Chapter 6. Working with Applications


IN THIS CHAPTER

  • Running GUI and CLI Applications

  • Working with Text

  • Office Applications

  • Creating and Editing Images with GIMP

  • Audio Applications

  • Networking Applications

  • Working with Java Applications

No matter how robust and efficient an operating system might be, it's of little interest unless you can run useful applications on it. Fortunately, even on a free operating system like FreeBSD, you can get thousands of top-notch applications that cost you no more money than what you paid for FreeBSD itself (that is, nothing). This is the case whether you're using the computer as a desktop workstation or a rack-mounted serverthe applications available for either purpose are in many cases well-developed, full-featured equivalents of any of the best software packages you'll find in the commercial software world, and they showcase the best strengths of the open-source computing community in their robustness, security, and easy availability for no charge.

This chapter discusses how to use the applications you'll be working with most often for common desktop computing tasks such as text editing, word processing, graphics manipulation, email, and web browsing. These applications are generally not installed as part of FreeBSD itself, but most of the applications that are integrated with the KDE or GNOME desktop environments are installed along with them (see Chapter 5, "Working with the X Window System"). Where applicable, text-based equivalents of the graphical applications used under KDE or GNOME will be discussed; you'll need to know how to edit text or read email even on a system that doesn't have X11 installed.

FreeBSD provides a mature and polished mechanism for installing third-party software (for more information on installing applications, see Chapter 16, "Installing Additional Software"). Some top-end software packages, such as the OpenOffice.org suite, are every bit as polished and full-featured as their commercial counterparts, and come with their own installation procedures, help systems, and technical support avenues. Beyond that, however, you'll run into one of the downsides of open-source software: because each package is written by someone different and none of it (with some notable exceptions) comes from a software company with a vested interest in customer service, it's often lacking in accurate or useful documentation, and technical support is all but nonexistent (unless you consider asking questions on web-based user forums to be "technical support"). Running desktop applications under FreeBSD can be very rewarding and give you far more bang for your buck than an expensive suite of commercial applications, but you'll need to be prepared to put up with the inevitable shortcomings of open-source applications that are never quite "complete" the way that commercial software is.

Note

In addition to the thousands of native FreeBSD applications, FreeBSD can also run most Linux applications through its Linux compatibility module. This gives you a very wide variety of applications to choose from for virtually any purpose, including commercial software developed and released in binary form for Linux. If you find you need to run a Linux application and you didn't enable Linux compatibility during the installation of the system, simply add the following line to /etc/rc.conf and then reboot the system:

linux_enable="YES"



Of course, this chapter cannot even begin to cover the entire range of applications available for FreeBSD, but it does give a good sampling of some of the more popular applications within a range of categories. Feel free to explore additional software packages not discussed in this chapterlook around in the ports collection (/usr/ports) and refer to Chapter 16 for more information about installing anything that looks interesting. It doesn't cost anything, so you've got nothing to lose!

Note

This chapter covers applications for workstation use. It does not cover server applications such as web servers, FTP servers, and email servers. If you are looking for information on setting up services such as these, you should read the appropriate chapters in Part V of the book, "FreeBSD Networking," that cover the services you are interested in configuring.





FreeBSD 6 Unleashed
FreeBSD 6 Unleashed
ISBN: 0672328755
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 355
Authors: Brian Tiemann

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