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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| pocopico/tinycore-redpill A Tiny Core Linux-based loader build tool (rploader.sh) for creating Synology DSM bootloaders using the Redpill kernel extension approach. … | 23 | 2210 | active |
| LinuxDroidMaster/Termux-Desktops A collection of shell scripts and documentation for launching full Linux desktop environments (XFCE4 and others) on Android devices via Ter… | 62 | 2207 | active |
| WoeUSB/WoeUSB-ng WoeUSB-ng is a Linux tool for creating bootable Windows installation USB drives from an ISO image or a real Windows DVD. It provides both a… | 48 | 2202 | active |
| adi1090x/dynamic-wallpaper A bash script (dwall) that automatically changes desktop wallpapers according to the current time of day using cron job scheduling. It ship… | 32 | 2200 | stable |
| jurplel/InstantSpaceSwitcher A native macOS app that switches between Spaces instantly by skipping the built-in animation, using a synthetic high-velocity trackpad gest… | 83 | 2198 | active |
| lenucksi/aur-malware-check A Python CLI tool that detects compromised AUR packages from the June 2026 atomic-lockfile supply-chain attack and other historical campaig… | 51 | 2196 | active |
| deviantfero/wpgtk wpgtk is a colorscheme, wallpaper, and template manager for *nix systems built on top of pywal, offering both a GTK GUI and a CLI. It gener… | 64 | 2192 | active |
| xremap xremap is a fast key remapper for Linux written in Rust that works on both X11 and Wayland via evdev and uinput. It supports application-sp… | 98 | 2188 | active |
| corecoding/Vitals Vitals is a GNOME Shell extension that displays computer temperature, voltage, fan speed, memory usage, CPU load, network speed, and storag… | 97 | 2187 | active |
| cnlohr/mini-rv32ima A tiny, single-file, header-only RISC-V RV32IMA emulator written in ~400 lines of dependency-free C, capable of booting Linux (RV32-NOMMU).… | 55 | 2185 | active |
| fayazara/Screendrop Screendrop is a native macOS app for screenshots and screen recording, serving as a free, self-hostable Loom alternative. It offers annotat… | 82 | 2174 | active |
| mirror/busybox BusyBox combines tiny versions of many common UNIX utilities (ls, sed, grep, tar, sh, etc.) into a single small, highly configurable execut… | 32 | 2173 | stable |
| sched-ext/scx A collection of sched_ext CPU scheduler implementations and tools for Linux, allowing kernel thread schedulers to be written in BPF and loa… | 86 | 2164 | active |
| SkyBlue997/enableMacosAI A shell-based installer plus a minimal macOS kernel extension (kext) that spoofs the device region code in IORegistry from CH/A to LL/A, un… | 56 | 2161 | active |
| microsoft/SysmonForLinux Sysmon for Linux is a Sysinternals tool that monitors and logs system activity such as process lifetime, network connections, and file syst… | 91 | 2160 | active |
| PipeWire/pipewire PipeWire is a server and user-space API for handling multimedia pipelines on Linux, providing a low-latency, graph-based engine for audio a… | 75 | 2160 | stable |
| PVE-Tools/PVE-Tools-9 PVE Tools Pro is an interactive Bash-based one-stop administration toolbox for Proxmox VE 9.x hosts. It wraps high-frequency and error-pron… | 82 | 2157 | active |
| nix-community/nix-on-droid Nix-on-Droid brings the Nix package manager to Android devices via a single-click F-Droid installable app based on a Termux terminal emulat… | 73 | 2153 | active |
| kainctl/isd isd is an interactive terminal UI (TUI) for managing systemd units, built in Python with the Textual framework. It provides fuzzy search ov… | 65 | 2152 | active |
| sgan81/apfs-fuse A read-only FUSE driver that mounts Apple File System (APFS) volumes on Linux. It supports FileVault-encrypted volumes, fusion drives, snap… | 32 | 2152 | active |
| christianhaitian/arkos ArkOS is a Linux-based custom operating system for retro gaming handhelds built on Rockchip and similar SoCs, such as the RG351 series, RGB… | 10 | 2151 | active |
| i486/VxKex VxKex is a set of API extensions for Windows 7 that allow some Windows 8, 8.1, and 10-exclusive applications to run on Windows 7. It works … | 76 | 2149 | active |
| nanochess/bootOS bootOS is a monolithic operating system written in x86 assembly that fits entirely within a single 512-byte boot sector. It provides a mini… | 75 | 2143 | stable |
| a13xp0p0v/kernel-hardening-checker A Python CLI tool that checks the security hardening options of the Linux kernel across Kconfig options, boot command line arguments, and s… | 75 | 2140 | active |
| LARBS Voidrice is a collection of Linux dotfiles (shell, editor, terminal program configs and helper scripts) deployed by the LARBS auto-installa… | 74 | 2137 | active |
| wzh4869/AppPorts AppPorts is a macOS utility that migrates large applications from /Applications to external storage (SSD, SD card, or NAS) while leaving a … | 85 | 2133 | active |
| jeffshee/hidamari Hidamari is a video wallpaper application for Linux written in Python that lets users set videos, streaming URLs, or webpages as their desk… | 76 | 2128 | active |
| hykilpikonna/hyfetch HyFetch is a command-line system information tool that displays OS and hardware details alongside customizable LGBTQ+ pride flags in the te… | 89 | 2126 | active |
| bytecodealliance/rustix Rustix is a Rust library providing safe, memory-safe and I/O-safe bindings to POSIX/Unix/Linux/Winsock syscall-like APIs. It offers configu… | 67 | 2123 | stable |
| mrzool/bash-sensible A single sourced shell file providing saner default settings for Bash, inspired by sensible.vim. It improves tab completion, command histor… | 32 | 2115 | stable |
| asmvik/skhd skhd is a simple hotkey daemon for macOS that lets users define global keyboard shortcuts in a text config file using a simple DSL. It supp… | 54 | 8139 | maintenance |
| trunkmaster/nextspace NEXTSPACE is a NeXTSTEP-like desktop environment for Linux built on GNUstep and WindowMaker, following the OpenStep User Interface Guidelin… | 57 | 2107 | active |
| al0ne/LinuxCheck A shell-based Linux emergency response and information gathering tool that performs 70+ security checks across 13 categories, including roo… | 23 | 2106 | active |
| tyilo/insert_dylib A command line utility written in C that inserts a dylib load command (LC_LOAD_DYLIB or LC_LOAD_WEAK_DYLIB) into Mach-O binaries, including… | 34 | 2098 | active |
| creack/pty A Go library providing an interface to Unix pseudo-terminals (PTYs). It lets Go programs start commands like exec.Command attached to a PTY… | 57 | 2096 | stable |
| osandov/drgn drgn is a programmable debugger that exposes program types and variables for expressive Python scripting, originally developed at Meta for … | 80 | 2093 | active |
| rebootuser/LinEnum LinEnum is a shell script that performs scripted local Linux enumeration and privilege escalation checks. It gathers system, user, network,… | 32 | 8039 | maintenance |
| domferr/tilingshell Tiling Shell is a GNOME Shell extension that adds advanced tiling window management to GNOME, extending the default two-column tiling to ar… | 74 | 2083 | active |
| cage-kiosk/cage Cage is a Wayland kiosk compositor that runs a single maximized application and prevents user interaction with anything else. It is built o… | 82 | 2082 | active |
| vinceliuice/WhiteSur-icon-theme WhiteSur Icon Theme is a MacOS Big Sur style icon theme for Linux desktops, installable via a shell script with color variants and KDE/GTK … | 87 | 2079 | active |
| patrikx3/onenote P3X OneNote Linux is an Electron-based desktop application that wraps the Microsoft OneNote web app into a standalone Linux window. It supp… | 80 | 2079 | active |
| ThioJoe/Windows-Super-God-Mode A PowerShell script that generates shortcuts to virtually every special shell folder, task link, system setting (ms-settings:), deep link, … | 62 | 2076 | active |
| lassekongo83/adw-gtk3 adw-gtk3 is an unofficial GTK3 port of the libadwaita theme, bringing GNOME 40+ style visuals to legacy GTK3 applications. It ships as a th… | 78 | 2069 | active |
| ValveSoftware/wine Valve's fork of Wine, a compatibility layer that runs Microsoft Windows executables (DOS, Win32, Win64) on Unix-like systems by translating… | 76 | 2069 | active |
| SAP/macOS-enterprise-privileges Privileges is a free macOS application from SAP that lets enterprise users temporarily elevate their accounts to administrator rights for a… | 92 | 2065 | active |
| didriksg/Crisp Crisp is a free, open-source macOS menu bar app for controlling external monitors, offering sharp HiDPI/Retina scaling, DDC hardware bright… | 80 | 2061 | active |
| usbarmory/tamago TamaGo is a framework that enables compilation and execution of Go applications directly on bare metal processors, without any underlying o… | 96 | 2060 | active |
| garywill/linux-router A single-file bash script that turns a Linux machine into a router in one command, wrapping iptables, dnsmasq, and related tools. It suppor… | 76 | 2058 | active |
| TeamWin/Team-Win-Recovery-Project Team Win Recovery Project (TWRP) is the leading open-source custom recovery environment for Android devices, written primarily in C. It pro… | 32 | 2057 | active |
| libretro/Lakka-LibreELEC Lakka is a lightweight open-source Linux distribution built on LibreELEC that turns small computers like the Raspberry Pi into a dedicated … | 72 | 2056 | active |
| canonical/snapd snapd is the background daemon and snap CLI tool that manages snap packages on Linux systems, handling installation, updates, confinement, … | 98 | 2055 | stable |
| facebookincubator/oomd oomd is a userspace out-of-memory (OOM) killer for Linux systems that leverages PSI and cgroupv2 to monitor memory pressure holistically. I… | 67 | 2054 | stable |
| jtsylve/LiME LiME (Linux Memory Extractor) is a loadable kernel module that acquires volatile memory from Linux and Android devices, writing captures to… | 75 | 2050 | active |
| AndreRH/hangover Hangover is a compatibility layer that runs x86_64 and x86_32 Windows applications on ARM64 (aarch64) Linux by combining Wine with emulator… | 94 | 2049 | active |
| DavidoTek/ProtonUp-Qt ProtonUp-Qt is a graphical Qt 6 application for installing and managing Steam compatibility tools like GE-Proton and Luxtorpeda, and Wine-G… | 85 | 2047 | active |
| berdav/CVE-2021-4034 A proof-of-concept exploit and vulnerability checker for CVE-2021-4034 (PwnKit), a polkit pkexec local privilege escalation vulnerability i… | 32 | 2044 | stable |
| GrapheneOS/hardened_malloc hardened_malloc is a security-focused general purpose memory allocator implementing the malloc API with extensive hardening against heap co… | 75 | 2029 | active |
| stumpwm/stumpwm StumpWM is a tiling window manager for X11 written entirely in Common Lisp, designed to be highly customizable and driven entirely by the k… | 64 | 2029 | active |
| Octane0411/open-vibe-island Open Island is a native macOS menu bar/notch application that acts as a control center for AI coding agents like Claude Code, Codex, and Ge… | 79 | 2027 | active |
| SimonSchubert/LinuxCommandLibrary A cross-platform offline reference app providing 8,966 formatted Linux man pages, 30+ categorized command basics, and terminal tips. It shi… | 93 | 2026 | active |
| dodo-reach/hermes-desktop Hermes Desktop is a native macOS (Swift/SwiftUI) companion app for managing a Hermes Agent host, either locally or over pure SSH. It provid… | 67 | 2024 | active |
| BlueM/cliclick cliclick is a macOS command-line tool for emulating mouse clicks, movements, and keyboard input from the shell. It is written in Objective-… | 36 | 2022 | active |
| systemd/mkosi mkosi is a Python CLI tool from the systemd project that builds bespoke, bootable OS disk images by wrapping distribution package managers … | 98 | 2016 | active |
| pilotmoon/PopClip-Extensions Source code repository for PopClip extensions published in the official PopClip Extensions Directory, maintained by @pilotmoon. PopClip ext… | 75 | 2015 | active |
| corpnewt/GenSMBIOS A Python script by corpnewt that wraps acidanthera's macserial tool to generate SMBIOS serial numbers and related identifiers for Hackintos… | 56 | 2003 | active |
| guhcostan/mac-cleaner-cli A free, open-source macOS CLI tool that frees up disk space by scanning for and removing caches, logs, Homebrew leftovers, Xcode DerivedDat… | 83 | 1999 | active |
| ChimeraOS ChimeraOS is a Linux distribution that turns any PC into a gaming console using Steam Big Picture mode. It provides a fully controller-comp… | 69 | 1999 | active |
| Start9Labs/start-technologies Start Technologies is the monorepo for Start9's products, headlined by StartOS, an open-source Linux distribution that turns any PC into a … | 96 | 1994 | active |
| managarm/managarm Managarm is a pragmatic microkernel-based operating system written in modern C++ with a fully asynchronous I/O API. It provides POSIX and L… | 77 | 1992 | active |
| hfiref0x/WinObjEx64 WinObjEx64 is a 64-bit Windows utility for exploring the Windows Object Manager namespace, viewing detailed object properties, structure du… | 86 | 1986 | active |
| ChefKissInc/NootedRed NootedRed is a macOS kernel extension (kext) that provides GPU bug fixes, quality-of-life improvements, and extended hardware support for A… | 91 | 1978 | active |
| djpohly/dwl dwl is a compact, hackable tiling Wayland compositor built on wlroots, designed to fill the same role in the Wayland world that dwm does in… | 10 | 1971 | active |
| Hermit Hermit is a lightweight unikernel written entirely in Rust, targeting scalable and predictable runtimes for high-performance and cloud comp… | 83 | 1970 | active |
| dahliaOS (Pangolin Desktop) Pangolin is the desktop environment shell for dahliaOS, written in Dart/Flutter, providing a start menu, settings, search, terminal, and ot… | 39 | 1969 | active |
| Jailhouse Jailhouse is a Linux-based partitioning hypervisor that splits hardware resources into isolated cells running bare-metal applications or ad… | 32 | 1967 | stable |
| MFDGaming/ubuntu-in-termux A shell script that installs an Ubuntu 22.04 rootfs inside the Termux terminal app on Android using proot, requiring no root access. It pro… | 23 | 1964 | active |
| nullpo-head/wsl-distrod Distrod is a meta-distribution installer for WSL 2 that lets users install Linux distros like Ubuntu, Arch, Debian, and Gentoo with systemd… | 39 | 1956 | active |
| hoytech/vmtouch vmtouch is a portable command-line utility for learning about and controlling the file system cache of Unix and Unix-like systems. It repor… | 32 | 1951 | stable |
| yuk7/wsldl wsldl is an advanced launcher and installer for Windows Subsystem for Linux distributions, written in Go. It lets users install any rootfs … | 86 | 1948 | active |
| lgarron/folderify A Rust CLI tool that generates pixel-perfect macOS folder icons in the native style from a PNG mask file, producing .icns and .iconset file… | 91 | 1945 | active |
| elitak/nixos-infect A shell script that replaces the existing operating system on a freshly provisioned VPS or cloud host with NixOS. It supports many provider… | 62 | 1941 | active |
| xXJSONDeruloXx/decky-lsfg-vk A Decky Loader plugin that streamlines installation and configuration of lsfg-vk, the Vulkan-based Lossless Scaling frame generation layer,… | 83 | 1940 | active |
| microsoft/openvmm OpenVMM is a modular, cross-platform Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) written in Rust, developed by Microsoft. It also hosts OpenHCL, a paravi… | 93 | 1938 | active |
| Aorimn/dislocker Dislocker is a FUSE-based driver and library that reads and writes Windows BitLocker-encrypted partitions (including BitLocker-To-Go) from … | 74 | 1938 | stable |
| OP-TEE OP-TEE Trusted OS is the secure-world operating system implementation of the OP-TEE project, running on ARM TrustZone-enabled hardware. It … | 75 | 1935 | active |
| NodeOS/NodeOS NodeOS is a lightweight operating system built on the Linux kernel that uses Node.js as its userspace and npm as its primary package manage… | 23 | 7344 | maintenance |
| moesoha/debian-media-box A printable box design and instruction manual for packaging Debian installation media, styled as a medicine box (a joke referencing the Deb… | 35 | 1931 | active |
| marcan/takeover.sh A shell script that takes over a running Linux system over SSH, letting you boot into an in-memory rescue environment and unmount the origi… | 32 | 7325 | maintenance |
| AsimovMac/asimov A macOS shell-based CLI tool that automatically excludes development dependency directories (like node_modules, .venv, target) from Apple T… | 94 | 1926 | active |
| amebalabs/TRex TRex is a macOS menu bar application that extracts text from any visible screen area using OCR, copying it directly to the clipboard. It wo… | 82 | 1926 | active |
| Shpigford/chops Chops is a free, open-source macOS app for discovering, browsing, editing, and organizing AI coding agent skills and agents across tools li… | 76 | 1926 | active |
| CoreELEC/CoreELEC CoreELEC is a lightweight 'Just enough OS' Linux distribution built to run Kodi media center software on low-cost Amlogic-based hardware. I… | 70 | 1926 | active |
| OpenRC/openrc OpenRC is a dependency-based init system for Unix-like operating systems that works alongside the system-provided /sbin/init program. It ma… | 75 | 1919 | stable |
| scanmem/scanmem scanmem is a Linux command-line memory scanner that isolates the address of a variable in a running process by scanning repeatedly for its … | 64 | 1919 | active |
| illumos/illumos-gate illumos-gate is the core source tree of illumos, an open-source Unix operating system descended from OpenSolaris. It provides advanced feat… | 77 | 1917 | active |
| fosskers/aura Aura is a multilingual package manager for Arch Linux that extends pacman with AUR support and additional features like package downgrading… | 66 | 1917 | active |
| material-shell/material-shell Material Shell is a GNOME Shell extension that provides a modern, material-design desktop interface for Linux with automatic tiling window … | 23 | 7245 | maintenance |
| volitank/nala Nala is a command-line front-end for libapt-pkg, rewritten in Rust on top of rust-apt, that makes APT package operations easier to inspect … | 77 | 1908 | active |
| bminor/glibc The GNU C Library (glibc), the standard C library for GNU/Linux and GNU/Hurd systems, providing the system API for C and C-compatible langu… | 10 | 1895 | stable |
| sickcodes/osx-optimizer A collection of shell scripts that optimize macOS using the `defaults` command and other system tweaks to speed up boot time, reduce UI ove… | 32 | 1891 | active |