Open-source operating-systems software
1492 open-source libraries, tools and applications tagged operating-systems, ranked by how closely operating-systems is their primary purpose, then by adoption and maintenance health. Each entry links to a page with sources, use cases and when to choose or avoid it.
1492 products, primary matches first, then adoption-weighted; health v2 shown.
| Product | Health v2 | Stars | Maturity |
|---|---|---|---|
| herbstluftwm/herbstluftwm herbstluftwm is a manual tiling window manager for the X11 window system, written in C++. Configuration happens at runtime via the herbstcl… | 76 | 1166 | active |
| hakuna-m/wubiuefi WubiUEFI is a fork of Wubi, the Windows Ubuntu Installer, adding UEFI support and compatibility with recent Ubuntu releases. It installs Ub… | 23 | 1165 | active |
| Vladimir-csp/uwsm uwsm is a Universal Wayland Session Manager that uses systemd units and helpers to set up the environment and manage standalone Wayland com… | 75 | 1164 | stable |
| xeco23/WasIstLos WasIstLos is an unofficial WhatsApp desktop client for Linux, written in C++ using gtkmm and WebKitGTK to wrap WhatsApp Web. It adds deskto… | 10 | 1164 | active |
| arthepsy/CVE-2021-4034 A proof-of-concept exploit for CVE-2021-4034 (PwnKit), a local privilege escalation vulnerability in polkit's pkexec utility. It is a small… | 32 | 1163 | stable |
| citronneur/pamspy pamspy is a Linux credentials dumper that uses eBPF to hook the pam_get_authtok function in libpam.so, capturing passwords from processes l… | 23 | 1162 | active |
| dgurkaynak/Penc Penc is a trackpad-oriented window manager application for macOS. It lets users move, resize, and snap windows using two-finger gestures ac… | 23 | 1162 | active |
| francma/wob wob is a lightweight overlay bar for Wayland compositors that displays values like volume or brightness as a transient on-screen indicator.… | 65 | 1161 | active |
| zbm-dev/zfsbootmenu ZFSBootMenu is a Linux bootloader for root-on-ZFS systems that finds kernels and initramfs images inside ZFS filesystems and launches them … | 71 | 1160 | active |
| JakWai01/lurk lurk is a Rust-based command-line tool that traces system calls of a process or command, serving as a simpler, prettier alternative to stra… | 72 | 1159 | active |
| Dimillian/RedditOS Curiosity (RedditOS) is an open-source Reddit client for macOS built primarily with SwiftUI. It serves both as a usable Reddit browser and … | 23 | 4025 | maintenance |
| void-linux/xbps XBPS (The X Binary Package System) is a binary package system written in C, designed from scratch to be fast, portable, and featureful. It … | 74 | 1158 | active |
| bluez/bluez BlueZ is the official Bluetooth protocol stack for Linux, providing the kernel interfaces, daemons, and command-line utilities for Bluetoot… | 89 | 1156 | stable |
| okooo5km/HiPixel HiPixel is a native macOS app for AI-powered image super-resolution, built with SwiftUI and using Upscayl's AI models. It offers batch upsc… | 70 | 1155 | active |
| termux/proot Termux's patched fork of PRoot, a user-space implementation of chroot, mount --bind, and binfmt_misc built on ptrace. It lets unprivileged … | 77 | 1154 | active |
| MalpenZibo/ashell A ready-to-use status bar for Wayland compositors such as Hyprland, Niri, MangoWC, and other wlroots-based setups, written in Rust with the… | 92 | 1152 | active |
| managarm/mlibc mlibc is a portable, fully featured C standard library designed for easy porting to new operating systems via a clean syscall abstraction l… | 92 | 1147 | active |
| pendulum-project/ntpd-rs ntpd-rs is a memory-safe Rust implementation of the Network Time Protocol (NTP) with support for the authenticated NTS extension, providing… | 87 | 1147 | stable |
| samba-team/samba Samba is the standard open-source Windows interoperability suite for Linux and Unix, implementing the SMB/CIFS protocol for file and print … | 75 | 1145 | stable |
| LordAmit/Brightness Brightness Controller is a Python/PyQt5 GUI application for Linux that adjusts brightness and color temperature (RGB ratios) of primary and… | 32 | 1142 | stable |
| Mexit/MultiOS-USB MultiOS-USB is a tool that prepares a USB, SSD, or other disk to boot multiple operating systems directly from ISO and WIM images using GRU… | 95 | 1137 | active |
| Supreeeme/xwayland-satellite xwayland-satellite provides rootless Xwayland integration for any Wayland compositor that implements xdg_wm_base and viewporter, without re… | 81 | 1137 | active |
| ccfos/huatuo HUATUO is an eBPF-based Linux kernel observability agent that provides kernel-wide metrics, event-driven context capture, autotracing, and … | 74 | 1134 | active |
| CodeEdit CodeEdit is a free, open-source, native macOS code editor built in Swift and SwiftUI, offering syntax highlighting, code completion, find a… | 66 | 23065 | experimental |
| insidegui/MultipeerKit A Swift library that wraps Apple's MultipeerConnectivity framework with a Codable-based API, letting iOS, macOS, and tvOS devices exchange … | 59 | 1132 | stable |
| Arinerron/CVE-2022-0847-DirtyPipe-Exploit A C-based root privilege escalation exploit for CVE-2022-0847 (Dirty Pipe), a Linux kernel vulnerability. It modifies Max Kellermann's proo… | 32 | 1132 | stable |
| servo/ipc-channel ipc-channel is a Rust library providing an inter-process communication implementation of Rust channels, designed as a drop-in replacement f… | 90 | 1128 | stable |
| erha19/ping-island Ping Island is a macOS Dynamic Island-style menu bar application for monitoring and managing AI coding agent sessions like Claude Code, Cod… | 77 | 1128 | active |
| trulyspinach/SMCAMDProcessor A pair of macOS kernel extensions for AMD Zen processors providing CPU power management and sensor monitoring (temperature, energy, frequen… | 23 | 1128 | active |
| microsoft/avml AVML is a portable X86_64 userland volatile memory acquisition tool for Linux, written in Rust and distributed as a static binary. It captu… | 95 | 1126 | active |
| NJU-ProjectN/nemu NEMU is a simple but complete full-system emulator supporting x86, mips32, riscv32, and riscv64 instruction sets, designed for teaching com… | 72 | 1126 | active |
| RuoJi6/CACM CACM is a Linux post-exploitation and privilege persistence tool that bundles port scanning, sensitive information gathering, EDR/AV identi… | 80 | 1124 | active |
| Kron4ek/Conty Conty is an unprivileged Linux container packed into a single portable executable, based on Arch Linux and compressed with squashfs or dwar… | 93 | 1122 | active |
| StreamController/StreamController StreamController is an open-source Linux desktop application for controlling Elgato Stream Deck devices, built with Python and GTK4. It off… | 84 | 1122 | active |
| DHDAXCW/OpenWRT_x86_x64 A community-built OpenWrt firmware for x86_64 hardware, compiled daily from immortalwrt sources via GitHub Actions. It bundles common route… | 67 | 1122 | active |
| Lakr233/FixTim FixTim is a macOS utility that fixes common runtime glitches (broken screenshots, laggy IME, audio issues, AirDrop/Wi-Fi failures, unrespon… | 50 | 1122 | active |
| splinedrive/kianRiscV A collection of open-source RISC-V RV32IMA system-on-chip designs written in Verilog/SystemVerilog, featuring MMU with SV32 virtual memory … | 64 | 1119 | active |
| rear/rear Relax-and-Recover (ReaR) is a Linux bare metal disaster recovery and system migration tool that creates bootable rescue images and automate… | 66 | 1118 | active |
| kdave/btrfsmaintenance A set of shell scripts that automate periodic btrfs filesystem maintenance tasks such as scrub, balance, trim, and defragmentation on selec… | 37 | 1118 | active |
| cyberus-technology/virtualbox-kvm A KVM backend for VirtualBox that replaces VirtualBox's own hypervisor with the Linux kernel's KVM. It lets users run their existing Virtua… | 79 | 1117 | active |
| kayozxo/GNOME-macOS-Tahoe A macOS Tahoe-inspired theme for GNOME desktops, built with CSS for GTK3, GTK4, and GNOME Shell. It includes an interactive installer with … | 79 | 1115 | active |
| edsrzf/mmap-go mmap-go is a portable memory-mapped file (mmap) package for Go. It provides a cross-platform API for mapping files into memory on Linux, ma… | 23 | 1113 | stable |
| somepaulo/MoreWaita MoreWaita is an expanded Adwaita-styled companion icon theme for GNOME Shell that adds icons for popular third-party apps and MIME types. I… | 94 | 1108 | active |
| memflow memflow is a Rust library providing a modular framework for physical memory introspection of machines, including live hardware, virtual mac… | 54 | 1108 | active |
| BastilleBSD/bastille Bastille is an open-source CLI tool for automating the deployment and management of containerized applications on FreeBSD using jails. It p… | 92 | 1106 | stable |
| shim shim is a small first-stage UEFI bootloader written in C that loads and validates a second-stage bootloader, enabling Secure Boot on Linux … | 69 | 1106 | active |
| contiki-os/contiki Contiki is an open source operating system for tiny low-power microcontrollers, providing standardized low-power wireless communication acr… | 32 | 3808 | maintenance |
| nwg-piotr/nwg-displays nwg-displays is a GTK-based GUI utility for managing display outputs on the sway, Hyprland, and Niri Wayland compositors. It lets users arr… | 93 | 1104 | active |
| MeowLove/Network-Reinstall-System-Modify A one-click shell script that reinstalls Linux and Windows operating systems over the network on VPS, cloud, or dedicated servers without C… | 62 | 1104 | active |
| vinc/moros MOROS is a text-based hobby operating system written in Rust for x86-64 BIOS computers, inspired by Unix, Plan 9, and DOS. It includes a cu… | 81 | 1101 | active |
| eugene-tarassov/vivado-risc-v A collection of Xilinx Vivado block designs and Tcl scripts that generate a RISC-V SoC FPGA bitstream capable of booting a full Debian Linu… | 76 | 1100 | active |
| thias/glim GLIM is a set of GRUB2 configuration files and a shell script that turn a VFAT-formatted USB stick into a multiboot device capable of booti… | 58 | 1100 | active |
| kunai-project/kunai Kunai is an eBPF-based threat-hunting and security-monitoring tool for Linux, often described as the Linux counterpart to Sysmon on Windows… | 80 | 1093 | active |
| weston-embedded/uC-OS3 µC/OS-III is a preemptive, highly portable, scalable real-time kernel (RTOS) originally developed by Micrium and now maintained by Weston E… | 61 | 1093 | stable |
| wslutilities/wslu wslu is a collection of shell utilities for the Windows Subsystem for Linux, including tools for path conversion, desktop shortcut creation… | 10 | 3743 | maintenance |
| nwg-piotr/nwg-shell nwg-shell is a GTK3-based desktop shell for the sway and Hyprland Wayland compositors, delivered as an installer and metapackage. It bundle… | 77 | 1089 | active |
| secureblue/secureblue secureblue is a security-focused desktop and server Linux operating system built as OCI bootable container images on top of Fedora Atomic D… | 93 | 1088 | active |
| ydkhatri/mac_apt mac_apt is a Python-based DFIR framework that parses macOS and iOS disk images or live systems to extract forensic artifacts like Safari hi… | 90 | 1088 | stable |
| fastos/fastsocket Fastsocket is a scalable Linux kernel TCP socket implementation that delivers linear performance scaling on multicore machines, transparent… | 23 | 3735 | maintenance |
| BlueManCZ/hyprmod HyprMod is a native GTK4/libadwaita settings application for the Hyprland Wayland compositor, written in Python. It provides a graphical in… | 81 | 1087 | active |
| microsoft/go-winio A Go library from Microsoft providing Win32 IO utilities, focused on named pipes and file handles, including using named pipes as a net tra… | 99 | 1084 | stable |
| mdlayher/netlink A Go library providing low-level access to Linux netlink sockets (AF_NETLINK). It offers an idiomatic, well-tested API for building netlink… | 92 | 1084 | stable |
| briankendall/proxy-audio-device A virtual audio driver (HAL plugin) for macOS that creates a proxy audio output device forwarding all audio to another output device. It le… | 82 | 1084 | active |
| soffes/HotKey HotKey is a small Swift library that wraps the Carbon APIs to make registering global keyboard shortcuts in macOS apps easy. It provides a … | 23 | 1081 | stable |
| Oversteer Oversteer is a GUI application for managing racing steering wheels on GNU/Linux, configuring settings like force feedback, rotation range, … | 50 | 1080 | active |
| lcpz/lain Lain is a Lua module providing alternative layouts, asynchronous widgets, and utility functions for the Awesome window manager (4.x). It is… | 70 | 1078 | active |
| ArtsyMacaw/wlogout wlogout is a GTK-based logout menu for Wayland environments, providing clickable buttons for actions like logout, shutdown, and reboot. It … | 23 | 1078 | active |
| openSUSE/open-build-service The Open Build Service (OBS) is a generic system to build and distribute binary packages from sources in an automatic, consistent, and repr… | 66 | 1077 | stable |
| shvchk/fallout-grub-theme A Fallout-themed visual theme for the GRUB bootloader, installed via a shell script. It supports many languages and is actively maintained … | 55 | 1074 | active |
| ovh/debian-cis A set of modular shell scripts that audit and harden Debian 11/12/13 systems according to CIS security benchmarks, used in production at OV… | 73 | 1069 | active |
| ZeroMemoryEx/Chaos-Rootkit Chaos-Rootkit is an x64 Ring 0 Windows kernel rootkit written in C++ as a research project to understand kernel internals and rootkit techn… | 55 | 1069 | active |
| anufrievroman/waypaper Waypaper is a GUI wallpaper manager for Linux systems running Wayland or Xorg, as well as macOS. It acts as a frontend for popular wallpape… | 82 | 1068 | active |
| pyroute2 A pure Python library for the Linux netlink protocol and BSD PF_ROUTE, providing message encoding/decoding and socket APIs for network conf… | 85 | 1066 | active |
| winesapOS/winesapOS winesapOS is a portable Arch Linux-based operating system image for gaming that runs from an internal or external drive without installatio… | 84 | 1066 | active |
| brona/iproute2mac A Python CLI wrapper providing Linux iproute2-style commands (ip, bridge, ss) on macOS. It lets Linux-savvy admins perform basic network co… | 94 | 1063 | active |
| aurutils/aurutils A collection of shell scripts that automate usage of the Arch User Repository (AUR), covering package searching, update checks, and depende… | 74 | 1061 | active |
| vitoplantamura/BugChecker BugChecker is a SoftICE-like kernel and user-mode debugger for Windows (XP through 11, x86 and x64) that runs entirely on the machine being… | 23 | 1061 | active |
| coldfix/udiskie udiskie is a udisks2 front-end that automatically mounts removable media such as USB drives and CDs from userspace on Linux. It includes a … | 75 | 1060 | active |
| MacPorts MacPorts is a package management system for macOS that compiles, installs, and manages open source software from Portfile definitions, inst… | 99 | 1059 | active |
| FDOS/kernel The FreeDOS kernel (DOS-C), an MS-DOS/PC-DOS compatible operating system kernel implementing the core DOS API. It is written in C and assem… | 82 | 1055 | active |
| ZitaoTech/HackberryPiCM5 HackberryPi_CM5 is an open-source ultra-portable handheld Linux computer built around the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5, featuring a 4-inch… | 32 | 1055 | active |
| an-anime-team/the-honkers-railway-launcher A graphical game launcher for Linux that manages Honkai: Star Rail installation, automatic patching, and telemetry disabling. It is part of… | 95 | 1053 | active |
| JaKooLit Hyprland Setup A collection of automated shell-based installer scripts for setting up the Hyprland Wayland compositor with KooL's preconfigured dotfiles o… | 64 | 3591 | maintenance |
| chris1111/Wireless-USB-Big-Sur-Adapter A macOS installer package providing drivers for Realtek 802.11n and 802.11ac USB Wi-Fi adapters, distributed as prebuilt binaries with no s… | 65 | 1050 | active |
| JLErvin/berry Berry is a small, lightweight stacking window manager for X11 written in C using XLib. It provides a healthy, byte-sized alternative for us… | 52 | 1050 | active |
| firewalld/firewalld firewalld is a dynamically managed firewall daemon for Linux that provides zone-based trust levels for network connections and interfaces, … | 97 | 1048 | stable |
| edk2-porting/edk2-rk3588 An open-source EDK2-based UEFI firmware implementation for Rockchip RK3588 SoC boards, providing a PC-like standardized boot experience. It… | 78 | 1047 | active |
| the0demiurge/CharlesScripts A collection of shell scripts, dotfiles, and small command-line utilities for setting up and maintaining Arch Linux, Ubuntu GNOME, or macOS… | 23 | 1047 | active |
| amlweems/xzbot A research toolkit for the xz backdoor (CVE-2024-3094) containing an OpenSSH honeypot patch to detect exploit attempts, a patch script to r… | 25 | 3550 | maintenance |
| gkpln3/CapsLockNoDelay A small macOS background utility written in Swift that removes the built-in delay when pressing the Caps Lock key. It runs invisibly in the… | 31 | 1039 | active |
| google/fscrypt fscrypt is a Go command-line tool for managing Linux native filesystem encryption (fscrypt API) on filesystems like ext4 and f2fs. It handl… | 82 | 1038 | active |
| CryoUtilities CryoUtilities is a Go-based utility with a GUI that tunes performance and manages storage on the Steam Deck, including swap resizing, kerne… | 23 | 3532 | maintenance |
| newmanls/rofi-themes-collection A collection of themes for the Rofi application launcher and window switcher on Linux. It provides ready-made rasi theme files (e.g., round… | 70 | 1034 | active |
| sk-ruban/notchi A macOS notch companion app that animates a mascot reacting in real time to Claude Code and Codex agent activity via hooks and a Unix socke… | 80 | 1033 | active |
| Zygo/bees bees is a userspace block-oriented deduplication agent for btrfs filesystems, written in C++. It runs as a daemon that incrementally scans … | 65 | 1033 | active |
| phil294/AHK_X11 AHK_X11 is a reimplementation of the AutoHotkey automation scripting language for Linux systems running the X11 windowing system. It suppor… | 56 | 1025 | active |
| nix-community/nixGL NixGL is a set of wrapper tools that solve the OpenGL and Vulkan driver-loading problem for applications run via the Nix package manager on… | 51 | 1025 | active |
| limboemu/limbo Limbo is a QEMU-based PC emulator that runs on Android devices, supporting x86/x86_64, ARM/ARM64, PowerPC, and Sparc guest architectures. I… | 23 | 3472 | maintenance |
| adrg/xdg A Go library implementing the XDG Base Directory Specification and XDG user directories, providing standard paths for application data, con… | 78 | 1022 | stable |
| redox-os/relibc relibc is a portable C standard library written in Rust, providing C, Linux, and BSD functions, a POSIX compatibility layer, and interfaces… | 75 | 1016 | active |