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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| plasma-umass/Mesh Mesh is a drop-in replacement malloc library for C/C++ that transparently reduces memory footprint by recovering from heap fragmentation wi… | 77 | 1887 | active |
| joehillen/sysz sysz is a shell-based terminal UI that wraps systemctl with fzf for interactively browsing, filtering, and managing systemd units. It suppo… | 23 | 1886 | stable |
| oracle/bpftune bpftune is a daemon that uses eBPF observability to continuously monitor Linux system behavior and automatically adjust kernel tunables suc… | 65 | 1885 | active |
| NVMe Management Suite The official NVM Express user space tooling for Linux, providing the `nvme` command line tool and the libnvme library it is built on. It su… | 94 | 1884 | stable |
| vinceliuice/Tela-icon-theme Tela is a flat, colorful icon theme for Linux desktops with many color variants (standard, Nord, Ubuntu, Manjaro, etc.). It installs via a … | 78 | 1884 | active |
| LXQt LXQt is a lightweight, modular Qt-based desktop environment for Linux and BSD, successor to LXDE and Razor-qt. This repository is a git sup… | 82 | 1883 | active |
| Fleex255/PolicyPlus Policy Plus is a free Windows application that provides a Local Group Policy Editor for all Windows editions, including Home editions that … | 69 | 1882 | active |
| simh/simh SIMH is a collection of highly portable simulators for historically significant computer systems such as the DEC PDP series, VAX, IBM mainf… | 66 | 1882 | active |
| jaypipes/ghw ghw is a Go library for discovering and inspecting host hardware, covering CPU, memory, block storage, network, PCI, GPU, topology, BIOS, a… | 97 | 1880 | active |
| diamondburned/dissent Dissent (formerly gtkcord4) is a lightweight third-party Discord client built with GTK4 and libadwaita for a native Linux desktop experienc… | 74 | 1860 | active |
| nix-community/lanzaboote Lanzaboote is Rust tooling that brings UEFI Secure Boot and Measured Boot support to NixOS. Its lzbt tool signs boot components, builds Uni… | 80 | 1858 | active |
| memtest86plus/memtest86plus Memtest86+ is a free, open-source, stand-alone memory tester for x86, x86-64, ARM AArch64, and LoongArch64 computers. It boots directly fro… | 91 | 1842 | active |
| abusoww/tuxmate TuxMate is a web-based cross-distro Linux app installer command generator. Users select the applications they want, and it produces inspect… | 46 | 1839 | active |
| Furglitch/modorganizer2-linux-installer MO2-LINT is a Python-based CLI installer that automates setting up Mod Organizer 2 on Linux, including Proton setup, NXM handler registrati… | 99 | 1835 | active |
| marin-m/vmlinux-to-elf A Python CLI (with optional GUI) that recovers a fully analyzable ELF file from raw or stripped Linux kernel images (vmlinux, vmlinuz, bzIm… | 92 | 1834 | stable |
| HoShiMin/Kernel-Bridge Kernel-Bridge is a C++20 Windows kernel driver template, development framework, and kernel-mode API with wrappers, including a hypervisor s… | 23 | 1827 | active |
| MatheuZSecurity/Singularity Singularity is a stealthy Linux kernel module (LKM) rootkit targeting modern 6.x kernels, using ftrace-based syscall hooking to hide proces… | 62 | 1825 | active |
| OpenSCAP OpenSCAP is a NIST-certified open-source toolkit providing both a C library and the 'oscap' command-line tool for parsing, validating, edit… | 83 | 1822 | stable |
| tanelpoder/0xtools 0x.tools is a set of Linux performance analysis tools (xcapture and xtop) that use modern eBPF to sample thread-level system activity such … | 52 | 1821 | active |
| Amog-OS/AmogOS AmogOS is a parody Linux distribution themed around the game Among Us, built on Openbox WM and LXDE to stay lightweight. It ships custom wa… | 54 | 1816 | active |
| Vysp3r/ProtonPlus ProtonPlus is a GTK4/libadwaita desktop application for managing Windows compatibility tools (Proton, Wine, DXVK, VKD3D) on Linux. It insta… | 96 | 1815 | active |
| lahfir/agent-desktop A native Rust CLI that lets AI agents control desktop applications through OS accessibility trees, returning structured JSON with determini… | 83 | 1808 | active |
| WiVRn/WiVRn WiVRn is a fully open-source OpenXR application that wirelessly streams VR games from a Linux PC to standalone Android-based VR headsets li… | 94 | 1802 | active |
| tuigreet/tuigreet tuigreet is a terminal-based graphical console greeter for greetd, providing a login interface with session management, user selection, and… | 96 | 1801 | active |
| acidanthera/VirtualSMC VirtualSMC is an advanced Apple SMC (System Management Controller) emulator implemented as a macOS kernel extension, requiring the Lilu kex… | 93 | 1800 | active |
| oreboot/oreboot oreboot is a downstream fork of coreboot rewritten mostly in Rust (with assembly where needed), serving as a firmware/bootloader for variou… | 70 | 1797 | active |
| p-e-w/argos Argos is a GNOME Shell extension that lets users create panel dropdown menu extensions by writing simple Bash scripts whose stdout is rende… | 65 | 1795 | active |
| ReSukiSU/ReSukiSU ReSukiSU is a KernelSU-based root solution for Android, forked from SukiSU Ultra with a focus on enhanced stability. It provides kernel-lev… | 69 | 1792 | active |
| immortalwrt-mt798x An ImmortalWrt (OpenWrt fork) variant targeting MediaTek MT798x family routers, providing a full embedded Linux firmware build system with … | 55 | 1788 | active |
| rcore-os/zCore zCore is a reimplementation of Google's Zircon microkernel written in safe Rust, runnable both as a userspace libos program and on bare met… | 83 | 1779 | active |
| GNOME/glib GLib is the low-level core C library underpinning GTK and GNOME, providing data structures, an object system (GObject), an event loop, thre… | 77 | 1773 | stable |
| pwn20wndstuff/Undecimus Undecimus is the open-source iOS app behind the unc0ver jailbreak, supporting iOS 11.0 through 12.4 on ARM64 devices. It applies kernel and… | 23 | 6614 | maintenance |
| wimpysworld/deb-get deb-get is a command-line tool that brings apt-get-style package management to .deb packages published in third-party apt repositories or v… | 83 | 1763 | active |
| bohanwood/debi A shell script that reinstalls any VPS or physical machine to a minimal Debian system via network boot by injecting the Debian installer in… | 53 | 1763 | active |
| Flat Remix Flat Remix is a flat, material-design-inspired icon theme for Linux desktops, with dark/light variants and many folder color options. It al… | 52 | 1763 | active |
| OpenPrinting/cups OpenPrinting CUPS is the standards-based, open source printing system for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems, supporting AirPrint,… | 89 | 1753 | active |
| cowtoolz/webcamize Webcamize is a command-line tool that turns almost any modern camera—DSLRs, mirrorless cameras, camcorders, point-and-shoots, and some smar… | 65 | 1752 | active |
| tokio-rs/io-uring A Rust library providing a safe, low-level interface to the Linux io_uring asynchronous I/O kernel API. It exposes submission and completio… | 74 | 1751 | stable |
| SystemUI Tuner SystemUI Tuner is an Android app for viewing and modifying hidden system settings on Android devices. It exposes hidden APIs and SystemUI t… | 64 | 1749 | active |
| Hybrid-Mount/meta-hybrid_mount Hybrid Mount is a metamodule for KernelSU and APatch that manages how other root modules are mounted on Android. At boot it scans installed… | 80 | 1746 | active |
| numtide/system-manager System Manager is a Nix-based tool for declaratively configuring Linux machines on any distribution, not just NixOS. It lets you describe p… | 81 | 1740 | active |
| 1amSimp1e/dots A collection of Linux dotfiles and desktop customization configurations ('rices') for Hyprland and GNOME, including terminal emulators, zsh… | 32 | 1739 | active |
| oerg866/win98-quickinstall A framework and automated installer that rapidly installs Windows 98/ME on hardware ranging from 486-era PCs to modern systems. It provides… | 87 | 1736 | active |
| nfzerox/VirtualMacOniPad Virtual Mac on iPad is a jailbreak-only application that runs full macOS in a virtual machine on Apple Silicon iPads (M1/M2). It uses the i… | 74 | 1734 | active |
| sudo-project/sudo Sudo is a Unix utility that allows a system administrator to delegate limited root or other-user privileges to users on a per-command basis… | 79 | 1730 | stable |
| joshiemoore/snakeware snakeware is a free Linux distribution whose userspace is written entirely in Python, booting directly into a Python interpreter inspired b… | 23 | 1730 | active |
| rancher/os RancherOS is a tiny Linux distribution in which the entire operating system, including system services, runs as Docker containers managed b… | 10 | 6448 | maintenance |
| machyve/xhyve xhyve is a lightweight hypervisor for macOS, a port of FreeBSD's bhyve built on Apple's Hypervisor.framework. It runs entirely in userspace… | 23 | 6432 | maintenance |
| cardisoft/cardinal Cardinal is a fast, accurate file search application for macOS built with Rust and Tauri, supporting an Everything-compatible search syntax… | 82 | 1725 | active |
| vinceliuice/Vimix-gtk-themes Vimix is a flat Material Design theme for GTK 3, GTK 2, and GNOME Shell, based on the Materia GTK theme. It supports GTK-based desktop envi… | 34 | 1725 | active |
| WildKernels/GKI_KernelSU_SUSFS Prebuilt Android GKI (Generic Kernel Image) kernels for Android 5.10+ devices with KernelSU root support and SUSFS root-hiding patches inte… | 88 | 1721 | active |
| ghaerr/elks ELKS is an embeddable subset of the Linux operating system targeting 16-bit Intel IA16 processors (8086, 8088, 80186, 80286, NEC V20/V30). … | 92 | 1719 | active |
| nix-community/nix-ld nix-ld is a shim dynamic linker that lets unpatched precompiled Linux binaries run on NixOS by installing itself at the conventional loader… | 69 | 1717 | active |
| lede-project/source The LEDE Project source tree, a fork that later reunified with OpenWrt, providing a Linux operating system build system for embedded device… | 77 | 1716 | active |
| elFarto/nvidia-vaapi-driver A VA-API driver implementation that uses NVIDIA's NVDEC hardware decoder as its backend, written in C. It is primarily designed to enable h… | 89 | 1713 | active |
| Coopydood/ultimate-macOS-KVM A Python-based automation toolkit and guide for creating macOS virtual machines on Linux using KVM/QEMU, with OpenCore bootstrapping and op… | 63 | 1711 | active |
| localdesktop/localdesktop.github.io Local Desktop is a free, open-source Android app that runs a full desktop Linux environment (Arch Linux ARM64 with an Xfce Wayland session)… | 86 | 1707 | active |
| fangfufu/Linux-Fake-Background-Webcam A Python application that creates a virtual webcam on GNU/Linux with fake backgrounds, including background replacement, blurring, animated… | 59 | 1706 | active |
| helixarch/debtap debtap is a Shell script that converts Debian .deb packages into Arch Linux packages with a focus on metadata accuracy. It can also generat… | 46 | 1706 | active |
| iNiR iNiR is a complete desktop shell for the Niri Wayland compositor, built on Quickshell and written in QML. It provides a top bar, dock, side… | 81 | 1701 | active |
| mcpelauncher An unofficial open-source launcher that runs the Android version of Minecraft: Bedrock Edition on Linux and macOS by emulating the Android … | 98 | 1699 | active |
| vygr/ChrysaLisp ChrysaLisp is a 64-bit parallel operating system environment featuring a virtual processor, GUI, terminal, OO assembler, C-Script compiler,… | 98 | 1695 | active |
| dnoegel/php-xdg-base-dir A small PHP library implementing the XDG Base Directory specification, exposing home, config, data, cache, and runtime directories via a si… | 23 | 6286 | maintenance |
| unifreq/openwrt_packit Flippy's OpenWrt packaging scripts that build flashable .img firmware images for ARM64 SoC TV boxes and development boards (Amlogic, Rockch… | 74 | 1691 | active |
| OSTree libostree (formerly OSTree) is a shared library and suite of command line tools that combines a git-like model for committing and downloadi… | 90 | 1689 | stable |
| TritonDataCenter/smartos-live smartos-live is the root repository for building SmartOS, a live-image illumos-based operating system from the Triton DataCenter project. I… | 75 | 1685 | active |
| dwmkerr/sharpshell SharpShell is a .NET Framework framework that simplifies creating Windows Shell Extensions, handling the COM interop and registration plumb… | 65 | 1679 | stable |
| Minimal Linux Live Minimal Linux Live (MLL) is a tiny educational Linux distribution built entirely from scratch via a collection of automated shell scripts. … | 57 | 1678 | active |
| sickcodes/osx-serial-generator A shell-based tool that generates valid macOS serial numbers, UUIDs, and board serials for use with OpenCore, OSX-KVM, and Docker-OSX. It i… | 34 | 1678 | stable |
| leukipp/touchkio TouchKio is a Node.js/Electron application that displays a Home Assistant dashboard in kiosk mode on a Linux device (e.g. Raspberry Pi) wit… | 86 | 1677 | active |
| CyberShadow/aconfmgr aconfmgr is a shell-based configuration manager for Arch Linux that tracks installed packages and changes to /etc configuration files as ex… | 76 | 1675 | active |
| hyprwm/hyprlock hyprlock is a GPU-accelerated, multi-threaded screen locking utility built for the Hyprland Wayland compositor. It uses the ext-session-loc… | 84 | 1674 | active |
| ghostwright/ghost-os Ghost OS is a native macOS framework that gives AI agents full computer-use capabilities by exposing the macOS accessibility tree, Chrome D… | 56 | 1673 | active |
| uiriansan/SilentSDDM SilentSDDM is a highly customizable theme for the SDDM display manager on Linux, built with QML and Qt6. It ships multiple preset configura… | 80 | 1672 | active |
| lwfinger/rtw88 A downstream backport of the Realtek rtw88 series WiFi 5 drivers from the Linux wireless-next repository, supporting PCIe, SDIO, and USB ch… | 66 | 1672 | active |
| inket/MacSymbolicator A native macOS app for symbolicating macOS/iOS crash reports (.crash, .ips) as well as sample, spindump, and hang reports using dSYM files.… | 39 | 1670 | active |
| libfuse/libfuse libfuse is the reference userspace library for the Linux FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) interface, letting applications implement and mount… | 93 | 6164 | maintenance |
| Pacstall Pacstall is an AUR-inspired package manager for Ubuntu and Debian written in Bash. It lets users install software from community 'pacscript… | 93 | 1658 | active |
| rust-osdev/uefi-rs uefi-rs is a Rust crate providing safe, convenient, and performant abstractions over the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI). It e… | 76 | 1658 | active |
| vinceliuice/Qogir-theme Qogir is a flat design GTK theme for GTK 3, GTK 2, and GNOME Shell, based on the Arc theme. It supports GTK-based desktop environments like… | 60 | 1658 | active |
| jeffshee/gnome-ext-hanabi Hanabi is a GNOME Shell extension that enables live video wallpapers on the GNOME desktop. It supports GNOME 45+ (with a TypeScript rewrite… | 76 | 1645 | active |
| SELinuxProject/selinux The upstream userspace repository for Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux), providing the libraries and tools that complement SELinux support … | 84 | 1634 | stable |
| GhostNaN/mpvpaper mpvpaper is a video wallpaper program for wlroots-based Wayland compositors such as sway, using mpv to render videos as desktop wallpapers.… | 80 | 1633 | active |
| ROCKNIX/distribution ROCKNIX is an immutable Linux distribution for handheld gaming devices focused on retro gaming emulation, developed by a community of enthu… | 93 | 1629 | active |
| macos-fuse-t/fuse-t FUSE-T is a kext-less FUSE implementation for macOS that replaces kernel extensions with a userspace NFSv4/SMB/FSKit server, letting macOS … | 98 | 1627 | active |
| vinceliuice/MacTahoe-gtk-theme A macOS Tahoe-like GTK theme for Linux desktops, based on the WhiteSur GTK theme. It includes installer scripts with customization options … | 79 | 1626 | active |
| intelxed/xed Intel XED is a C library for encoding and decoding X86 (IA32 and Intel64) machine instructions, converting between byte sequences and struc… | 89 | 1622 | stable |
| meefik/linuxdeploy An open-source Android application that installs and runs GNU/Linux distributions on Android devices via chroot environments. It bootstraps… | 23 | 5953 | maintenance |
| OpenAtomFoundation/TobudOS TobudOS (formerly TencentOS Tiny) is a real-time operating system for IoT devices, incubated by the OpenAtom Foundation after being donated… | 23 | 5939 | maintenance |
| regolith-linux/regolith-desktop Regolith Desktop is a Linux desktop environment that combines the i3 tiling window manager with GNOME session tooling. This repository is t… | 47 | 1610 | active |
| Frogging-Family/linux-tkg A set of shell scripts that automatically download, patch, and compile custom Linux kernels (version 5.4 and newer) with a selection of des… | 95 | 1605 | active |
| thenickdude/wacom-driver-fix A set of patched Wacom tablet drivers that fix broken Bamboo, Graphire, Intuos 1-3, and first-gen Cintiq drivers on macOS Catalina, Big Sur… | 44 | 1605 | active |
| kcrawford/dockutil dockutil is a Swift command line utility for managing macOS Dock items, supporting add, remove, move, find, and list operations on applicat… | 46 | 1604 | active |
| RandomCoderOrg/ubuntu-on-android ubuntu-on-android (udroid) is a tool that installs pre-configured Ubuntu filesystems with desktop environments and development tools on And… | 66 | 1603 | active |
| Heads Heads is an open-source firmware and OS configuration that runs a minimal Linux as a coreboot or LinuxBoot ROM payload, moving the root of … | 68 | 1602 | active |
| embox/embox Embox is a highly configurable POSIX-compliant real-time operating system for resource-constrained embedded systems and microcontrollers. I… | 89 | 1599 | active |
| HelenOS/helenos HelenOS is a portable microkernel-based multiserver operating system written from scratch in C, decomposing OS functionality like file syst… | 67 | 1599 | active |
| tkashkin/Adwaita-for-Steam A CSS-based skin that makes the Steam client look like a native GNOME/Adwaita application. It patches Steam's interface files and offers ma… | 73 | 1597 | active |
| matheus-git/systemd-manager-tui A terminal user interface (TUI) application written in Rust for managing systemd services. It lets users view logs, list services, inspect … | 88 | 1594 | active |
| nohajc/anylinuxfs A Rust CLI utility for macOS that mounts any Linux-supported filesystem (ext4, btrfs, xfs, ZFS, NTFS, exFAT, etc.) with full read-write acc… | 84 | 1579 | active |