I'm not aware of any GUI package managers. There's no Synaptic or appstore in
the default install. You use 'pkg_add' and 'pkg_delete' to add or remove
prebuilt binaries, and 'make install' from the ports tree to build from
source.
To control the sound hardware, you use 'mixerctl'. If you install a more
refined DE, such as Xfce, there's a GUI sound control included. This is not a
big deal. You only have to set the master in everyday tasks, the actual level
is fine tuned in each individual program that plays sound graphically. For
instance, SMplayer has a slider that works the same as any sound applet.
You should compare BSDs to Arch Linux or Gentoo. There's minimal handholding
but the documentation is excellent. You can perform any task through the
command line. That's why there's a terminal window auto-started every time
you open a graphical session.
