high dynamic range image composition and processing.
 * - powerful, free, cross-platform raw photo processing system.
 * - photo manager for GNOME.

Video

 * Mpv - a free and open source command-line media player.
 * - a fully-featured Qt front-end for.
 * VLC - a wildly popular, cross platform video player and streamer.

3D

 * Blender - a free and open-source 3D creation suite.

File Sharing

 * Nfs-utils - a file system protocol that allows client machines to access network attached filesystems (called exports) from a host system.
 * Samba - a re-implementation of the SMB/CIFS networking protocol, a Microsoft Windows alternative to Network File System (NFS).

Network Management

 * Dhcpcd-ui - a Qt and GTK monitor and configuration graphical user interface for dhcpcd.
 * Iwd - an up-and-coming wireless daemon for Linux.
 * Netifrc - Gentoo's default framework for configuring and managing network interfaces on systems running OpenRC.
 * systemd-networkd - a part of systemd useful for simple configuration of wired network interfaces.
 * Wpa_supplicant - a wifi supplicant to handle network authentication.

Astronomy

 * - a space simulation that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions with a real-time 3D visualization of space.
 * - an open source planetarium for your computer with a realistic sky in relaitme 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope.

Nanoscience

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

Diff/Merge tools

 * - a Qt frontend to diff3.
 * - a KDE tool for viewing the differences between files.
 * - a visual diff and merge tool targeted at developers, under GNOME.
 * - a patch manager to easily manage large numbers of patches by keeping track of the changes each patch makes.

IDEs

 * - a GTK HTML editor for the experienced web designer or programmer.
 * - the open source, cross platform, free C++ IDE.
 * - a GTK based fast and lightweight IDE supporting many different languages.
 * - supporting KF5/Qt, C/C++ and much more.
 * - a lightweight C++/Qt IDE from the Qt Project.

Programming text editors

 * GVim - a text editor based on the vi text editor.
 * Emacs - a class of powerful, extensible, self-documenting text editors.
 * - a KDE text editor.
 * - a vim fork focused on extensibility and agility.
 * - a very powerful editor for programmers.
 * Vim - a text editor based on the vi text editor.

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 appropriate dependencies.