Free and Open Source Software, howtos and Installations

posted by Rianne Schestowitz on Feb 04, 2026,
updated Feb 04, 2026

• dcat - terminal-based 3D model viewer - LinuxLinks

  dcat is a terminal-based 3D model viewer.

  This is free and open source software.

• stax - CLI and TUI for stacked Git branches and PRs - LinuxLinks

  stax is a modern CLI for stacked Git branches and PRs.

  Stacked branches let you split work into small, reviewable pieces that build on each other (and visualize it as a tree).

  Smaller reviews – Each PR is focused, so reviewers move faster and catch more issues Parallel progress – Keep building on top while lower PRs are still in review Safer shipping – Merge foundations first; reduce the risk of “one giant PR” landing at once Cleaner history – Each logical change lands independently (easier to understand, revert, and git blame)

  This is free and open source software.

• ziglint - linting suite - LinuxLinks

  ziglint is a linting suite for Zig.

  ziglint searches the current directory for .zig files and lint them against the various tests in the suite.

  This is free and open source.

• tredis - terminal UI for Redis - LinuxLinks

  tredis provides a terminal UI to interact with your Redis servers. The aim of this project is to make it easier to navigate, observe, and manage your Redis data in the wild.

  This is free and open source software.

• FAT - modern TUI-based file and archive viewer - LinuxLinks

  FAT is a modern, TUI-based file and archive viewer for your terminal. It’s designed for developers and power users who want to quickly inspect files and peek inside archives like .zip and .tar without having to extract them first.

  It is lightweight, fast, and highly extensible.

  This is free and open source software.

• Pipeline - watch YouTube and PeerTube videos - LinuxLinks

  I’ve covered quite a few GUI tools that let you access YouTube content without using a web browser. Pipeline goes one step further by letting you also view PeerTube content. Pipeline is free and open source software.

  PeerTube aims to be a decentralized and free/libre alternative to video broadcasting services. It’s powered by ActivityPub and WebTorrent. There’s no vendor lock-in. PeerTube allows you to upload your videos to a platform that you choose by yourself. And each community can help each other by caching one another’s videos. Each platform has its own terms of service, moderation and federation policies.

• Vortix - terminal UI for WireGuard and OpenVPN - LinuxLinks

  Vortix is a terminal UI for WireGuard and OpenVPN with real-time telemetry and leak guarding.

  The software runs under macOS, but Linux supported is planned.

  This is free and open source software.

• HortusFox - self-hosted collaborative plant management system - LinuxLinks

  You can add your plants with various details and photos and assign them to a location of your environment. There is a dashboard available that shows all important overview information. The system does also feature a warning system in order to indicate which plants need special care, user authentication, tasks, inventory management, calendar, search, collaborative chat and a history log of what actions users have taken. The system features collaborative management, so you can manage your plants with multiple users.

  It uses MariaDB/MySQL as its database backend.

  This is free and open source software.

• pad.ws - whiteboard as an IDE - LinuxLinks

  pad.ws is a whiteboard app that acts as a dev environment in your browser. It uses Excalidraw for the whiteboard interface while Coder powers the cloud development environments.

  This is free and open source software.