Best Free and Open Source Software

posted by Rianne Schestowitz on Apr 19, 2025

• Best Free and Open Source Alternatives to Apple Spotlight - LinuxLinks

  Apple Spotlight is a system-wide search feature on Apple devices. It lets users quickly find files, apps, contacts, and information within their devices and online. Spotlight can also perform calculations and conversions

  Spotlight is proprietary software and is not available for Linux. We recommend the best free and open source alternatives.

• stack-back - automated incremental backups using restic - LinuxLinks

  stack-back provides automated incremental backups using restic for any docker-compose setup.

  This is free and open source software.

• GoldenDict-ng is an advanced dictionary lookup program - LinuxLinks

  GoldenDict-ng is an advanced dictionary lookup program, supporting many dictionary formats.

  This is free and open source software.

• Improve ImgSLI is an image comparison tool - LinuxLinks

  Improve ImgSLI is a tool designed for comparing two images side-by-side, featuring a synchronized magnifying glass to inspect details closely.

  It’s built for anyone needing detailed image comparison, analysis, or manipulation, such as designers, upscale enthusiasts, photographers, or researchers.

  This is free and open source software.

• LACT configures and monitors AMD, NVIDIA and Intel GPUs - LinuxLinks

  Fan monitoring or control might not be available on some laptops, because the fan is physically not connected through the GPU.

  This is free and open source software.

• grex generates regular expressions from user-provided test cases - LinuxLinks

  The philosophy of this project is to generate the most specific regular expression possible by default which exactly matches the given input only and nothing else. With the use of command-line flags (in the CLI tool) or preprocessing methods (in the library), more generalized expressions can be created.

  The produced expressions are Perl-compatible regular expressions which are also compatible with the regular expression parser in Rust’s regex crate. Other regular expression parsers or respective libraries from other programming languages have not been tested so far, but they ought to be mostly compatible as well.

  This is free and open source software.

• frei is a modern replacement for the free command - LinuxLinks

  frei (FREe Improved) is a modern replacement for the free command.

  free shows your memory usage on Unix-based systems. frei obtains memory data from /proc/meminfo and represents it in a colored bar chart using the same color-coding for as htop.

• fastmod - fast partial replacement for codemod - LinuxLinks

  fastmod is a tool to assist you with large-scale codebase refactors that can be partially automated but still require human oversight and occasional intervention. It’s a find/replace tool for programmers.

  Example: Let’s say you’re deprecating your use of the tag. From the command line, you might make progress by running...