Best Free and Open Source Software

posted by Rianne Schestowitz on Nov 08, 2025

• 11 Best Free and Open Source Terminal-Based Bibliography Tools - LinuxLinks

  A bibliographic manager will typically let the user search academic and non-academic databases, store the reference, annotate them, import / export between different formats, and present the data to standard formats.

  There are a wide range of open source software which offers similar functionality (and more besides) available for Linux. This roundup focuses on software for the terminal. GUI based software is covered in this roundup.

  A common misconception is that bibliography tools are really only useful for academics. However, this type of software is a type of reference manager offering the ability to collect large amounts of metadata.

  Here’s our verdict captured in a legendary LinuxLinks-style ratings chart. Only free and open source software is eligible for inclusion.

• 6 Best Free and Open Source C and C++ Linter Tools - LinuxLinks

  Linters are useful tools for maintaining code quality and consistency in C and C++. They analyze code for potential issues, enforce coding standards, and help catch errors before they are pushed into production. Linters are not necessarily a quick fix, can be a distraction, and it’s not inconceivable that they may not be helpful with old, large code bases.

  This article picks some useful tools to help you fix C and C++ code.

  Here’s our verdict captured in a legendary LinuxLinks-style ratings chart. Only free and open source software is eligible for inclusion here.

• Meshtastic - decentralized mesh networking ecosystem - LinuxLinks

  The radios automatically create a mesh to forward packets as needed, so everyone in the group can receive messages from even the furthest member. The radios will optionally work with your phone, but no phone is required.

  This is free and open source software.

• wolfSSH - small, fast, portable SSH implementation - LinuxLinks

  wolfSSH is dependent on wolfCrypt, found as a part of wolfSSL. The following is the simplest configuration of wolfSSL to enable wolfSSH.

  It comes packaged with a few example tools for testing purposes and to demonstrate interoperability with other SSH implementations.

  This is free and open source software.

• Ytui-music - TUI YouTube Music Player - LinuxLinks

  Ytui-music is a Youtube client in the terminal for listening to music.

  This is free and open source software.

• GuiMan - frontend for Pacman and AUR - LinuxLinks

  GuiMan is a GUI frontend for pacman and AUR that claims it actually works.

  This is free and open source software.

• Swirc - console based ICB and IRC client - LinuxLinks

  Swirc is a BSD licensed, console based and lightweight ICB and IRC client written in C/C++, whose goals are to be portable and secure.

  It’s written with the Ncurses UI framework.

  This is free and open source software.

• duviz - render ASCII-art representation of disk space usage - LinuxLinks

  duviz is a (Python 3) command-line tool to visualize disk space usage.

  It’s like the plethora of desktop applications and widgets (e.g. Filelight, DaisyDisk, WinDirStat, JDiskReport, TreeSize, SpaceSniffer, …), but instead of a fancy GUI with animated pie charts and shaded boxes you get a funky “ASCII art style hierarchical tree of bars” in your shell.

  This is free and open source software.

• NouTube - YouTube and YouTube Music in a single app - LinuxLinks

  NouTube is a simple app that combines YouTube and YouTube Music in a single app.

  This is free and open source software.

• Calls - make phone and SIP calls - LinuxLinks

  It can be used with a cellular modem for plain old telephone calls as well as VoIP calls using the SIP protocol.

  Calls uses libpeas to support runtime loadable plugins which can be called “providers”. Calls currently ships four different plugins:

  mm: The ModemManager plugin used for cellular modems sip: The SIP plugin for VoIP dummy: A dummy plugin ofono: The oFono plugin used for cellular modems (not in active development)

  This is free and open source software.

• Xaric - IRC client - LinuxLinks

  Xaric is a UNIX irc client similar to (and forked from) BitchX and ircII.

  This is free and open source software.

• Arch Linux MCP Server - Arch Linux MCP (Model Context Protocol) - LinuxLinks

  Leverage AI to get output for digestible, structured results that are ready for follow up questions and actions.

  This is free and open source software.

• Dropbear - lightweight SSH server - LinuxLinks

  Dropbear is a relatively small SSH server and client. It runs on a variety of UNIX platforms.

  Dropbear is particularly useful for “embedded”-type Linux (or other Unix) systems, such as wireless routers.

  This is free and open source software.