August 2025 updates to the largest compilation of recommended free and open source software available for Linux.
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16 Best Free and Open Source Linux Chess Apps
Linux chess software generally is separated into a “front end” application and a “chess engine”. There are a wide range of chess-playing software for Linux which can defeat most master players under tournament conditions.
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FUSS – Debian-based Linux distribution
FUSS is an open source operating system based on the Debian Linux distribution.
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File Browser – web file browser
File Browser provides a file managing interface within a specified directory. Upload, delete, preview and edit your files.
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Super-linter – collection of linters and code analyzers
Super-linter is a ready-to-run collection of linters and code analyzers, to help validate and fix your source code.
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Hoodik – cloud storage solution
Hoodik is a lightweight, secure, and self-hosted cloud storage solution.
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Quadrapassel – falling-block game
Quadrapassel is a derivative of a classic falling-block game.
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15 Best Free and Open Source Linux Ham Radio Tools
Ham radio is a popular hobby and service bringing people, electronics and communication together. We pick our favorite ham radio tools.
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MegaLinter – analyzes the consistency of your code
MegaLinter is a tool for CI/CD workflows that analyzes the consistency of your code, IAC, configuration, and scripts
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14 Best Free and Open Source Linux Video Converters
The best video converters make the process simple, and support a wide number of different codecs and formats.
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lyrus – cmus lyric player
lyrus is a fully fledged cmus, mpd lyric player automatic lyrics fetcher.
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Fedinspect – analyse Fediverse servers
Fedinspect is a GNOME application to enable developers to inspect and analyse fediverse server configurations.
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Diurnals – get daily Todoist notifications
Diurnals lets you receive a daily popup to notify about upcoming Todoist tasks. It’s simple and easy to configure.
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ownCloud – content collaboration, file-sharing, and file-syncing
ownCloud is a software system that offers file hosting services. It’s free and open source software widely used.
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7 Best Free and Open Source Zsh Configuration Frameworks
We highly recommend installing a framework with Zsh as it makes dealing with configuration, plugins and themes a lot more straightforward.
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Radxa OS – Debian-based Linux distribution
Radxa OS, or Radxa, is an open source operating system developed by the Radxa team based on the Debian Linux distribution.
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Alternatives to popular CLI tools: less
This article spotlights alternative tools to less. All of the tools are free and open source and sport a command-line interface.
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remarklint – check Markdown code style
remark is an ecosystem of plugins that work with markdown as structured data, specifically ASTs (abstract syntax trees).
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KLog – ham radio logger
KLog provides general purpose ham radio DX logging support.
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Benchmarking the Aiffro K100 All-SSD NAS
In this article I run a series of benchmarks on the Aiffro K100 NAS and compare it to other low cost computers.
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Color Palette – look up GNOME colors
Color Palette is a tool for viewing the GNOME color palette as defined by the design guidelines.
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Alternatives to popular CLI tools: more
This article spotlights alternative tools to more.
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harsh – habit tracking for geeks
harsh is habit tracking for geeks. A minimalist, command line tool for tracking, understanding, and forging habits.
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ASRock Industrial NUC BOX-255H Running Linux: Intel Core Ultra 7 Processor 255H
The NUC BOX-255H has the mobile/embedded class 15th generation Intel Core 7 255H processor, based on the Arrow Lake architecture.
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Radxa ROCK 5T Single Board Computer Running Linux: Power Consumption
For this article in the series, I’m looking at the power consumption of the Radxa ROCK 5T single-board computer.
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LinuxLinks – The Home of Linux
Our popular series on the best free and open source Linux software, hardware, programming, Android, and much more.
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Volla Phone Quintus running Ubuntu Touch: Introduction to the Series
This is a new series looking at the Volla Phone Quintus running Ubuntu Touch. This phone sports a powerful Mediatek Dimensity 7050 with 8 cores and 8GB of RAM.
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ASRock Industrial NUC BOX-255H Running Linux: OpenVINO AI Plugins for Audacity
The plugins provide AI-enabled effects, generators and analyzers. I can run them on the NUC Box-255H with no internet connection needed.
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Aiffro K100 All-SSD NAS running Linux: Introduction to the Series
The Aiffro K100 is an All-SSD NAS with an Intel N100 processor, 8GB of RAM, and 4 M.2 2280 NVMe slots. The machine retails for around £227.
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fooyin v0.9.1 is released – the best open source music player gets better
fooyin is a customisable music player that strongly resembles foobar2000. The new release adds some neat features and improvements.
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ASRock Industrial NUC BOX-255H Running Linux: Stable Diffusion
In the series I’m going to explore the GPU capabilities of the machine covering AI and gaming. Let’s start with deep learning.
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15 Best Free and Open Source Linux Serial Terminals
A serial terminal is software that allows communication with devices through a serial port, often used for debugging embedded systems.
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ASRock Industrial NUC BOX-255H Running Linux: Power Consumption
For this article in the series I’m looking at the power consumption of the ASRock Industrial NUC BOX-255H.
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Firefly AIBOX 3588S – Set up Flatpak to use external disk
In this article I explain how to install Flatpaks to my microSD card. This is useful given the small size of the eMMC.
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Benchmarking the ASRock Industrial NUC BOX-255H
In this article I’ll benchmark the machine. The tests are run using the Phoronix Test Suite, unless otherwise stated.
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Benchmarking the Radxa ROCK 5T Single Board Computer
In this article I run a series of benchmarks on the Radxa ROCK 5T single board computer and compare it to its peers.
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ASRock Industrial NUC BOX-255H Running Linux: Introduction to the series
This is a series of articles looking at the ASRock Industrial NUC BOX-255H. In this series, I examine every aspect of this Mini PC in detail.
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Alternatives to popular CLI tools: tree
This article spotlights alternative tools to tree, a utility that lists the contents of directories in a tree-like format.
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10 Best Free and Open Source Linux Graphical IRC Clients
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a form of real-time Internet text messaging (chat) or synchronous conferencing. We recommend the best free and open source graphical IRC clients.
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14 Best Free and Open Source Linux WebRTC Tools
WebRTC is real-time communication for the web, enabling video, voice, and data transfer between peers using an open standard.
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11 Best Free and Open Source Linux Digital Forensics Tools
Digital forensics is a specialist art. It allows investigations to be undertaken without modifying the media.
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Firefly AIBOX-3588S Running Linux: Access Remote File Systems Over SSH with SSHFS
SSHFS is a file system in user space (FUSE) that uses the SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) to mount a remote file system.
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Radxa ROCK 5T Single Board Computer Running Linux: Introduction
This is a new series looking at the Radxa ROCK 5T single board computer. It’s billed as an elegant computer with 8K + 4K dual display.
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Firefly AIBOX-3588S Embedded Fanless PC: Power Consumption
For this article in the series, I’m looking at the power consumption of the Firefly AIBOX-358SS fanless PC.
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TEAMGROUP X1 MAX 512GB USB 3.2 Gen 2 Flash Drive Review
The TEAMGROUP X1 MAX flash drive is available in 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB capacities with 1000 MB/s reads and 900 MB/s write speeds.
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BrosTrend AX3000 WiFi Range Extender & Wi-Fi to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter Review
The BrosTrend AX3000 is a 2 in 1 device. First, it’s a dual band Wi-Fi range extender. It also provides a Wi-Fi to Gigabit ethernet adapter.
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Benchmarking the Firefly AIBOX-3588S Embedded Fanless PC
I benchmark the Firefly AIBOX-3588S and compare it to single board computers (both ARM and RISC-V) as well as an Intel N100 Mini PC.
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Orange Pi R2S Single Board Computer Running Linux: Power Consumption
I’ll see how the Orange Pi R2S compares to a few other single board computers and mini PCs which cost considerably more.
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Raspberry Pi 5 Desktop Mini PC: Good value compared to an Intel N100 Mini PC?
A question I get asked a fair bit is whether the Raspberry Pi 5 represents good value to purchase as a desktop PC.
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Firefly AIBOX-3588S Embedded Fanless PC Running Linux – Introduction
This is the first in a series of articles looking at the Firefly AIBOX 3588S embedded fanless ARM-based mini PC.
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Best Free and Open Source Alternatives to Autodesk FBX Review
FBX Review is a lightweight, standalone software tool for viewing 3D assets and baked animations quickly and efficiently.
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Orange Pi RV2 Single Board Computer Running Linux: Installing to the eMMC
In this article I document transferring my Ubuntu distribution from the microSD card to the eMMC. It makes the distro much snappier on the RV2.
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Raspberry Pi 5 Desktop Mini PC: Improve Wi-Fi
Let’s try to improve the Raspberry Pi 5’s Wi-Fi performance (transfer speed and latency) with a USB 3.0 adapter from BrosTrend.
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Best Free and Open Source Alternatives to Autodesk Motion FX
Autodesk Motion FX is software to create real-time video effects using your computer’s camera. It’s also a video editor.
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Kioxia Exceria Plus G2 Portable SSD 2TB Review
For this review, I’ve evaluating the Kioxia Exceria Plus G2 Portable SSD. It’s available in 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB capacities. I’m reviewing the 2TB version.
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Orange Pi 5 Max Single Board Computer: Power Consumption
In this article in the series, I look at the power consumption of the Orange Pi 5 Max and compare it to some other computers.
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BrosTrend AX1800 USB WiFi 6 Adapter AX4L Linux Compatible
This is a review of the BrosTrend USB WiFi 6 Adapter. It supports Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Debian, Ubuntu Mate, and other distributions.
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Benchmarking the Orange Pi R2S Single Board Computer
The Orange Pi R2S features a RISC-V processor, four wired network ports (two 2.5G ethernet ports and two 1G ethernet ports).
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Orange Pi RV2 Single Board Computer Running Linux: orangepi-config
My RV2 board is running Ubuntu 24.04. Included is a configuration tool called orangepi-config. Let’s see what it offers.
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Garage – S3-compatible distributed object storage service
Garage is an S3-compatible distributed object storage service designed for self-hosting at a small-to-medium scale.
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tidyall – all-in-one code tidier and validator
tidyall is your all-in-one code tidier and validator bringing together a variety of code tidiers and validators.
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Atom Chess – chess engine built using Stockfish and Electron
Engine Analysis is performed with Stockfish 17 with the ability to change depth.
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