Application Management
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| pkg | Software Station | Update Station | Ports | Applications | ||
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Contents
Introduction
Most people do not actually use an operating system. They use applications. GhostBSD is designed to provide a desktop and full-featured environment for applications.
"GhostBSD is based on TrueOS with FreeBSD 12 STABLE"
"When FreeBSD 13 STABLE gets released, GhostBSD will be upgraded to TrueOS with FreeBSD 13 STABLE."ericbsd
Function
GhostBSD supports a wide variety of web browsers, office suites, email readers, graphics programs, programming environments, network servers, and just about everything else you might want.
Ways to get applications
There are different ways to get applications. A small part is preinstalled.
Ghost-/FreeBSD provides two complementary technologies for installing third-party software: the FreeBSD Ports Collection, for installing from source, and packages, for installing from prebuilt binaries. Either method may be used to install software from local media or from the network.
There are a lot of prebuilt packages. You can choose out of more than 30.000 packages.
Some people like to use the command line and others a graphical interface.
Preinstalled Applications
GhostBSD comes with a lot of preinstalled applications, for example:
- Libreoffice
- Firefox
- Thunderbird
- Caja
- Brasero
- Rhythmbox
- VLC Mediaplayer
- MATE Terminal
- Pluma
How to find Applications
On GhostBSD are different ways to find an application:
- If you know the name of an application, try Software Station first.
- The FreeBSD-Handbook, Chapter 4.3, is a very good starting point.
- In the future there will be also an overview on the GhostBSD wiki page: Applications.
Manage prebuilt Packages
Using the command line
If you know the package name, open a terminal, change with su and password to user root and use pkg.
pkg is already installed on GhostBSD.
There is no package pkgng in the GhostBSD repository.
Also there is no such file like /etc/make.conf to ensure, that the new version of pkg has to be used. Therefore the page Using pkgng Package Management is partially obsolete.
Using GUI
- An easy way to get applications, use Software Station. This tool is a graphical front-end for the pkg package manager. It is already installed on GhostBSD.
- In the same way you can get updates, use Update Station. It is also already installed.
- OctoPkg an older version of a graphical front-end for the pkg package manager. It is also in the GhostBSD repository, but is no longer standard.
Using Ports
Most of these applications can be built using the GhostBSD/FreeBSD Ports Collection.
Using other Ways
The typical steps for installing third-party software on a UNIX® system include:
- Find and download the software, which might be distributed in source code format or as a binary.
- Unpack the software from its distribution format. This is typically a tarball compressed with a program such as compress(1), gzip(1), bzip2(1) or xz(1).
- Locate the documentation in INSTALL, README or some file in a doc/ subdirectory and read up on how to install the software.
- If the software was distributed in source format, compile it. This may involve editing a Makefile or running a configure script.
- Test and install the software.
A FreeBSD/GhostBSD ports are collections of files designed to automate the process of compiling an application from source code. The files that comprise a port contain all the necessary information to automatically download, extract, patch, compile, and install the application.
If the software has not already been adapted and tested on FreeBSD, the source code might need editing in order for it to install and run properly.
See source: FreeBSD Handbook and learn more.
