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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15 Best Free and Open Source CLI Data Hashing Tools
Hashing is the process of passing data through a formula that produces a condensed fixed-value representation, called a hash value.
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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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5 Useful Free and Open Source Graphical GRUB Config Tools
GRUB is a boot loader software used in Linux systems. We pick 5 useful GUI tools to edit the bootloader configuration.
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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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4 Best Free and Open Source Travel Planners
This roundup focuses on software which act as a digital travel assistant.
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Alternatives to popular CLI tools: cat
cat derives its name from concatenation and provides other nifty options too. This article spotlights alternative tools to cat.
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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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fanxiang S880 2TB NVMe SSD Review
This is a capsule review of the fanxiang S880 2TB NVMe SSD. It’s available in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities.
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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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Best Free and Open Source Software: July 2025 Updates
July 2025 updates to the largest compilation of recommended free and open source software available for Linux.
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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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Best Free and Open Source Alternatives to Autodesk Fusion
Autodesk Fusion is a CAD, CAM, and PCB design software. We recommend the best free and open source alternatives.
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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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Orange Pi RV2 Single Board Computer Running Linux: Building a Program
Options for installing software are a bit more limited with the RV2 compared with ARM-based single board computers. Let’s build a piece of open source software.
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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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TEAMGROUP PD20 Mini External SSD Review
I’m testing the 2TB PD20 Mini External SSD which provides plenty of capacity for backing up a computer or holding a good chunk of data.
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Orange Pi R2S Single Board Computer Running Linux: Introduction
This is a series of articles looking at the Orange Pi R2S, the latest addition to the range of single board computers from Orange Pi.
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Raspberry Pi 5 Desktop Mini PC: 2.5Gbps Networking
In this article I explore a simple upgrade to improve the Raspberry Pi 5’s network speed.
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Orange Pi RV2 Single Board Computer Running Linux: Power Consumption
In this article in the series, I look at the power consumption of the Orange Pi RV2 and compare it to some other computers.
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Benchmarking the Banana Pi BPI-F3 Single Board Computer
In this article I benchmark the Banana Pi BPI-F3 and compare it to other single board computers as well as an N100 Mini PC.
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Benchmarking the Orange Pi 5 Ultra, Orange Pi 5 Max and Orange Pi RV2
I benchmark the Orange Pi 5 Ultra, Orange Pi 5 Max, Orange Pi RV2 against a Raspberry Pi 5 and a DreamQuest N100 Mini PC.
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22 Best Free and Open Source Linux PDF Viewers
The PDF file format is one of the most common file formats in use today. This article recommends the best open source PDF viewers.
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FeedFlow – minimalistic RSS Reader
FeedFlow is a minimalistic RSS Reader available on Linux, Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows.
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Updo – website monitoring tool
Updo is a command-line tool for monitoring website uptime and performance. It provides real-time metrics on website status, response time…
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Vet examines Go source code and reports suspicious constructs
Vet examines Go source code and reports suspicious constructs, such as Printf calls whose arguments do not align with the format string.
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texel – Command line interface for reading spreadsheets
Texel is a useful CLI for quickly reading spreadsheets and copying their contents to clipboard in CSV format.
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OCLint – static code analysis tool
OCLint is a static code analysis tool for improving quality and reducing defects by inspecting C, C++ and Objective-C code.
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12 Best Free and Open Source Linux CLI File Encryption Tools
This roundup explores the finest CLI-based file encryption tools.
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Cantera – chemical kinetics, thermodynamics, and transport tool suite
Cantera is a collection of object-oriented software tools for problems involving chemical kinetics, thermodynamics, and transport processes.
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