Chapter 8. Desktop Environments

KDE Plasma is an easy-to-use desktop environment. This desktop provides a suite of applications with a consistent look and feel, a standardized menu and toolbars, keybindings, color-schemes, internationalization, and a centralized, dialog-driven desktop configuration. More information on KDE can be found at the KDE homepage. For FreeBSD-specific information, consult the FreeBSD homepage at KDE.

GNOME is a user-friendly desktop environment. It includes a panel for starting applications and displaying status, a desktop, a set of tools and applications, and a set of conventions that make it easy for applications to cooperate and be consistent with each other.

XFCE is a desktop environment based on the GTK+, lightweight and provides a simple, efficient, easy-to-use desktop. It is fully configurable, has a main panel with menus, applets, and application launchers, provides a file manager and sound manager, and is themeable. Since it is fast, light, and efficient, it is ideal for older or slower machines with memory limitations.

The MATE Desktop Environment is the continuation of GNOME 2. It provides an intuitive and attractive desktop environment using traditional metaphors.

Cinnamon is a UNIX® desktop which provides advanced innovative features and a traditional user experience. The desktop layout is similar to Gnome 2. The underlying technology is forked from Gnome Shell. The emphasis is put on making users feel at home and providing them with an easy to use and comfortable desktop experience.

LXQt is an advanced, easy-to-use, and fast desktop environment based on Qt technologies. It has been tailored for users who value simplicity, speed, and an intuitive interface. Unlike most desktop environments, LXQt also works fine with less powerful machines.

Firefox is an open source browser that features a standards-compliant HTML display engine, tabbed browsing, popup blocking, extensions, improved security, and more. Firefox is based on the Mozilla codebase.

To install the package of the latest release version of Firefox, execute:

To instead install Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR) version, execute:

Chromium is an open source browser project that aims to build a safer, faster, and more stable web browsing experience. Chromium features tabbed browsing, popup blocking, extensions, and much more. Chromium is the open source project upon which the Google Chrome web browser is based.

To install Chromium, execute:

Iridium is a free, open, and libre browser modification of the Chromium code base, with privacy being enhanced in several key areas. Automatic transmission of partial queries, keywords, metrics to central services is inhibited and only occurs with consent.

To install Iridium, execute:

Falkon is a new-ish and very fast QtWebEngine browser. It aims to be a lightweight web browser available on all major platforms. Falkon has all standard functions someone can expect from a web browser. It includes bookmarks, history (both also in sidebar) and tabs. Beyond that, AdBlock plugin can block ads, Click2Flash can block Flash content and SSL Manager can edit the local CA Certificates database.

To install Falkon, execute:

Konqueror is more than a web browser as it is also a file manager and a multimedia viewer. It supports WebKit, a rendering engine used by many modern browsers including Chromium, as well as its own KHTML engine.

To install Konqueror, execute:

Gnome Web (Epiphany) is a web browser designed to be as lightweight and fast as possible, at the expense of many of the features found in other browsers.

To install Gnome Web (Epiphany), execute:

Qutebrowser is a keyboard-focused browser with a minimal GUI. It is based on Python and PyQt5 and free software, licensed under the GPL.

To install qutebrowser, execute:

Dillo aims to be a multiplatform alternative browser that is small, stable, developer-friendly, usable, fast, and extensible. This new, experimental version of Dillo is based upon FLTK toolkit, rather than GTK1, and has been substantially rewritten.

To install Dillo, execute:

A lynx-like web browser with text and graphics modes with many features like displaying tables, menus, etc.

To install Links, execute:

w3m is a pager/text-based web browser. It is a similar application to Lynx, but it has several features Lynx does not have like rendering tables and rendering frames.

To install w3m, execute:

Visual Studio Code is a type of tool that combines the simplicity of a code editor with what developers need for their core edit-build-debug cycle. It provides comprehensive editing and debugging support, an extensibility model, and lightweight integration with existing tools.

To install Visual Studio Code, execute:

Qt Creator is a cross-platform IDE (integrated development environment) tailored to the needs of Qt developers. Functionalities included with Qt Creator are:

To install Qt Creator, execute:

Open source, feature-full, plugin extensible IDE for C/C++ and other programming languages. It is based on KDevPlatform and the KDE and Qt libraries, and it has been under development since 1998.

To install kdevelop, execute:

The Eclipse Platform is an open extensible IDE for anything and yet nothing in particular. The Eclipse Platform provides building blocks and a foundation for constructing and running integrated software-development tools. The Eclipse Platform allows tool builders to independently develop tools that integrate with other people’s tools.

To install Eclipse IDE, execute:

Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing. It is an improved version of the vi editor distributed with most UNIX systems.

Vim is often called a "programmer’s editor," and so useful for programming that many consider it an entire IDE. It is not just for programmers, though. Vim is perfect for all kinds of text editing, from composing email to editing configuration files.

To install Vim, execute:

Neovim is an aggressive refactor of editors/vim. It represents a complete overhaul of the codebase with many sanity improvements, including sensible defaults, a built-in terminal emulator, asynchronous plugin architecture, and powerful APIs designed for speed and extensibility. It retains full compatibility with almost all Vim plugins and scripts.

To install Neovim, execute:

GNU Emacs is an extensible, customizable, free/libre text editor. At its core is an interpreter for Emacs Lisp, a dialect of the Lisp programming language with extensions to support text editing.

To install GNU Emacs, execute:

LibreOffice is a free software office suite developed by The Document Foundation. It is compatible with other major office suites and available on a variety of platforms. It is a rebranded fork of Apache OpenOffice and includes applications found in a complete office productivity suite: a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager, drawing program, database management program, and a tool for creating and editing mathematical formulæ. It is available in a number of different languages and internationalization has been extended to interfaces, spell checkers, and dictionaries. More information about LibreOffice can be found at libreoffice.org.

To install LibreOffice, execute:

The LibreOffice package comes by default only in English. To have a localized version of LibreOffice it is necessary to install a language pack. For example, for the version localized in Spanish, it is necessary to install the package editors/libreoffice-es with the command:

The KDE Plasma desktop environment includes an office suite which can be installed separately from KDE Plasma. Calligra includes standard components that can be found in other office suites. Words is the word processor, Sheets is the spreadsheet program, Stage manages slide presentations, and Karbon is used to draw graphical documents.

To install Calligra, execute:

AbiWord is a free word processing program similar in look and feel to Microsoft® Word. It is fast, contains many features, and is user-friendly.

AbiWord can import or export many file formats, including some proprietary ones like Microsoft® .rtf.

To install AbiWord, execute:

Okular is a universal document viewer, part of the KDE Plasma project.

Okular combines excellent functionality with the versatility of supporting different kind of documents, like PDF, Postscript, DjVu, CHM, XPS, ePub and others.

To install Okular, execute:

Evince is a document viewer for multiple document formats including PDF and Postscript. Part of the GNOME project. The goal of evince is to replace document viewers such as ggv and gpdf with a single, simple application.

To install Evince, execute:

ePDFView is a lightweight PDF document viewer that only uses the Gtk+ and Poppler libraries. The aim of ePDFView is to make a simple PDF document viewer, similar to Evince but without using the GNOME libraries.

To install ePDFView, execute:

For users that prefer a small FreeBSD PDF viewer, Xpdf provides a light-weight and efficient viewer which requires few resources. It uses the standard X fonts and does not require any additional toolkit.

To install Xpdf, execute:

Zathura is a highly customizable and functional document viewer. It provides a minimalistic and space saving interface as well as an easy usage that mainly focuses on keyboard interaction.

To install zathura, with PDF support, execute:

Additionally, one can install graphics/zathura-pdf-poppler for alternative PDF support, graphics/zathura-ps for PostScript support, graphics/zathura-djvu for DjVu support, and graphics/zathura-cb for comic book support.

KMyMoney is a personal finance application created by the KDE community. KMyMoney aims to provide the important features found in commercial personal finance manager applications. It also highlights ease-of-use and proper double-entry accounting among its features. KMyMoney imports from standard Quicken QIF files, tracks investments, handles multiple currencies, and provides a wealth of reports.

To install KMyMoney, execute:

GnuCash is part of the GNOME effort to provide user-friendly, yet powerful, applications to end-users. GnuCash can be used to keep track of income and expenses, bank accounts, and stocks. It features an intuitive interface while remaining professional.

GnuCash provides a smart register, a hierarchical system of accounts, and many keyboard accelerators and auto-completion methods. It can split a single transaction into several more detailed pieces. GnuCash can import and merge Quicken QIF files. It also handles most international date and currency formats.

To install GnuCash, execute: