TIP Recommended Packages

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This page is an unofficial effort to provide hints to all Gentoo users interested in their perfect desktop installation. There exists discussion thread on Gentoo Forums for support and other ideas.

A newbies guide version of this is available here.

Contents

[edit] Background

All this started on May 7th 2005, after posting a proposal on the Gentoo Forums.
I just wanted to:

hear other's opinions on what applications / packages one should emerge and how to configure them to have The Best, Gentoo Driven, Professional Desktop Installation (TM) and Professional Server Installation (TM).

[edit] Portage Related

eix (app-portage/eix)

Significant search-speedup (see: TIP Speed up searches in portage).

psyco (dev-python/psyco)

General python (and therefore Portage)-speedup (see: TIP Speed up portage with Psyco. WARNING: it sometimes breaks things ... Just to let you know it).

Ufed (app-portage/ufed)

Easy to use USE flag editor with description for each use flag.

flagedit (app-portage/flagedit)

Even more advanced CLI USE flag editor.

autounmask (app-portage/autounmask)

Unmasks packages and their dependencies. Great for installing unstable GNOME, KDE, etc.

[edit] GUIs

Porthole (app-portage/porthole)

Gives you access to many portage functionalities; USE flags, Sockets and much more. GTK based.

Kuroo (app-portage/kuroo)

Gives you a much better and friendly interface, and usage stats (formerly known as guitoo). Qt based and KDE dependent.

[edit] File managers

PCManFM (app-misc/pcmanfm)

An extremely fast and lightweight tabbed file manager with support for thumbnails.

GNU Midnight Commander (app-misc/mc)

GNU Midnight Commander is a ncurses-based file manager with support for mouse (using gpm).

Dolphin (kde-base/dolphin)

A KDE filemanager focusing on usability.

Rox-Filer (rox-base/rox)

A filemanager that can display thumbnails of images and videos. Very nice little (RISC OS based) graphical file manager. It depends on GTK+ 2.

Krusader (kde-misc/krusader)

An advanced twin panel file manager for KDE, similar to Midnight or Total Commander.

emelFM2 (app-misc/emelfm2)

A GTK+2 file manager with a simple and efficient interface, divided into three "panes" (two display the directory filelists and the third displays the output of commands executed within the program). A built-in command-line, toolbar buttons or assigned keys (entirely configurable by user) can be used to initiate commands. A flexible filetyping mechanism provides user-determined actions for desired filetypes.

Gentoo (app-misc/gentoo)

Gentoo is a free file manager for Linux and other Unix-like systems. Gentoo is written in ANSI C using the GTK+ toolkit, and the two-pane concept. What makes gentoo stand out are its graphical configurability and its file typing and styling system. Using the latter, gentoo identifies the type of your files and then uses the style you've defined for the type to determine how to display it in listings.
The name, which dates back to 1998, was coincidentally chosen.

[edit] Terminals

Eterm (x11-terms/eterm)

Aterm (x11-terms/aterm)

rxvt (x11-terms/rxvt)

URxvt (x11-terms/rxvt-unicode)

Konsole (kde-base/konsole)

[edit] Graphics editors

The GIMP (media-gfx/gimp)

The GNU Image Manipulation Program; a 2D photo and vector graphics editor. While not as usable and powerful as its main commercial alternative, Adobe Photoshop (which is, as of now, not directly, nor officially available on GNU/Linux -see Wine and CrossOver Office, the latter being a commercial product), the GIMP probably is the best free software bitmap graphics editor out there. For vector graphics, dedicated tools such as Inkscape or Sodipodi should be used, by people with intermediate to advanced needs.

Inkscape (media-gfx/inkscape)

An Open Source vector graphics editor that uses the W3C standard SVG file format. A very powerful application.

Open Clip Art Library (x11-misc/openclipart)

A public domain collection of clip art in the SVG format (usable by GIMP, Inkscape and others).

Blender (media-gfx/blender)

The best free 3D modelling program available. Import filters for 3D Studio Max and Maya are available (as far as I know, please specify).

CinePaint (media-video/cinepaint)

Motion picture editing tool used for painting and retouching of movies, handles color management and 16bit support.

ImageMagick (media-gfx/imagemagick)

Excellent image converter/viewer with basic editing features.

Wings3D (media-gfx/wings)

3D modeler with powerful user interface.

F-Spot (media-gfx/f-spot)

Excellent C# image viewer and touch up editor, cataloguing + export/publish features.

[edit] Graphics viewers

Eye of Gnome (media-gfx/eog)

The Eye of GNOME image viewer is the official image viewer for the GNOME Desktop environment. With it, you can view single image files, as well as large image collections.

Gthumb (media-gfx/gthumb)

A fullfeatured program to manage your pictures; can also import files from digital cameras.

GQview (media-gfx/gqview)

cool image viewing application.

Feh (media-gfx/feh)

Highspeed and lightweight image viewer which is basically used through commandline.

KPovmodeler (kde-base/kpovmodeler)

good POV-Ray Modeler comparable with Moray

GLiv (media-gfx/gliv)

Image viewer that uses OpenGL. Has a GUI and thumbnail browser. Due to the fact it uses OpenGL, various operations such as rotation, panning, and zooming, will be very light on the system cpu with most of the image processing being done by the video card.

Gwenview (media-gfk/gwenview)

Very great and feature rich Image viewer for KDE (!). The GUI is in the style of ACDS**...

Ristretto (xfce-extra/ristretto)

Ristretto is a fast and lightweight picture-viewer for the Xfce desktop environment.

[edit] Networking

tsclient (Terminal Service Client) (net-misc/tsclient)

tsclient is a GTK2 frontent for RPD/VNC (rdesktop). Terminal service clients allow users to remotely access computers. Alternatively use:
Code: Remote SSH 
ssh -X

Netcat (net-analyzer/netcat)

The Swiss TCP/IP UDP/IP Army knife

tcpdump (net-analyzer/tcpdump)

Packet sniffer, good tool for finding network problems

Wireshark (net-analyzer/wireshark)

Graphical packet sniffer with many dissectors (Formerly ethereal).

nmap (net-analyzer/nmap)

The best network scanner ever

mtr (net-analyzer/mtr)

My Traceroute - combines traceroute and ping

scapy (net-analyzer/scapy)

A Python interactive packet manipulation program for mastering the network

[edit] Network card autoconfiguration and management

[edit] Auto-switching and unplugging of network devices

  • Use ifplugd to switch between wireless and wired networks automatically
  • You can also use netplug, as it's newer, simpler way of auto-managing network interfaces (Not to be confused with the discontinued netplugd).

[edit] Wireless network selection

NetworkManager (net-misc/NetworkManager)

Network configuration and management in an easy way. Desktop env independent.

wlassistant (net-wireless/wlassistant)

Qt application.

Knemo (net-misc/knemo)

Tip: You can configure knemo (emerge knemo) to display wlassistant, etc. via context menu actions

Wicd (net-misc/wicd)

Tip: A lightweight wired and wireless network manager for Linux

[edit] USB storage device management

gnome-volume-manager (gnome-base/gnome-volume-manager)

kio-slaves and dbus provide this functionality in KDE. See this page.

ivman (sys-apps/ivman)

Global HAL/DBUS mounting capability. Ivman[1] is "a generic handler for HAL events." It can be used to automatically mount USB sticks, digital cameras, etc. There is an article on setting up Ivman here on the wiki.

hal (sys-apps/hal)

[edit] Office

OpenOffice.org (app-office/openoffice) or (app-office/openoffice-bin)

Full office suite: word processing, spreadsheet, presentations, etc.

KOffice (app-office/koffice) or (app-office/koffice-meta)

Alternative full office suite

Abiword (app-office/abiword)

Word processor only

LyX (app-office/lyx)

Typesetting word processor

Gnumeric (app-office/gnumeric)

Spreadsheet only

Planner (app-office/planner)

Project manager

MagicPoint (app-office/magicpoint)

Standalone presentation creator. Needs review as to whether deserves to be in TIP Recommended Packages

[edit] Development

[edit] Compilers, interpreters and libs + docs

fpc (dev-lang/fpc)

pascal compiler with GTK+ bindings and probably others, well integrated into kdevelop.

[edit] IDEs for different languages / environments

Eclipse SDK (dev-util/eclipse-sdk)

Eclipse is an open source Java-based IDE from the Eclipse Project. It is extensible and has many different projects that enable development in other languages. Out of the box, it is a very solid Java IDE. Using the CDT plugin, you can also use it to develop C/C++ applications.

KDevelop (dev-util/kdevelop)

KDevelop is an IDE from KDE. It is plugin-based and has support for many languages, including Ada, Bash, C/C++, Fortran, Haskell, Java, Pascal, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, and SQL. It also sports code-completion, code snippets, a front-end for the GCC debugger, a difference viewer, language documentation/tutorials, project templates, and syntax highlighting.

Anjuta (dev-util/anjuta)

Gnome/GTK2 based IDE, multiple languages.

Bluefish (app-editors/bluefish)

A GTK HTML editor for the experienced web designer or programmer.

Glade (dev-util/glade)

IDE for Gnome apps development. Supports, Java, C/C++/C#, Perl, Python, Ruby, GTK/GTK2.

Eric (dev-util/eric)

A QT-based Python IDE, also supporting Ruby.

Quanta Plus Web Development Environment (kde-base/quanta)

Full software/web development suite for KDE.

NVU (app-editors/nvu)

Dreamweaver-like HTML development.

Netbeans (dev-util/netbeans)

Sun's IDE. Very usefull for java-related programs (java, jsp, beans,...).

FreeRIDE (dev-util/freeride)

IDE for Ruby.

REALBASIC (bugzilla)

Crossplatform RAD IDE for a VB like objectoriented basic dialect.

SciTE (app-editors/scite)

SciTEA highly customizable programming editor.

[edit] Automounting for CDs and DVDs

magicdev (app-misc/magicdev)

autofs (net-fs/autofs)

kio-slaves and dbus provide this functionality in KDE. See this page.

[edit] Graphical environments

A graphical environment becomes very much a personal choice if you've transcended the KDE/GNOME juggernaut, and it would be unfair to claim any WM as best-of-breed. To make your own mind up, see the web sites for them and compare feature lists (OK eye candy!), then emerge them. Edit /etc/rc.conf and set XSESSION to choose a default (there are plenty of notes there on what to do).

If you have more than one WM installed and you use KDM or GDM (installed along with KDE/Gnome or as separate packages) you can select which window manager you use every time you log in. If you login to a virtual terminal, you can choose your window manager with ~/.xinitrc.

In addition, several window managers (all but KDE/Gnome, essentially) allow you to change your window manager on the fly when configured properly.

[edit] Desktop Environments

KDE (kde-base/kde)

A highly integrated and very popular desktop environment. It includes the most built-in functionality of any desktop, which may or may not be a good thing.

GNOME (gnome-base/gnome)

The other very popular desktop environment. The standard corporate Linux desktop.

Xfce (xfce-base/xfce)

A light GTK desktop environemnt that is similar to GNOME, yet faster and lighter. It is also very pretty. You'd use it instead of GNOME or KDE if you want fast and do not care for the more robust features of GNOME.

[edit] Window Managers

XFCE4 (xfce-base/xfce4)

Light desktop environment

Enlightenment (x11-wm/enlightenment)

Enlightenment Window Manage

Blackbox (x11-wm/blackbox)

A small, fast, full-featured window manager for

Afterstep (x11-wm/afterstep)

AfterStep is a feature rich NeXTish window manager

Fluxbox (x11-wm/fluxbox)

A favorite WM among the gentoo crowd. It is very similar to blackbox, yet better in most ways. It comes with a slit to see packages and some panel support, but that's it. It is derived from blackbox - supports grouping, slits, fbpager.

Openbox (x11-wm/openbox)

A WM that does not include anything other than basic window management. For the purists.

Ratpoison (x11-wm/ratpoison) and Ion (x11-wm/ion)

WMs designed for maximum usability without making use of the mouse. No window decoration. For the real purists.

Enlightenment DR17 (x11-wm/enlightenment)

There's an old e-16 and a new e-17 which is a very fast and good-looking WM. A good installation-HOWTO can be found here (in the Gentoo-section).

IceWM (x11-wm/icewm) WindowMaker (x11-wm/windowmaker)

WindowMaker strives to replicate the look and feel of the NEXTSTEP[tm] user interface. It is compatible with GNOME and KDE. Very configurable and very good for productivity. Highly recommend trying for at least a week.

FVWM (x11-wm/fvwm)

An extremely powerful ICCCM-compliant multiple virtual desktop window manager.

awesome (x11-wm/awesome)

A dynamic floating and tiling window manager.

wmii (x11-wm/wmii)

Window Manager Improved Improved- One of the most versatile window managers ever created. It has the best parts of ratpoison, wmi, evilwm and ion. Currently masked but the source can be manually downloaded and built in seconds. Main deps are xlib, libixp, dmenu and xmessage.

DWM (x11-wm/dwm)

A dynamic window manager for X11 (similar to wmii).

[edit] Customizing Localization

See: Localization.

[edit] Inputting Characters

To input characters non directly available through the keyboard, you must use an input method. Currently, the best document discussing this on the Gentoo Wiki is at Japanese, but the input method part of it is equally useful to enable Chinese and Korean input.

[edit] Other Packages and Notes

  • grip and gstreamer don't support Chinese song titles well. But there is a trick to re-code GB2312/BIG5/.... format CDDB information into UTF-8 by using: 
iconv -f GB2312 -t UTF-8 foo > foobar

(See: Unicode HOWTO for more on this). This is especially useful when combined with a console based ripper: media-sound/abcde.

[edit] Multimedia

[edit] Audio

Banshee (media-sound/banshee)

Import, organize, play, and share your music using a simple and powerful interface.

gtkpod (app-pda/gtkpod)

GUI for iPod using GTK2

Ekiga (net-im/ekiga)

H.323 and SIP VoIP softphone

Amarok (media-sound/amarok)

KDE-based feature-rich music player (Amarok Homepage).

Audacious (media-sound/audacious)

BMP fork, music player (Audacious Homepage).

BMPx (media-sound/bmpx)

Beep Media Player (BMPx Homepage).

Rhythmbox (media-sound/rhythmbox)

GTK2 Media player app

mpg321 (media-sound/mpg321)

Simple command line mp3 player

cplay (media-sound/cplay)

A curses based front end to many popular console media players, written in Python

moc (media-sound/moc)

Music On Console - ncurses interface for playing audio files

mpd (media-sound/mpd)

Music player which runs as a daemon. Various clients available - eg: mpc and ncmpc

Xfmedia (xfce-extra/xfmedia)

A lightweight media player, based on the xine engine.

Quod Libet (media-sound/quodlibet)

Lightweight GTK2 music player and organizer, with many plugins available.

exaile (media-sound/exaile)

GTK-based music player. Is posotioned as Amarok for GTK based DE. Music collection manager and plugins available.

timidity++ (media-sound/timidity++)

Midi and Karaoke midi player. Converts midi to wav too.

audacity (media-sound/audacity)

Audacity Plays and records wav, mp3, ogg-vorbis files.

[edit] Video

KPlayer (media-video/kplayer)

KDE multimedia player and library. Uses MPlayer as the media playing backend. Very stable and has excellent user interface.

Codeine (media-video/codeine)

Very simple and userfriendly Qt-based multimedia player using Xine as a backend, but also very configurable like all KDE apps.

Kaffeine (media-video/kaffeine)

(KDE-based feature-rich video player using Xine as a backend).

Xine (media-video/xine-ui)

Video/DivX/Avi/Mpeg playback - You may want to choose a player providing a frontend to Xine (e.g. Kaffeine in KDE, Totem-xine in Gnome).

MPlayer (media-video/mplayer)

Video/DivX/Avi/Mpeg playback - You may want to choose a player providing a frontend to mplayer (e.g. KPlayer in KDE, gmplayer in Gnome, smplayer for KDE/QT 4).

SMPlayer (media-video/smplayer)

Great front-end for mplayer written in Qt4.

VLC (media-video/vlc)

VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...). Built-in video decoding saves you from installing extra codecs.

[edit] Media codecs

[edit] Audio Codecs

a52dec (media-libs/a52dec)

needed for DVD sound playback

libogg (media-libs/libogg)

ogg files

win32codecs (media-libs/win32codecs)

MS encoded files; only usable with 32bit players (amd64 can use mplayer-bin. there is now an AMD64 version. Warning: It is illegal to install these codecs in the United States (of course no one is going to be installing these there...).

faad2 (media-libs/faad2)

read/convert M4A

flac (media-libs/flac)

lossless audio compression codec

[edit] Video Codecs

libdvdcss (media-libs/libdvdcss) and libdvdread (media-libs/libdvdread)

Needed for DVD playback

libvorbis (media-libs/libvorbis)

ogm files

xvid (media-libs/xvid)

divx and avi

[edit] DVD Movies

KPlayer (media-video/kplayer)

automatically detects dvd devices and disks, lists titles, can play both video and data dvds

VLC (media-video/vlc)

supports dvd menus

xine (media-video/xine-lib)

supports dvd menus

xine-ui (media-video/xine-ui)

xine X front end. Very rich in features. Best front end

gxine (media-video/gxine)

xine front end for Gnome

totem (media-video/totem)

supports dvd menus when compiled with xine USE flag

ogle (media-video/ogle)

dedicated dvd player with menu support, somewhat buggy

MPlayer (media-video/mplayer)

plays dvd's without menu support

SMPlayer (media-video/smplayer)

Great front-end for mplayer written in Qt4.

gstreamer (media-libs/gstreamer)

support in the works.

kaffeine (media-video/kaffeine)

xine front end for KDE. very nice interface

KMPlayer (media-video/kmplayer)

MPlayer front end for KDE

[edit] Burning CDs and DVDs

X-CD-Roast (xcdroast) (app-cdr/xcdroast)

Old-school menu based front-end for CD and DVD writing.

brasero (app-cdr/brasero)

Gnome CD/DVD burning application.

K3b (app-cdr/k3b)

KDE based CD/DVD burning application.

graveman (app-cdr/graveman)

GTK2 CD/DVD burning application.

mkisofs (mkisofs) + cdrecord

Console tools for images and burning cds.

dvd+rw-tools (app-cdr/dvd+rw-tools)

Console tools for dvds; not limited to +RW media.

bashburn (app-cdr/bashburn)

Console tool for burning cds, handles lots of conversions.

cdw (app-cdr/cdw)

Curses based console cd burner, not as flexible as bashburn, but still good.

gnomebaker (app-cdr/gnomebaker)

GTK2 CD/DVD burning application.

Nero (app-cdr/nero)

Nero Burning ROM for Linux.

Xfburn (Xfburn)

Xfce CD burning application.

[edit] CD-ripping and sound encoding

Console based.
Console based, questionable interface to linux architecture
Console based.
KDE itself with either kdemultimedia or kdemultimedia-kioslaves, both with "encode" USE Flag. Ripping to FLAC, MP3 (with libmad) and OGG
Console based curses interface.
Cross-platform cd interface library, updated paranoia

[edit] Printing support, easy adding printers, both local and networked

CUPS[2] is a popular solution to printing in GNU/Linux. Gentoo.org has an article on printing. Though there are some other choices here, CUPS is probably what you want.

[needs more work]

[edit] Easy sharing of files and printers

[needs more work]

[edit] Internet applications

[edit] Web Browsing

Mozilla Suite (www-client/seamonkey)

Mozilla Firefox (www-client/mozilla-firefox) and Mozilla Firefox (binary) (www-client/mozilla-firefox-bin)

Gecko-based browser for GTK.

Opera (www-client/opera)

A proprietary and standards-compliant graphical web browser for Qt.

Kazehakase (www-client/kazehakase)

A browser with Gecko engine like Epiphany or Galeon.

Epiphany (www-client/epiphany) and Epiphany extensions (www-client/epiphany-extensions)

GNOME web browser based on the Mozilla rendering engine (Gecko).

Galeon (www-client/galeon)

A GNOME Web browser based on Gecko (Mozilla's rendering engine).

Konqueror (kde-base/konqueror)

Qt browser using the rendering engine KHTML (same as what Safari derived from)

Arora (www-client/arora)

Qt4 WebKit browser

[edit] E-mail

Claws-Mail (mail-client/claws-mail)

Lightweight Mail-Client for GTK.

KMail (kde-base/kmail)

KMail is the e-mail component of Kontact, the integrated personal information manager of KDE.

Mozilla Thunderbird (mail-client/mozilla-thunderbird) and Mozilla Thunderbird (mail-client/mozilla-thunderbird-bin)

E-mail client for GTK.

evolution (mail-client/evolution)

Integrated mail, address book and calendaring functionality for GTK.

Sylpheed (mail-client/sylpheed)

A lightweight e-mail client and newsreader.

mutt (mail-client/mutt)

A small but powerful text-based mail client.

pine (mail-client/pine)

A text-based application for reading, sending and managing e-mails.

[edit] News Readers

Mozilla Suite (www-client/seamonkey)

Mozilla Suite.

Mozilla-Thunderbird (mail-client/mozilla-thunderbird)

News/Mail/RSS reader.

pan (net-nntp/pan)

GTK2 newsreader.

KLibido (net-nntp/klibido)

Great for binaries.

sylpheed (mail-client/sylpheed)

E-mail and newsreader

slrn (net-nntp/slrn)

Powerful ncurses based console Client

[edit] RSS Agregators

Mozilla-Thunderbird (mail-client/mozilla-thunderbird)

News/Mail/RSS reader.

erss (erss)

Depends on many Enlightenment packages.

liferea (net-news/liferea)

GTK2-based RSS reader.

akregator (kde-base/akregator)

RSS reader for KDE.

yarssr (net-news/yarssr) newsbeuter (net-news/newsbeuter)

Feed reader for the console.

[edit] FTP

krusader (Krusader)

Powerful KDE based Total Commander like file manager; also great as FTP client.

kasablanca (kasablanca)

KDE based ftp client.

kftpgrabber (kftpgrabber)

KDE based ftp client.

gFTP (gFTP)

GUI based FTP client.

ftp (ftp)

Command Line FTP client.

lftp (lftp)

Shell emulation, command completion, processing queues, batch control, SSL/TLS support and many more.

ncftp (ncftp)

yafc (yafc)

Console based.

Konqueror (kde-base/konqueror)

FileZilla (filezilla)

GUI (GTK) based FTP client.

[edit] IRC

Konversation (Konversation)

Great, easy KDE based IRC client.

KVIrc (KVIrc)

A more powerful KDE based IRC client.

Chatzilla (Chatzilla)

Included on Mozilla Suite.

bitchx (bitchx)

Graphical with USE="gtk".

ircii (ircii)

Console-based.

irssi (irssi)

Console-based. Many plugins are oriented around using screen, and through screen, this client can be used to access the same IRC session from multiple computers on your network.

xchat (xchat)

Graphical IRC Client with Perl,Python,TCL Scripting Support, comparable to mirc.

weechat (weechat)

Console-based, but has many optional graphical frontends.

[edit] BitTorrent

Azureus (net-p2p/azureus)

Java-based BitTorrent client with the most important BT features.

bittorrent (net-p2p/bittorrent)

Standard bittorrent client

Bittornado (net-p2p/bittornado)

Text or Python download dialog.

btg (net-p2p/btg)

Client/server oriented bittorrent client, written in C/C++ using rb_libtorrent. You can use it with a command line interface, a graphic user interface and/or a web interface.

cTorrent (net-p2p/ctorrent)

Linux console torrent client, written in C/C++. Small and effective.

deluge (net-p2p/deluge)

Lightweight and new BitTorrent

hrktorrent (net-p2p/hrktorrent)

Fast, simple and light commandline bittorrent client, written in C++, using rb_libtorrent. Features DHT and IP Filter.

KTorrent (net-p2p/Ktorrent)

KDE based BitTorrent client.

lince (net-p2p/lince)

gtkmm based bittorrent client - lightweight and fast

qbittorrent (net-p2p/qbittorrent)

BitTorrent client in C++ and Qt4.

rtorrent (net-p2p/rtorrent)

Fast and resource-friendly console client.

aria2 (net-misc/aria2)

Fast and resource-friendly console client (also supports MetaLink, HTTP(S), FTP, etc.).

Transmission (net-p2p/transmission)

A versatile and multi-platform BitTorrent client, focusing on being lightweight, yet feature-filled.

uTorrent

Win32 client emulated through wine (app-emulation/wine), almost all the features of Azureus and uses fewer resources.

[edit] Instant messengers

Pidgin (Formerly Gaim) (pidgin)

Instant messenger for AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, ICQ, IRC, JABBER, and others. Frontends: GUI (pidgin) and console (finch)

Gajim (gajim)

GTK+-based Jabber Client. XMPP-focused client, similar to Pidgin (Gaim) but with UI improvements. Supports Jabber (XMPP/GTalk), MSN, Yahoo and ICQ via Jabber transports.

SIM (sim)

Instant messenger for AIM, ICQ, JABBER, LiveJournal, SMS, Yahoo.

Psi (psi)

Qt Jabber client with support for multiple accounts.

licq (licq)

Text-based ICQ- and MSN Client with Qt-GUI.

aMSN (aMSN)

Instant messaging client supporting MSN (including video).

Mercury (mercury-bin)

MSN and Jabber client written in Java.

climm (climm)

Console-based messenger for ICQ, probably the best. Previously known as micq.

centericq (centericq)

Console-based messenger for ICQ, Y!, AIM, IRC, MSN, Gadu-Gadu and Jabber. (No longer maintained?)

Kadu (Kadu)

Qt Gadu-Gadu client.

Kopete (Kopete)

KDE instant messenger. See Kopete homepage.

BitlBee (net-im/bitlbee)

IRC to IM gateway. Connect to AIM, ICQ, Jabber, MSN, and Yahoo! with your IRC client. See BitlBee.

irssi (net-irc/irssi)

A modular text-based IRC client with IPv6 support.

BitchX (net-irc/bitchx)

Text-based IRC client. See BitchX homepage.

BitchX (net-irc/bitchx)

Graphical IRC client for GTK. See XChat homepage.

KVirc (net-irc/kvirc)

KVirc is graphical IRC client for Qt with a highly configurable interface and many advanced features. See KVirc homepage.

[edit] Other

nscd (nscd), or Name Service Cache Daemon. Should give faster webs since it doesn't have to do a DNS lookup for visited URLs. (from http://packages.debian.org: "You should install this package only if you use slow Services like LDAP, NIS or NIS+".

charm (charm), a simple yet powerful text-mode LiveJournal weblog client.

[edit] Games

See Games.

[edit] Text Editors

Kate (app-editors/kate)

MDI texteditor for Qt.

GNU Emacs (app-editors/emacs)

Extensible, customizable, self-documenting real-time display editor for console and GTK.

gVim (app-editors/gvim)

Graphical user interface for the all-famous Vim (Vi-improved)

gEdit (app-editors/gedit)

GNOME's default text editor.

leafpad (app-editors/leafpad)

A lightweight GTK based editor, loads much faster than gEdit, XFCE users try its derivative mousepad.

mousepad (xfce-extra/mousepad)

Xfce4 text editor

SciTE (app-editors/scite)

All basic features, piping tidy indent, easy configuration of all features.

Kate (kde-base/kate)

KDE Advanced Text Editor

jEdit (app-editors/jedit)

Programmer's editor written in Java

kile (app-editors/kile)

LaTeX IDE, works under KDE

emacs, joe, nano, pico, vi/vim

Console based text editors. Easiest to use of these are nano (installed by default on Stage 3) and pico while vim and emacs are more powerful once mastered.

hteditor (app-editors/hteditor)

binary/text editor. disassembles but does not work well in X

ghex (app-editors/ghex)

GNOME hexadecimal editor

nedit (app-editors/nedit)

Highly configurable editor, supports mouse text manipulation modes, easily recordable macro language.

[edit] Server software

[edit] File Server

samba (net-fs/samba) - Windows compatible file and printer sharing

proftpd (net-ftp/proftpd) - high configurable FTP server

pure-ftpd (net-ftp/pure-ftpd) - Secure FTP server with many features(including MySQL backend)... supports FXP

vsftpd (net-ftp/vsftpd) - Secure and extremely fast

nfs (net-fs/nfs-utils) - Legendary network files sharing utility. NFS/Share Directories

[edit] Mail Server

cyrus-imapd (net-mail/cyrus-imapd) - very popular IMAP server

dovecot (net-mail/dovecot) - very popular IMAP server

postfix (mail-mta/postfix) - very popular MTA (mail transfer agent)

[edit] Web Server

apache (www-servers/apache) - most common web server with tons of addons

fnord (www-servers/fnord) - fast tiny web server with IPv6 and cgi support (patches for PHP are also available AFAIK).

Lighttpd (www-servers/lighttpd) - Security, speed, compliance, and flexibility (FastCGI, CGI, Auth, Output-Compression, URL-Rewriting and many more).

[edit] 64bit System Compatibility with 32 Bit Applications

  • For AMD64 systems. Even though in the new 2005.0 profile (and on) gcc/glibc are already set to be 32-bit compatible, you still need 32-bit emulation libraries. There are several such libraries in app-emulation/emul-linux-x86-*:
baselibs, compat, java, gtklibs, medialibs, qtlibs, sdl, soundlibs, xlibs.
  • What are they for:
emul-linux-x86-compat, emul-linux-x86-baselibs - for general setup
emul-linux-x86-xlibs - if you need to use 32-bit binary programs under X (like OpenOffice).
emul-linux-x86-gtklibs - for 32-bit applications that use GTK
emul-linux-x86-qtlibs - for 32-bit applications that use Qt
emul-linux-x86-medialibs
emul-linux-x86-java - 32 bit Sun's J2SE Development Kit
emul-linux-x86-soundlibs - for 32-bit applications that use sound
emul-linux-x86-sdl - for 32-bit applications that use libsdl (Simple Direct Media Layer).
  • You'll probably need only the higher-level compatibility libraries, others will be pulled in as dependencies. If you need to be just compatible, you can emerge all of the above.
  • emul-linux-x86-nvidia disappeared when nvidia-driver was converted to multilib
  • See also HOWTO AMD64

[edit] System and Drivers

[edit] Autodetection of devices (where possible)

  • udev
  • hotplug/coldplug (deprecated by newer udev versions - roughly 090).

[edit] Support for 3D graphics cards

[needs more work]

[edit] Nvidia

nvidia-drivers (nvidia-drivers)

nvidia-legacy-drivers (nvidia-legacy-drivers)(nvidia drivers for older (TNT(2)/GeForce) cards.

nvidia-settings (nvidia-settings)

Official nvidia utility to monitor (and overclock with "option 'coolbits' 'true'" set in xorg.conf) nvidia cards.

nvclock (media-video/nvclock)

Utility to overclock nvidia cards on linux.

[edit] ATI

ati-drivers (ati-drivers) 8.14.13-r2 works at kernel <=2.6.12

ati-drivers-extra (ati-drivers-extra)

Try: 

rmmod radeon drm
modprobe agpgart

and/or modprobe sis-agp or intel-agp.... 

emerge -va ati-drivers ati-drivers-extra
opengl-update ati
/opt/ati/bin/fglrxconfig

[edit] VIA Unichrome

  • dri module already in kernel <= 2.6.13-r3
  • needs compiled source of xorg-x11, can be achieved by executing 
FEATURES="noclean" emerge xorg-x11
  • the source code will stay in /var/tmp/portage/xorg-x11-<version>/work/
  • all steps are well described here - the Unichrome project

[edit] Power/Cooling and System Monitors

GNOME System Monitor (gnome-extra/gnome