Free and Open Source Software

posted by Rianne Schestowitz on Dec 22, 2025

• 8 Useful Free and Open Source Linux Forensics Memory Tools - LinuxLinks

  Digital forensics is a specialist art. It allows investigations to be undertaken without modifying the media. Being able to preserve and analyze data in a safe and non-destructive way is crucial when using digital evidence as part of an investigation, and even more so when a legal audit trail needs to be maintained. Digital forensics can be used in a wide range of investigations such as computer intrusion, unauthorised use of computers including the violation of an organisation’s internet-usage policy, gathering intelligence from documents and emails, as well as the protection of corporate assets.

  This roundup focuses on memory tools that help with forensics. Only free and open source software is eligible for inclusion here.

  Here’s our verdict captured in a legendary LinuxLinks-style ratings chart.

• Superseedr - Rust BitTorrent client - LinuxLinks

  Superseedr is a modern Rust BitTorrent client featuring a high-performance terminal UI, real-time swarm observability, secure VPN-aware Docker setups, and zero manual network configuration. It is fast, privacy-oriented, and built for both desktop users and homelab/server workflows.

  Superseedr brings the BitTorrent into the modern terminal environment, focusing on speed, visibility, and reliability.

  Deep Swarm Analytics: Moves beyond simple progress bars by providing high performance real-time heatmaps, peer metrics, and network graphs for complete swarm observability. Modern Rust Engine: Leverages Rust and Model-Based Testing to ensure memory safety, high performance, and unparalleled reliability. Seamless Networking: Designed for resilient connectivity, featuring automatic listener reloading for dynamic VPN ports to maintain uptime without manual intervention.

  This is free and open source software.

• ad - adaptable text editor - LinuxLinks

  ad (pronounced A.D.) is an attempt at combining a modal editing interface of likes of vi and kakoune with the approach to extensibility of Plan9’s Acme. Inside of ad text is something you can execute as well as edit.

  ad is aiming to be a hybrid of the pieces of various editors:

  vim style modal editing. convenient text navigation and selection from vim/kakoune. mini-buffer based user defined minor modes from emacs. sam/acme style editing commands for larger editing actions. acme style extension through exposing editor state and functionality for external client programs. support for mouse based navigation and selection but not requiring that as the main way of using the editor like in acme.

  ad is not trying to replace vim (or kakoune, or emacs) in terms of being a massively hackable editor. Rather it is trying to follow the philosophy of acme in being an integratING development environment (rather than integratED).

  This is free and open source software.

• Picat - logic-based multi-paradigm programming language - LinuxLinks

  Compared with functional and scripting languages, the support of explicit unification, explicit non-determinism, tabling, and constraints makes Picat more suitable for symbolic computations. Compared with Prolog, Picat is arguably more expressive and scalable: it is not rare to find problems for which Picat requires an order of magnitude fewer lines of code to describe than Prolog and Picat can be significantly faster than Prolog because pattern-matching facilitates indexing of rules.

  Picat provides functional programming features, such as pattern-matching, recursion, and list comprehension, for composing functions.

  This is free and open source software.

• spw - generate secure passwords - LinuxLinks

  spw lets you generate secure passwords using multiple algorithms with hardware RNG support.

  Enhanced UX with interactive mode, QR codes, profiles, and beautiful output.

  This is free and open source software.

• AutoTimeliner - extract forensic timeline from volatile memory dump - LinuxLinks

  AutoTimeliner lets you automagically extract forensic timeline from volatile memory dumps.

  AutoTimeline automates this workflow:

  Identify correct volatility profile for the memory image. Runs the timeliner plugin against volatile memory dump using volatility. Runs the mftparser volatility plugin, in order to extract $MFT from memory and generate a bodyfile. Runs the shellbags volatility plugin in order to generate a bodyfile of the user activity. Merges the timeliner, mftparser and shellbags output files into a single bodyfile. Sorts and filters the bodyfile using mactime and exports data as CSV.

  This is free and open source software.