GUI apps with debootstrap

Hi all,

Sorry if the next question is a dumb one but, along the years, my different jobs attached me to Windows systems (no alternatives to the technical software that I use) and I am quite new in BSD or Linux world.
I use Artix as my daily driver (cannot use FreeBSD because some hardware incompatibilities), but the laptop is dying (broken wifi/usb card and USB ports failing every few minutes) and I would like to install FreeBDS in an old laptop. The problem is that I have some important constraints.

The main one is that I need a GUI digital signature client to sing official documents, and that client is only available in .deb and .rpm packages (beside Windows and Mac versions).
I shaw in FreeBSD Handbook that I can use a Debian Base System with debootstrap but, as the client requieres a desktop and interacts with the browsers (the browser calls the signature client), I don't know if installing a desktop environment like Xfce/Plasma in FreeBSD, and Debian through debootstrap, it's enough to install and run Debian GUI applications seamlessly. ¿It is possible?
Not sure if the “foreign” application can be called from the FreeBSD desktop and how it will interact with the window manager or desktop environment.

I can just try, but I’m sure there are a lot of issues/concepts/basics that I’m not taking into account, and I prefer to ask in advance.

Thanks for any comments or guidance.
 
There is no problem calling Linux binaries from FreeBSD browsers, the tricky bit is to tell the browser to open the special URLs with a helper program.

I would install a complete Debian with browser and the signing app and then use that complete Debian as /compat/linux on FreeBSD. That means using the Linux version of the browser. Only issue that you maybe have to sort out is things written to $HOME.
 
Great, I will try what you say and use Linux browser (it works well with the signing app in Debian and Artix).

Thank you very much for the response!
 
Thanks! it's other interesting option. As I am taking my first steps with FreeBSD (and even Linux) I am not sure what will be better or less complicate for me, but it's great to have different options in the same system.
 
It works fine with Debian and Artix (the package is in Arch AUR), so never tried with Wine. I prefer to avoid Windows version, but it can be a good fallback if it works with Wine.

Also they have publised the source code of the last version in Github, but compile software from source code is beyond my skills at this moment.
 
Also they have publised the source code of the last version in Github
That's good to hear. Maybe we can avoid some of the fiddling required to run non-native versions. If you can provide a link to the github, we can have a quick flick through to see how portable it is.
In theory a signing program should be quite cross platform in terms of dependencies and platform specific code (especially if they already have a Linux port).

Perhaps we can write you a script to help compile it?
 
I really don't know, they are trying to do it cross-platform using Java, but I'm not fully aware of the diferences between Java Platform and Java apps.

As I said I'm quite new in this world (Windows does not help to learn any basis of anything) and just now I'm still struggling with FreeBSD installation and tuning, sorry.
 
Hmm, it indeed looks like Java. So I extracted the Windows setup.exe and it looks like it bundles a jre along with a Java package.

However, it does have some binaries for windows, osx and linux within the jar archive. So potentially it has some platform specific code embedded in there that would need to be built for FreeBSD and packaged.

Will have a fiddle and see if it is feasible to get running! Unless any resident Java experts can chip in? ;)
 
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