news
Best Free and Open Source Software
-
Best Free and Open Source Software: August 2026 Updates
Here’s the latest from our hand-picked software recommendations. This month alone, we’ve published 133 new and updated roundups, helping readers discover outstanding free and open source software across a huge range of categories.
That work takes time. Every roundup involves researching projects, checking development activity, assessing alternatives, revisiting older recommendations, and keeping thousands of LinuxLinks pages useful and current. Alongside our software coverage, we continue to publish extensive hardware reviews, benchmarks, and hands-on Linux testing.
If LinuxLinks has helped you discover useful software, please consider supporting the site with a donation.
Chatterbox - family of text-to-speech models
The family includes Chatterbox Multilingual V3 for speech synthesis across more than 20 languages, Chatterbox-Turbo for lower-latency English generation, and the smaller Chatterbox-Nano for resource-constrained and CPU-based deployments. Turbo and Nano also understand paralinguistic tags such as laughs, coughs, and chuckles.
Generated audio incorporates Resemble AI’s PerTh neural watermarking technology, which is designed to remain detectable after common audio processing and compression.
This is free and open source software.
Polyphone – powerful SoundFont editor
Polyphone is a graphical SoundFont editor for creating and modifying sample-based musical instruments.
Its workspace follows the SoundFont structure, separating samples, instruments and presets with dedicated editing views for each level. It is designed for projects containing large collections of samples and parameters, making it useful for building instruments from recordings and refining existing SoundFonts. The interface is built with Qt and runs on multiple desktop platforms. Its tabbed layout also supports several open SoundFonts.
This is free and open source software.
Botfather – cross-platform automation framework
Automation logic is written in JavaScript, with APIs for tasks such as image matching and interacting with graphical interfaces. It can therefore automate software where conventional command-line or API-driven approaches are impractical, including interfaces that need to be recognised visually. Android automation is supported alongside desktop and browser targets, giving scripts a common environment across several classes of application.
Botfather also includes the Binary Generator Tool, known as bingen, which can turn scripts into cross-platform binaries for easier deployment. The application itself is built with C++ and Qt and uses components including OpenCV for computer vision and Chromium Embedded Framework for browser integration. Linux builds are supported, and the project also maintains Flatpak build infrastructure. Projects can combine visual recognition with JavaScript control logic instead of depending on fixed screen coordinates alone. Its source tree also includes tooling for a helper browser process and continuous integration checks for Flatpak builds.
This is free and open source software.
KmPlot - mathematical function plotter
KmPlot is a mathematical function plotter that can draw graphs of functions together with their integrals and derivatives. It provides a configurable, scalable plotting area with zooming and support for colouring individual graphs.
The application supports Cartesian, parametric, polar, implicit and differential plots. A mathematical parser handles function expressions, while built-in tools can locate maxima and minima and plot derivatives and integrals. Parametrized functions can be explored interactively using a slider.
Plots can be exported as BMP, PNG or SVG images, or sent directly to a printer.
This is free and open source software.
syndicationd – terminal RSS and Atom feed reader
They’re especially useful for people who follow lots of blogs, as they remove the hassle of checking each site individually. That’s particularly helpful when some blogs are updated only occasionally.
syndicationd is a terminal-first RSS and Atom feed reader. The executable is named synd and provides a keyboard-driven interface for following websites without relying on a hosted feed service. This is free and open source software.
jql - query and process JSON data
jql is a command-line tool for querying and processing JSON data. It uses its own compact query language to select values and structures from JSON input while returning JSON as output.
The tool supports selection by keys, indices and ranges together with operators for flattening structures, processing array elements and inspecting keys. It can work with files or standard input and includes support for streamed newline-delimited JSON.
This is free and open source software.
Hyrise - in-memory database system
Developed by the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI), Hyrise offers comprehensive SQL support and query plan optimization. Its architecture enables researchers to experiment with new data management concepts while supporting realistic database workloads.
The software includes built-in support for established benchmarks including TPC-H, TPC-DS, Join Order Benchmark and Star Schema Benchmark. Hyrise is developed primarily for Linux and optimized for server hardware.
This is free and open source software.
Cherrypick - modern screen color picker
Cherrypick is a modern desktop colour picker designed primarily for elementary OS.
It provides a straightforward way to sample a colour from anywhere on the screen and then work with the resulting value in a compact graphical interface. The application is built with GTK4 and uses Wayland-compatible portal technology, making it suited to current Linux desktop environments.
The project revives ideas and some code from the earlier, now unmaintained ColorPicker application, but has been modernised for GTK4, Wayland and elementary OS 8. Its scope stays focused on fast colour sampling and conversion rather than broader palette design or image editing.
This is free and open source software.
monobit - collection of tools for working with bitmap fonts
monobit is a collection of tools for working with bitmap fonts. It can modify fonts and convert between a large number of bitmap font formats, including formats originating on classic computer platforms and operating systems.
The software can be used either from the command line or as a Python package. Its native YAFF format is a human-readable, text-based visual representation of bitmap fonts, but monobit can automatically recognise and work with many other formats.
This is free and open source software.
xfce4-screenshooter - take screenshots
xfce4-screenshooter is an application for taking screenshots.
It can capture the entire screen, the active window, or a selected region. The application can be used through its graphical interface, from the command line, or as an Xfce panel plugin.
This is free and open source software.