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Best Free and Open Source Software
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Best Free and Open Source Alternatives to Google Data Studio
Google has a firm grip on the desktop. Their products and services are ubiquitous. Don’t get us wrong, we’re long-standing admirers of many of Google’s products and services. They are often high quality, easy to use, and ‘free’, but there can be downsides of over-reliance on a specific company. For example, there are concerns about their privacy policies, business practices, and an almost insatiable desire to control all of our data, all of the time.
What if you are looking to move away from Google and embark on a new world of online freedom, where you are not constantly tracked, monetised and attached to Google’s ecosystem.
In this series we explore how you can migrate from Google without missing out on anything. We recommend open source solutions.
alofmt - fast deterministic Ruby formatter
alofmt is a fast, deterministic formatter for Ruby source code. It uses Prism to understand Ruby syntax and implements its formatting engine in Rust, combining source-aware formatting with an emphasis on predictable and repeatable output.
The formatter takes a strict approach to problematic input. Instead of attempting to produce partially formatted output when syntax cannot be handled safely, it reports the problem. Formatting policy can be kept with the project, giving teams a reproducible style without embedding formatting logic into their own tooling.
This is free and open source software.
Tach - enforce dependencies and interfaces in Python projects
Tach is a command-line tool for defining and enforcing architectural boundaries in Python projects.
It analyses relationships between Python modules and packages, letting developers describe the intended structure of a codebase and check that imports comply with those rules. Tach is particularly suited to modular applications and modular monoliths where uncontrolled dependencies can gradually make components difficult to separate or maintain. Projects can adopt Tach incrementally rather than having to configure an entire codebase at once.
This is free and open source software.
ExternalDNS - synchronize Kubernetes resources with DNS providers
ExternalDNS is a Kubernetes controller that keeps records in external DNS providers synchronized with resources defined inside a cluster. It watches Kubernetes objects, derives the DNS records that should exist, compares that desired state with provider data, and applies the required changes.
Unlike a cluster DNS server, ExternalDNS does not answer DNS queries itself. Its role is to automate authoritative DNS configuration so services and other exposed resources can acquire appropriate public or private names as cluster state changes. This makes it useful in environments where manual DNS updates would otherwise become part of every deployment workflow.
This is free and open source software.
Parental Controls - local parental controls for supervised accounts
All enforcement and stored information remain on the local machine. The software does not require a remote account, cloud service or telemetry system.
Administrators can create a supervised account or apply supervision to an existing user. Applications can be allowed or blocked using filesystem ACLs, while web restrictions use nftables and configurable DNS providers. Screen-time controls support both daily usage quotas and permitted time ranges.
The application can also display weekly usage charts, hourly activity patterns and login sessions. Age profiles can be assigned to supervised accounts, and collected activity information can be exported or deleted from the interface.
This is free and open source software.
ripasso - simple password manager
The project provides more than one user interface. Its Cursive-based TUI is the most mature interface and is used by the developer as their daily password manager. There is also a GTK interface, although this remains a work in progress and does not yet offer feature parity with the TUI.
ripasso can display the age of stored passwords and lets users edit credentials from the interface. Because it uses the established pass storage format, existing password stores can be used rather than requiring migration to a proprietary database format.
The software is available in repositories for several distributions including Arch Linux, Fedora, NixOS and Alpine. The project is actively maintained and continues to receive dependency updates and development work.
This is free and open source software.
Power Options - Linux GUI power management
Power Options is a Linux power management application that combines a background daemon with graphical frontends. It is designed to centralise power-saving controls that would otherwise be spread across several utilities and configuration files.
The program analyses the host system and can generate profiles suited to the hardware it finds. Its profile model is not limited to one battery and one AC configuration, making it useful for users who want different power characteristics for quiet work, maximum battery life, sustained performance or other situations.
This is free and open source software.
Chromoscope - multiscale structural variation genome browser
The application is particularly geared towards cancer genomics, where large and complex structural alterations can be difficult to understand using a conventional linear genome browser. Chromoscope loads datasets through HTTP requests using configuration files, which means genomic data can reside on public servers, private infrastructure or cloud storage without requiring a dedicated Chromoscope backend.
This is free and open source software.
kleiner-brauhelfer - brewing assistant for hobby brewers
kleiner-brauhelfer is a graphical brewing assistant aimed at hobby brewers.
It helps manage the practical information associated with producing beer, bringing recipes, brew-day records and fermentation data together in a desktop application. Version 2 is the continuation of the original kleiner-brauhelfer project and uses Qt for its graphical interface.
This is free and open source software.
dns-lexicon - manage DNS records across multiple providers
The project is particularly useful where DNS records must be created or changed programmatically, such as certificate issuance, deployment workflows and infrastructure management. Providers still expose different authentication schemes and capabilities, but Lexicon normalizes common record operations behind one configuration model.
Commands identify the provider, operation, domain, record type, name and content explicitly, making common changes straightforward to invoke from scripts without an interactive workflow. Provider integrations cover hosted cloud services, specialist DNS platforms and self-managed systems, so the same project can span substantially different deployment models.
This is free and open source software.