Best Open Source Software

VirtualBox

Powerful virtualization product for enterprise and home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as open source. VirtualBox lets you try out Android, Windows, live CDs and more, without having to trouble with bootloaders.

OS	Supported	Notes
		VirtualBox has platform packages for Windows, OS X, Linux, and Solaris hosts. There are some pre-built VMs designed for developers. Homepage: www.virtualbox.org Developer: Oracle Corporation License: GNU GPL v2 Written in: C, C++, Assembly

BleachBit

BleachBit quickly frees disk space and tirelessly guards your privacy. Free cache, delete cookies, clear Internet history, shred temporary files, delete logs, and discard junk you didn’t know was there. An indispensable tool for keeping your system clean of detritus.

Supported applications include Firefox, Flash, Internet Explorer, Java, Opera, Safari, GNOME, and many others.

OS	Supported	Notes
		Bleachbit is actively maintained for Linux, Windows, OS X, and BlackBerry. Homepage: www.bleachbit.org Developer: Andrew Ziem License: GNU GPL v3 Written in: Python

ClamAV

ClamAV is an antivirus engine for detecting trojans, viruses, malware & other malicious threats. Currently developed by Cisco, ClamAV is freely distributable and its updates are free to download too.

ClamAV includes a number of utilities: a command-line scanner, automatic database updater and a scalable multi-threaded daemon, running on an anti-virus engine from a shared library.

OS	Supported	Notes
		ClamAV is available for many Linux distributions, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, OpenCSW, AIX, BSD, HP-UX, OpenVMS, OSF, Solaris as well as Windows and OS X. Homepage: www.clamav.net Developer: Cisco Systems License: GNU GPL v2 Written in: C, C++

Déjà Dup

The reason why home users don’t backup is because it’s too much of a chore. The solution – a really simple backup tool. Déjà Dup hides the complexity of backing up the Right Way (encrypted, off-site, and regular) and uses Duplicity as the backend.

OS	Supported	Notes
		Déjà Dup can be installed on most Linux distributions. Some distributions, such as Ubuntu, install it by default. Homepage: launchpad.net/deja-dup Developer: Déjà Dup Maintainers License: GNU GPL v3 Written in: Python

Redo Backup

Redo Backup and Recovery is so simple and user-friendly that anyone can use it. It is the easiest, most complete disaster recovery solution available. Tried and tested, Redo Backup is a reliable solution.

Redo Backup and Recovery allows bare-metal restore. Bare metal restore is not only the best solution for hardware failure, it is also the ultimate antivirus: Even if your hard drive melts or gets completely erased by a virus, you can have a completely-functional system back up and running in as little as 10 minutes.

OS	Supported	Notes
		Redo Backup and Recovery is a live CD so it does not matter what operating system you use. The live CD is built on Ubuntu to provide a graphical user interface and unmodified binaries of each program. Homepage: redobackup.org Developer: RedoBackup.org License: GNU GPL v3 Written in: Perl

GParted

A front-end to GNU Parted and the official GNOME Partition Editor application besides Disks. It is used for creating, deleting, resizing, moving, checking and copying partitions, and the file systems on them. Not a tool you’ll use that often, but when needed, it will be appreciated.

OS	Supported	Notes
		GParted Live is a small bootable GNU/Linux distribution that contains the partition editor application. GParted can be used on x86 and x86-64 based computers running Linux, Windows, or Mac OS X by booting from media containing GParted Live. You need Parted >= 1.7.1 and Gtkmm >= 2.8.x Homepage: gparted.org Developer: GParted developers License: GNU GPL v2 Written in: C++

VeraCrypt

This is high quality disk encryption software which is a fork from the discontinued TrueCrypt software. VeraCrypt adds enhanced security to the algorithms used for system and partitions encryption, and solves many vulnerabilities and security issues found in TrueCrypt.

Individual ciphers supported by VeraCrypt are AES, Serpent, Twofish, Camellia, and Kuznyechik. Five different combinations of cascaded algorithms are available: AES-Twofish, AES-Twofish-Serpent, Serpent-AES, Serpent-Twofish-AES and Twofish-Serpent.

OS	Supported	Notes
		VeraCrypt has stable releases for Windows, OS X and Linux, as well as Raspbian (a Raspberry Pi ARMv7 distribution). Homepage: veracrypt.codeplex.com Developer: IDRIX License: Apache License 2.0 Written in: C, C++, Assembly

Wine

Short for Wine Is Not an Emulator, Wine allows allow applications designed for Microsoft Windows to run on Unix-like operating systems, including Linux. A great example of colloboration between volunteer developers and a commercial organisation (CodeWeavers), Wine still has a part to play for applications that only support Windows.

OS	Supported	Notes
		The developers provide binary packages for popular Linux distributions, Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and Mageia. There are also OS X packages available. Homepage: www.winehq.org Developer: Wine authors License: GNU LGPL v2.1+ Written in: C,JavaScript, Objective-C

K3b

You don’t get much better in CD and DVD authoring software than K3b. The actual disk recording is performed by command line utilities (cdrecord, cdrkit, cdrdao and growisofs), so they deserve a mention here.

OS	Supported	Notes
		K3b features in many popular Linux distributions. There are also packages available for PC-BSD. Homepage: k3b.plainblack.com Developer: Sebastian Trueg License: GNU GPL v2 Written in: C++

Clonezilla

Disk cloning and imaging is essential software for the home user. Besides offering disk cloning and imagings, it can be used for data recovery, and deployment.

OS	Supported	Notes
		Clonezilla Live is a small bootable Linux distribution for x86/amd64 (x86-64) based computers. Debian Live has been combined with Clonezilla as "Clonezilla Live," a software that can be used to easily image and clone individual machines. Homepage: clonezilla.org Developer: NCHC Free Software Labs License: GNU GPL v2 Written in: Perl

Shutter

One of the handy utilities that makes Linux a special environment to use. Shutter is a feature-rich screenshot tool. Take a screenshot of a specific area, window, your whole screen, or even of a website – apply different effects to it, draw on it to highlight points, and then upload to an image hosting site, all within one window.

This is the finest dedicated screenshot application for Linux.

OS	Supported	Notes
		Shutter is available for any major Linux distribution. Windows users may be familiar with the Snipping Tool, included in Windows Vista or later. Functionality has slowly been increased with later versions, Windows 10 adds a delay function which allows for time captures. Homepage: shutter-project.org Developer: Mario Kemper License: GNU GPL v3 Written in: Perl

KeePassX

With a light interface, KeePassX is an essential tool for anyone who needs to save information (such as user names, passwords, attachments), with secure personal data management.

KeePassX currently uses the KeePass 2 (.kdbx) password database format as the native format.

OS	Supported	Notes
		The developer publishes binary packages for Windows and OS X. Major Linux distributions carry packages. Auto-Type is currently supported on Linux only. Homepage: www.keepassx.org Developer: KeePassX Team License: GNU GPL v2 Written in: C++

PeaZip

The perfect way to handle compressed files, PeaZip support more than 150 different file formats. It also offers excellent file management features, with an easy-to-use user interface.

OS	Supported	Notes
		Supported operating systems: Any GNU/Linux i386 or x86-64 architecture, Windows. There is experimental support for Linux ARM and BSD/Unix. Homepage: www.peazip.org Developer: Giorgio Tani License: GNU LGPL v3 Written in: Object Pascal

GCstar

If you’re a collector, you need software to manage that collection. GCstar is that software. It is such a versatile tool and a perfect way to manage collections for movies, video games books, music, coins, and much more.

OS	Supported	Notes
		GCstar is developed on Linux and there are packages available in most major Linux distributions. Installation on other platforms is not straightforward. Windows lags behind as it does not have the latest version available as a binary. OS X installation is cumbersome. Packages for FreeBSD are available. Homepage: www.gcstar.org Developer: Christian Jodar, Nyall Dawson, TPF, Adolfo González License: GNU GPL v2 Written in: Perl

Terminator

The reason why Linux offers so much power is due to the command line. The Linux shell can do so much, and this power can be accessed on the desktop by using a terminal emulator. There are so many available for Linux that the choice is bewildering. But for us, we have never fallen out of love with Terminator.

OS	Supported	Notes
		Terminator replaces xterm, rxvt, xwsh and friends on X11 systems, GNOME Terminal, KDE's Konsole, Apple's Terminal.app, and PuTTY on Windows. Homepage: code.google.com/archive/p/jessies/wikis/Terminator.wiki Developer: Phil Norman, Elliott Hughes, Martin Dorey License: GNU GPL v2 Written in: Java

FontForge

What you need to manage fonts in an efficient way. Fontmatrix is a font explorer which recursively queries the fonts (ttf, ps & otf) in the directories you give it to search, sorts them quickly, and shows them.

OS	Supported	Notes
		FontForge is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Homepage: fontforge.github.io Developer: George Williams, Frank Trampe, Ben Martin, Adrien Tétar, Khaled Hosny, Jeremy Tan License: GNU GPL v3 Written in: C

Recoll

Recoll is based on the very capable Xapian search engine library, for which it provides a powerful text extraction layer and a complete, yet easy to use, Qt graphical interface.

This Python tool is powered by locate and find. It has a very lightweight interface.

OS	Supported	Notes
		Packages or ports for Recoll are available in the standard repositories for many Linux distributions. Recoll has been built on Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, and Solaris. The Windows installation of Recoll is self-contained, and only needs Python 2.7 to be externally installed. Homepage: www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll Developer: Jean-François Dockes License: GNU GPL v2 Written in: C++, Python

Dolphin

When it comes to file management, Linux has a plethora of tools. If you are looking for a simple to use GUI file manager that focuses on usability, yet has many talents, Dolphin ticks the boxes.

OS	Supported	Notes
		Dolphin became the default file manager of KDE-based desktop environments in the fourth iteration, termed KDE Software Compilation 4. Homepage: userbase.kde.org/Dolphin Developer: KDE License: GNU GPL v2 Written in: C++

Midnight Commander

If you generally use the console environment, Midnight Commander is likely to be preferable to Dolpin. It’s a two panel file manager, and is a clone of Norton Commander.

OS	Supported	Notes
		Midnight Commander has unofficial binaries for OS X and Windows. Homepage: midnight-commander.org Developer: Miguel de Icaza, contributors License: GNU GPL v3 Written in: C