Best Free and Open Source Software

posted by Rianne Schestowitz on Apr 23, 2025

• Best Free and Open Source Alternatives to Corel PHOTO-PAINT - LinuxLinks

  Corel PHOTO-PAINT is a raster graphics editor, or photo editing software. Edit, enhance, and retouch photographs, as well as create bitmap illustrations and paintings. PHOTO-PAINT is part of the CorelDRAW Graphics Suite.

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

• KLayout is a GDS and OASIS file viewer and editor - LinuxLinks

  KLayout is a GDS and OASIS file viewer and editor. This is a mask layout viewer and editor for the chip design engineer.

  This is free and open source software.

• OrbVis is a Realtime Satellite Orbit Visualizer - LinuxLinks

  OrbVis is a tool used to view and propagate the full CelesTrak satellite catalog in realtime.

  This is free and open source software.

• Gwyddion - SPM data visualization and analysis - LinuxLinks

  Gwyddion provides a large number of data processing functions, including all the standard statistical characterization, levelling and data correction, filtering or grain marking functions. And since the developers are active SPM users, the program also contains a number of specific, uncommon, odd and experimental data processing methods they found useful.

  This is free and open source software.

• PonyProg is a serial device programmer - LinuxLinks

  PonyProg is a serial device programmer software with a user friendly GUI (Qt-based) framework.

  Its purpose is reading and writing every serial device. With PonyProg and SI-Prog you can program Wafercard for SAT, eeprom within GSM, TV or CAR-RADIO. Furthermore it can be used as a low cost starter kit for PIC and AVR. Ponyprog supports AVR, SPI eeprom, AVR micro, 12C bus 8bit eeprom, PIC 16 micro, PIC 12 micro, AT89S micro and SDE2506 eeprom family chips

  This is free and open source software.

• Gpredict is a real-time satellite tracking and orbit prediction application - LinuxLinks

  Gpredict is different from other satellite tracking programs in that it allows you to group the satellites into visualisation modules. Each of these modules can be configured independently from the others giving you unlimited flexibility concerning the look and feel of the modules. Naturally, Gpredict will also allow you to track satellites relatively to different observer locations – at the same time.

  This is free and open source software.