Free and Open Source Software, howtos and Installations

posted by Rianne Schestowitz on Nov 13, 2025

• Hug SCM - The Humane Source Control Management Interface - LinuxLinks

  Hug SCM is a humane, intuitive interface for Git and other version control systems.

  It works as a universal language to control the underlying SCM tool you use.

  Hug transforms complex and forgettable Git commands into a simple, predictable language that feels natural to use, keeping you focused on your code, not on wrestling with version control.

  This is free and open source software.

• Radxa Cubie A7Z Single Board Computer Running Linux: Power Consumption - LinuxLinks

  This is a short series looking at the Radxa Cubie A7Z single board computer. It’s billed as “tiny size, mighty AI” SBC.

  The SBC is powered by the Allwinner A733 SoC, featuring a hybrid octa-core CPU (dual-core Arm Cortex-A76 and hexa-core Arm Cortex-A55 up to 2.0GHz), integrated 3 TOPS NPU, and Imagination BXM-4-64 GPU, providing AI and multimedia processing capabilities. The board is designed for edge AI applications such as image recognition, computer vision, voice processing, robotics, and smart IoT devices.. This is a tiny board measuring a mere 65mm x 30 mm x 6mm.

  For this article in the series, I’m looking at the power consumption of the Radxa Cubie A7Z.

• yabd - yet another brightness daemon - LinuxLinks

  yabd is a simple (~300 lines of python) daemon that sets the brightness of the screen depending on ambient brightness.

  This is free and open source software.

• UnifiedPush - decentralized push notification system - LinuxLinks

  UnifiedPush is a decentralized push notification system that lets you choose the service you want to use. It’s designed to be privacy-friendly, flexible, and open — making it perfect if you want control over your push notifications.

  KUnifiedPush is a service developed by KDE, able to develop to different push servers. It is able to work with public server, without requiring signing up as it can use a self-hosted server.

  The easiest way to install KUnifiedPush is with your OS package manager.

• GhostMirror - mirror analyzer for Arch Linux - LinuxLinks

  It can analyze the mirrors and display in-depth errors or the names of packages that are not updated.

  Thanks to the custom sorting mode, it can create a list of mirrors based on each user’s needs.

  If you don’t have time to update the mirror list manually, by adding a single command-line argument, the systemd service will be automatically activated. Feel free to forget about the mirrors.

  This is free and open source software.

• pamixer - PulseAudio command line mixer - LinuxLinks

  This project also provides a small C++ library to control PulseAudio.

  PulseAudio is a sound server for POSIX operating systems, primarily used on Linux, that acts as middleware between applications and audio hardware. It provides features like software mixing, individual volume control per application, and network audio streaming, making it easier to manage sound on a computer. PulseAudio typically runs on top of other systems like Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) to provide more advanced functionality.

• Hexkudo - GNOME number-placement logic game - LinuxLinks

  Hexkudo is a GNOME number-placement logic game. Each puzzle gives you a grid of hexagons and a few numbers as anchor. Your job is to connect them into a continuous path that visits every cell exactly once, in numeric order. Hexkudo comes with a simple interface and several difficulty levels that makes it fun for players of all skill level.

  Hexkudo is inspired by several projects including GNOME Sudoku and Open Sudoku.

  This is free and open source software.

• alram - alarm for RAM - LinuxLinks

  Alram is an alarm for RAM. It’s designed to help when available memory is below threshold, with optional task killer.

  The tool shows you a warning when memory is below defined threshold. If you define kill list – it will kill those processes, when above happens.

  This is free and open source software.

• iwinfo - provides wifi information about capabilities and network(s) - LinuxLinks

  Since this does add some level of risk, scanning is limited to root and members of the wheel group only.

  Some additional information is gathered using iwctl when iwd is running. These are the ip address, security mode (e.g. WPA2), and transmission type (e.g. 802.11ax). These require either root or membership in network or wheel groups.

  This is free and open source software.