Recommended applications

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

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.

Window managers

 * Awesome — a highly configurable, next generation, dynamic window manager for X.
 * 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.
 * Sway — an open-source Wayland compositor that is designed to be compatible with the i3 window manager.
 * 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.

Taskbars / Panels

 * — a lightweight X11 desktop panel for LXDE, also works with other WMs.
 * — a lightweight panel, works with any NETWM compliant window manager (eg xfwm4, sawfish, openbox, metacity, kde wm).
 * Tint2 — a lightweight panel/taskbar specifically made for Openbox, but it can also work with other window managers.
 * — a fast, lightweight, quick launch bar.

Cross-toolkit themes

 * — a toolkit theme to provide a common style to GNOME/GTK and KDE/Qt applications.

Clipboard managers

 * — 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.
 * — an advanced twin-panel (commander-style) file-manager with many extras.
 * — a web browser and file manager based on KDE Frameworks.
 * 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 X.

Application launchers

 * — a window switcher, run dialog and replacement.
 * — a generic, highly customisable, and efficient menu for the X Window System.

Optical disk burners

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

Terminal emulators

 * — a terminal emulator for KDE.
 * — a Quake-style dropdown terminal based on.
 * — 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 drop down terminal, similar to the consoles found in first person shooters.
 * — a feature rich terminal emulator using the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries.
 * — a terminal emulator for the Xfce desktop environment.
 * alacritty — a terminal emulator focused on simplicity and performance.

Chat clients

 * WebRTC — implemented in Firefox.
 * — a Qt5-based Tox client.
 * 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.
 * HexChat — a graphical IRC client based on XChat.
 * Quassel Core — a daemon/headless IRC client, part of Quassel, that supports 24/7 connectivity.

Email clients

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

P2P

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

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

 * 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.
 * — a music player and library organizer based on Amarok and Qt.
 * Audacious — a media player similar to XMMS, and Winamp.
 * — 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.

Image viewers

 * — part of (a collection of tools and libraries for many image formats).
 * — 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.
 * Feh — an open-source image viewer that is mainly aimed at command-line users. 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.
 * — image viewers for the framebuffer console (fbi) and X11 (ida).
 * — a lightweight Qt image viewer.

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.
 * GIMP — the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It can be used as a simple paint tool, photo retouching and general image manipulation.

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.

Document readers

 * — a PDF/EPUB viewer with vim like bindings.
 * — an e-book reader with a Qt interface.
 * — a simple document viewer for GNOME.
 * Foliate — a free and open-source eBook reader that supports EPUB, Mobipocket, Kindle, FictionBook, and comic book archive formats.
 * — an e-book reader supporting many 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.
 * — a lightweight tabbed PDF viewer with a Qt5 interface.
 * Zathura — a free, plugin-based document viewer.
 * – KDE universal document viewer.

Document management

 * Calibre — an electronic book management tool.

Editors

 * GVim — a text editor based on the vi text editor.
 * Emacs — a class of powerful, extensible, self-documenting text editors.
 * — a very powerful editor for programmers.
 * Vim — a text editor based on the vi text editor.
 * — a vim fork focused on extensibility and agility.
 * — a WYSIWYM frontend for LaTeX, DocBook, etc.
 * — a desktop publishing (DTP) and layout program.
 * — a multi-platform WYSIWYG ebook editor for ePub format.
 * — a KDE text editor.
 * — a text editor for the GNOME desktop.

Note taking

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

Office suites

 * — a light and fast cross platform word processor.
 * — the KDE office suite.
 * Libreoffice — a full office productivity suite.

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

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.

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.

Network Management

 * Dhcpcd-ui — a Qt and GTK monitor and configuration graphical user interface for dhcpcd.
 * 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.
 * Iwd — an up-and-coming wireless daemon for Linux.
 * Wpa_supplicant — a wifi supplicant to handle network authentication.

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).