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Applications - Free and/or Open Source Software

Free/Libre and/or Open Source Software

Section titled “Free/Libre and/or Open Source Software”

Source: Fight for your freedom in computing. Don’t let proprietary programs control you plus my additions

  • 7zip - file archiver, a utility used to place groups of files within compressed containers known as “archives”
  • Aegis - free, secure and open source app for Android to manage your 2-step verification tokens
  • Ansible - software tools that enables infrastructure as code
  • Ardour - digital audio workstation
  • Audacity - digital audio editor and recording application software
  • Bash - Unix shell and command language written by Brian Fox for the GNU Project as a free software replacement for the Bourne shell
  • Bitwarden - password management service
  • Blender - Blender 3D computer graphics software tool set
  • BusyBox - a software suite that provides several Unix utilities in a single executable file
  • Calibre - cross-platform suite of e-book software
  • ctags, etags - Generate tag files for source code
  • Ceph - software-defined storage platform that implements object storage
  • Clonezilla - drive cloning, drive imaging and system deployment utilities used to simplify deployment and maintenance of a group of computers
  • Cockpit - web based interface for servers, intended for everyone like Linux admins and new users
  • Data Display Debugger DDD - graphical front end for GDB and CUDA-GDB
  • DB Browser for SQLite - SQLite management, editing browser
  • Drupal - web content management system (CMS) written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License
  • Espanso - Privacy-first, cross-platform text expander
  • Fairmail - privacy oriented email app for Android
  • F-Droid - app store and software repository for Android, serving a similar function to the Google Play store
  • Firefox - web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation, see also Firefox Shortcuts - Firefox Shortcuts
  • Flatpak - formerly known as xdg-app is a utility for software deployment and package management for Linux. It is advertised as offering a sandbox environment in which users can run application software in isolation
  • FreeTube - private YouTube viewer
  • GCC - GNU Compiler Collection is an optimizing compiler produced by the GNU Project supporting various programming languages, hardware architectures and operating systems
  • GDB - GNU Project Debugger for various languages
  • gImageReader - Optical Character Recognition (OCR), A Gtk/Qt front-end to tesseract-ocr
  • Gimp - GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free and open-source raster graphics editor[5] used for image manipulation (retouching) and image editing, free-form drawing, transcoding between different image file formats
  • Git - Git Version Control System - distributed version control
  • Gnome - GNU Network Object Model Environment desktop environment for Linux/Unix like
  • GNU Boxes - virtualization
  • GNU - “GNU is Not Unix” core software to GNU/Linux systems
  • GNU/Linux - operating system
  • GRASS GIS - Geographical Information System software used for geospatial data management and analysis, image processing, graphics/map production, spatial modelling, and visualization
  • Grub - GNU project’s bootloader software
  • Handbrake - video converter, transcoder for digital video files
  • headlamp - Kubernetes web UI for local or in cluster use
  • htop - interactive system-monitor process-viewer and process-manager
  • Infinity
  • Jellyfin - suite of multimedia applications designed to organize, manage, and share digital media files to networked devices
  • Kamal - Application deployment anywhere from bare metal, VMs, to cloud, will work with any type of web app that can be containerized
  • KDE Connect - facilitates wireless communications and data transfer between devices over local network
  • KDE Desktop environment for Linux/Unix like
  • Kdenlive - Video Editor, Can also do music editing and output.
  • kondo - Cleans dependencies and build artifacts from your projects
  • Krita - raster graphics editor designed primarily for digital painting and 2D animation
  • KVM - virtualization module in the Linux kernel that allows the kernel to function as a hypervisor
  • Lazarus - Delphi compatible cross-platform IDE for Rapid Application Development, uses Free Pascal
  • LibreOffice - office Prod software suite
  • MariaDB - community-developed, commercially supported fork of the MySQL relational database management system (RDBMS), intended to remain free and open-source software under the GNU General Public License
  • Mastodon - running self-hosted social networking services. It has microblogging features similar to the Twitter service
  • MicroG - Implementation of proprietary Google libraries that serves as a replacement for Google Play Services on the Android operating system
  • mpv - media player software based on MPlayer, mplayer2 and FFmpeg
  • Nextcloud - suite of client-server software for creating and using file hosting services
  • Notepad++ - text editor
  • OBS - cross-platform screencasting and streaming app
  • Onlyoffice - office suite
  • Openshot - video editor
  • Open Street Map - geographical and map information
  • PeaZip - cross platform file manager and file archiver
  • PeerTube - decentralized, ActivityPub federated video platform powered by WebTorrent, that uses peer-to-peer technology to reduce load on individual servers when viewing videos
  • Pihole - Linux network-level advertisement and Internet tracker blocking application which acts as a DNS sinkhole and optionally a DHCP server, intended for use on a private network
  • Piped - YouTube viewer
  • Podman desktop - Manage Podman and other container engines from a single UI and tray
  • Podman TUI - Podman terminal user interface
  • Proton tools - Mail, VPN, Drive open source
  • Qemu - emulator (Quick EMUlator). It emulates the machine’s processor through dynamic binary translation and provides a set of different hardware and device models for the machine, enabling it to run a variety of guest operating systems
  • RStudio - IDE for R
  • Session - decentralized messaging platform
  • Shotcut - Non-linear video editor similar to Adobe Premiere Elements
  • Signal - cross-platform centralized encrypted instant messaging service developed by the non-profit Signal Foundation
  • Spyder - IDE for scientific programming in the Python language
  • systemd - provides an array of system components for Linux operating systems - aim is to unify service configuration and behavior across Linux distributions
  • Termux - terminal emulator for Android
  • Terraform - infrastructure as code build and maintenance (Mozzila Public License 2.0, weak copyleft)
  • Thurderbird - cross-platform email client, personal information manager, news client, RSS and chat client
  • Tor Browser
  • Transmission - BitTorrent client which features a variety of user interfaces on top of a cross-platform back-end
  • Ublock Origin - Browser ad and annoyance blocker
  • Vim - text editor
  • Virtual Manager
  • VLC - portable, cross-platform media player software and streaming media server
  • Wine - Wine Is Not an Emulator, now just “Wine” is a free and open-source compatibility layer that aims to allow application software and computer games developed for Microsoft Windows to run on Unix-like operating systems
  • Wireguard - communication protocol and free and open-source software that implements encrypted virtual private networks (VPNs), and was designed with the goals of ease of use, high speed performance, and low attack surface
  • WireShark - packet analyzer. It is used for network troubleshooting, analysis, software and communications protocol development, and education
  • WordPress - content management system (CMS) written in PHP and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database with supported HTTPS
  • zotero - manage bibliographic data and related research materials

Modern Terminal Commands and Programs

Section titled “Modern Terminal Commands and Programs”
  • ag - A code searching tool similar to ack, but faster.
  • alacritty - terminal emulator, URLs can open, search, VI bindings
  • asciinema - record and share terminal sessions
  • atuin - interactive shell history
  • bacon - re-runs cargo clippy, build, test, or run
  • bat - cat with colours, line numbers, git integration, paging
  • bob-nvim - nvim version manager
  • bottom - like htop with widgets, cross platform
  • broot - directory and file navigation with directory sizes, search
  • btop - like top, system monitoring
  • cargo-info - shows info about cratesS
  • crush - coding CLI with artificial intelligence (AI) models
  • cheat - cheat sheets
  • choose - human-friendly and fast alternative to cut and (sometimes) awk
  • collima - container runtimes on macOS, Linux with minimal setup
  • coreutils - GNU coreutils in Rust, cross platform, can alias to run rust coreutils instead of OS ones like alias usort = “coreutils sort”
  • ctop - top like interface for container metrics
  • curlie - user friendly curl, good also for API tests
  • delta - syntax-highlighting pager for git, diff, grep, and blame output
  • Difftastic - structural diff tool that compares files based on their syntax.
  • dive - exploring container image layers
  • doggo - Command-line DNS Client, user friendly
  • dua - disk usage analyzer, parallel and can analyze specific directories
  • duf - df alternative
  • dust - file and folder size tree, du (disk usage) with colours like subdirectories, intuitive interface
  • evcxrjupyter - rust kernel for jupyter, requires Jupyter framework to be installed
  • eza - ls with colours, icons
  • fd - find with shorter syntax, some limitations compared to find, colours
  • findutils (uutils) - Rust implementation of GNU find, locate, xargs run commands on files
  • fish shell - command line shell
  • fselect - Find files with SQL-like queries
  • fzf - fuzzy finder
  • gdbgui - Browser based front end for GNU Debugger (GDB)
  • gitui - terminal client for git, good for small git operations
  • gum - tool to create nice glamorous (nice looking) shell scripts
  • Helix - modal editor like vim with modern defaults and more built in features
  • httpie - user friend HTTP client
  • hurl - for repeatable tests and plain text files for requests, API testing
  • hyperfine - command line benchmarking tool, check run times
  • irust - interactive rust REPL
  • jq - sed for JSON
  • Just - like make, command runner
  • k6 - loading testing tool for application and infrastructure
  • k9s - Kubernetes TUI, manage pods
  • kubectx and kubens - Switch between Kubernetes clusters and namespaces
  • Kubescape - Kubernetes security platform checking security in clusters, YAML, and Helm and using different security frameworks
  • lazydocker - manage docker, TUI
  • lnav - log file navigator, log directory manager, analysis
  • lsd - ls with more accessible output, colours, icons
  • macchina: A system information frontend
  • mask - like make and just, tasks are defined in a markdown file
  • mcfly - better history search
  • monolith: CLI tool for saving complete web pages as a single HTML file
  • mosh - remote terminal allowing roaming, intermittent connectivity, like SSH
  • mprocs - running multiple process, like tmux, but useful for long running non-interactive single processes to give them status
  • navi - interactive cheatsheets
  • ncspot - spotify client terminal UI
  • nu - shell with pipelines and everything is data, has plugins
  • Ouch: Painless compression and decompression for your terminal with autodetection of file types
  • pgcli - postgresql interface
  • podman - tool for managing OCI containers and pods
  • porsmo - pomodoro timer
  • posting - API TUI, good for API tests
  • presenterm - markdown terminal slideshow tool
  • procs - ps with colours and more accessible output, search
  • ripgrep-all - ripgrep but also search in compressed files, PDF, ebooks, office docs
  • ripgrep - faster grep, grep with default recursive search, filters
  • rtx-cli - version manager of programming languages like python, node, ruby, like program asdf
  • sccache - cache for compiler tools, support for Rust code, see usage for set up
  • sd - Intuitive find & replace CLI (sed alternative)
  • skim - command fuzzy finder
  • speedtest-rs - network speedtesters
  • starship prompt - cross platform/shell configurable prompt
  • stern - multi pod and container log tailing for Kubernetes
  • tig - git log viewer
  • tldr (tealdeer) - shortened man pages with examples
  • tokei - code statistics, lines of codes summary by language
  • topgrade Upgrade all the things by detecting the tools you use and running the appropriate commands to update them.
  • typst - markup-based typesetting system with programming logic, like a modern LaTex, Word, Google docs, good for academic and technical documentation, example use cases: math papers, resume, documents, diagrams, presentations
  • usql - Universal command-line interface for SQL databases
  • wiki-tui - wikipedia terminal ui
  • wormhole - private file transfer from computer to computer
  • wttr.in - using curl to query weather like curl wttr.in/toronto
  • xh - send HTTP requests, like HTTPie
  • Yazi - terminal file manager with previews
  • yt-dlp - audio/video downloader
  • zellij - terminal multiplexer like tmux and screen, no Windows implementation as of 2023-06-14
  • zoxide - smart cd to jump to frequently used directories

nix package manager on Linux, MacOS and scoop on Windows covers most of these programs

Support Summary as of 2025-02-13

Section titled “Support Summary as of 2025-02-13”

Key commands I use regularly and packaging support:

ProgramArchDebianFedoraFreeBSDUbuntuVoidMSYS2scoop
atuinxxxx
batxxxxxxxx
brootxxxxx
carapacex (AUR)xxxxx
fdxxxxxxxx
fzfxxxxxxxx
helixxxxxxx
lazygitxxxxx
mprocsx (AUR)xx
nushellxxxxx
ripgrepxxxxxxxx
starshipxxxxxxxx
topgradexxxx
vcstool (pipx)xxxxxxxx
yazixxxxx
zoxidexxxxxxxx

Installation

Section titled “Installation”

Most packages above can be installed using cargo with cargo install <command>

Installation - The Cargo Book

Mobile Android

Section titled “Mobile Android”

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/freesoftware/comments/15cp6ff/all_my_open_source_app_alternatives/ and see also GitHub - offa/android-foss: A list of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) for Android

App → Alternative

See Also

Section titled “See Also”