# How to "search" for software?



## AJ-BSD (Oct 1, 2012)

Hello guys,
New to FreeBSD.

Quick question:
I installed the latest FreeBSD (9.0), and also installed gnome desktop.
All good.

Yet when I google to find software, say I want to install an irc client.

Would I google "freebsd irc" or would it go better "freebsd irc for gnome"?

I guess I'm not sure if with FreeBSD would give the best answers, or adding that I have gnome installed would be better.

Or if the irc client for gnome also work for the KDE desktop?

Google Chrome I've been unable to install... yet FireFox went well with the "make clean install" command.
((btw, cool thing that make clean install!))

I also successfully installed emacs... and I know emacs has an irc option/addon... yet that's flying over my head at the moment.

Thanks!


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## vadimkolchev (Oct 1, 2012)

You may like to be aware of the project freshports.org . There you can browse lists of available ports by categories - this might help. Also if you know what you are searching for you may explore /usr/ports on your system. 
As for your second question - if you use gnome, you'd better stick to gtk apps. KDE apps will work in gnome no problem, but when installing they will fetch a great bunch of dependancies (qt, for example). So if you want to mix - no problem, it will work, but why should you? If you search for a good irc client (gtk-based) I will advise xchat.


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## vadimkolchev (Oct 1, 2012)

Sorry for double-posting. You should issue *make install clean* and not *make clean install*. And my advice for you is to install and use ports-mgmt/portmaster. The main reason is that you will be able to configure all ports before compilation process starts and that it will give in the end all messages related to ports you install, if any.


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## graudeejs (Oct 1, 2012)

ports-mgmt/psearch


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## UNIXgod (Oct 1, 2012)

irssi for the console is nice. works well with screen or tmux.


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## Majorix (Oct 1, 2012)

FreshPorts is a complete, searchable list of ALL the ports for FreeBSD.


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## AlexJ (Oct 2, 2012)

+1 for FreshPorts
but when you have to work with a server that doesn't have any GUI, it isn't fun to search FreshPorts over /usr/ports/www/elinks

There is more solutions that doesn't require install anything and works from console/SSH-session

1. Simplest, but you need to know exactly what are you looking for(exact name)

```
whereis PortName
```

2. If you need to find a port but dont know exactly which one

```
cd /usr/ports && make search name='port'
cd /usr/ports && make search key='string'
```


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## AJ-BSD (Oct 2, 2012)

Thanks for all the replies everyone!
I'm jotting a lot of these down on my notebook.

I really like FreeBSD... so far, awesome-tastic!

I am making a new VM, with the amd64 image.
Initially, the one I downloaded was the i386.
So lets see how this goes.

Thank you everyone! =)


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## UNIXgod (Oct 2, 2012)

If your port is uniq I like this trick:

`% cd /usr/ports/*/irssi`

=)

EDIT: The above actually doesn't work but this one does:

`% cd /usr/ports/*/xscreensaver`


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