157 stars today 🐧 A curated list of awesome applications, softwares, tools and other materials for Linux distros.
Awesome Linux Software
🐧 This repo is a collection of AWESOME Linux applications and tools for any users/developers.
🐧 Feel free to contribute / star / fork / pull request . Any recommendations and suggestions are welcomed.
Update: Recently, I received feedbacks from you about the quality of some applications on this list. I myself tested them out a lot (not all of them, though). If you have any problems with the apps, please: -> head to the dev page (if available) -> make an issue for the dev there -> make an issue here so that I can consider whether I should get the app out of the list. Remember : Everything has its own quality, so there will never be anything like "best app" or "selective list" here, thank you.
Photorec - PhotoRec is file data recovery software designed to recover lost files including video, documents and archives from hard disks, CD-ROMs, and lost pictures (thus the Photo Recovery name) from digital camera memory.
Qt4-fsarchiver - qt4-fsarchiver is a GUI for the program fsarchiver to save/restore partitions, folders and MBR/GPT. The programm is for systems based Debian, for Suse and Fedora.
System Rescue CD - SystemRescueCd is a Linux system rescue disk available as a bootable CD-ROM or USB stick for administrating or repairing your system and data after a crash.
Test Disk - TestDisk is powerful free data recovery software! It was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software.
Timeshift - TimeShift is a system restore utility which takes incremental snapshots of the system using rsync and hard-links. These snapshots can be restored at a later date to undo all changes that were made to the system after the snapshot was taken. Snapshots can be taken manually or at regular intervals using scheduled jobs.
Desktop customization
Arc Theme - A flat theme with transparent elements
Compiz Config settings manager - The OpenCompositing Project brings 3D desktop visual effects that improve usability of the X Window System and provide increased productivity.
Conky - Conky is a free, light-weight system monitor for X, that displays any kind of information on your desktop.
Flatabulous - This is a Flat theme for Ubuntu and other Gnome based Linux Systems.
Irradiance Theme - A Unity theme inspired by OSX Yosemite based on Radiance.
Gnome Extensions - Extensions for the Gnome Desktop Environment.
Gnome Look - Large amounts of community created icons, shell themes, fonts, and many more assets that can be used to customize your Gnome desktop environment, all located in one website.Freeware
Arduino IDE - The open-source Arduino Software (IDE) makes it easy to write code and upload it to the board.
BlueJ - A free Java Development Environment designed for beginners, used by millions worldwide.
Code::Blocks - Code::Blocks is a free C, C++ and Fortran IDE built to meet the most demanding needs of its users. It is designed to be very extensible and fully configurable.
Codelite - A Free, open source, cross platform C,C++,PHP and Node.js IDE.
Eclipse - Eclipse is famous for our Java Integrated Development Environment (IDE), but our C/C++ IDE and PHP IDE are pretty cool too
Fritzing - Fritzing is an open-source hardware initiative that makes electronics accessible as a creative material for anyone.
Geany - Geany is a text editor using the GTK+ toolkit with basic features of an integrated development environment. It was developed to provide a small and fast IDE, which has only a few dependencies from other packages.
Genymotion - Genymotion is a fast third-party emulator that can be used instead of the default Android emulator.
Git - Git is a free and open source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency.
Jupyter Notebook - Open source, interactive data science and scientific computing across over 40 programming languages.
KDevelop - It is a free, open source IDE, feature-full, plugin extensible IDE for C/C++ and other programming languages.
Komodo Edit - Free and open source multilanguage development environment.
Lighttable - The next generation code editor! Support live coding.
MariaDB - One of the most popular database servers. Made by the original developers of MySQL.
MonoDevelop - Cross platform IDE for C#, F# and more.
Nemiver - Nemiver is a project to write a standalone graphical debugger that integrates well in the GNOME desktop environment.
Netbeans - NetBeans IDE lets you quickly and easily develop Java desktop, mobile, and web applications, as well as HTML5 applications with HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.
NodeJS - Node.js® is a JavaScript runtime built on Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine.
Oh-my-zsh - A delightful community-driven framework for managing your zsh configuration.
VSCode - Visual Studio Code is a lightweight but powerful source code editor which runs on your desktop and is available for Windows, OS X and Linux. It comes with built-in support for JavaScript, TypeScript and Node.js and has a rich ecosystem of extensions for other languages (C++, C#, Python, PHP) and runtimes.
Calibre - Incredibly ugly but powerful software for ebook management and conversion.
Evince - Evince is a document viewer for multiple document formats. The goal of evince is to replace the multiple document viewers that exist on the GNOME Desktop with a single simple application.
Foxit - Foxit Reader 8.0—Award-winning PDF Reader.
Lucidor - Lucidor is a computer program for reading and handling e-books. Lucidor supports e-books in the EPUB file format, and catalogs in the OPDS format.
MasterPDF editor - Master PDF Editor a convenient and smart PDF editor for Linux.
Okular - Okular is a universal document viewer based developed by KDE. Okular works on multiple platforms, including but not limited to Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, *BSD, etc.
Sigil - Sigil is a multi-platform EPUB ebook editor.
Bluefish - Bluefish is a powerful editor targeted towards programmers and webdevelopers, with many options to write websites, scripts and programming code.
Brackets - A modern text editor that understands web design.
Emacs - An extensible, customizable, free/libre text editor — and more.
Geany - Geany is a text editor using the GTK+ toolkit with basic features of an integrated development environment. It was developed to provide a small and fast IDE, which has only a few dependencies from other packages.
Gedit -gedit is the GNOME text editor. While aiming at simplicity and ease of use, gedit is a powerful general purpose text editor.
Kate - Kate is a multi-document editor part of KDE since release 2.2.
Lighttable -the next generation code editor! Support live coding.
Sublime - One of the best text editor of all time.
VSCode - Visual Studio Code is a lightweight but powerful source code editor which runs on your desktop and is available for Windows, OS X and Linux. It comes with built-in support for JavaScript, TypeScript and Node.js and has a rich ecosystem of extensions for other languages (C++, C#, Python, PHP) and runtimes.
Vim -Vim is an advanced text editor that seeks to provide the power of the de-facto Unix editor 'Vi', with a more complete feature set. It's useful whether you're already using vi or using a different editor.
Education
BibleTime - BibleTime is a Bible study application based on the Sword library and Qt toolkit.
Celestia - The free space simulation that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions.
Chemtool - Chemtool is a small program for drawing chemical structures on Linux.
Epoptes - An open source computer lab management and monitoring tool.
Gcompris - GCompris is a high quality educational software suite comprising of numerous activities for children aged 2 to 10.
Geogebra - THE GRAPHING CALCULATOR FOR FUNCTIONS, GEOMETRY, ALGEBRA, CALCULUS, STATISTICS AND 3D MATH.
GNU Typist - ncurses-based free-software typing instructor
Google Earth - Google Earth is a virtual globe, map and geographical information program.
GPeriodic - GPeriodic is a periodic table application for Linux.
ITalc - iTALC is a use- and powerful didactical tool for teachers. It lets you view and control other computers in your network in several ways.
KDE Edu Suite - Free Educational Software based on the KDE technologies.
MAPLE - Maple is math software that combines the world's most powerful math engine with an interface that makes it extremely easy to analyze, explore, visualize, and solve mathematical problems.
MATLAB - The MATLAB platform is optimized for solving engineering and scientific problems. MATLAB helps you take your ideas beyond the desktop. You can run your analyses on larger data sets and scale up to clusters and clouds.
Maxima - Maxima is a system for the manipulation of symbolic and numerical expressions, including differentiation, integration, Taylor series, Laplace transforms, ordinary differential equations, systems of linear equations, ....
Moodle - Course management system for online learning.
OpenEuclid - OpenEuclide is a 2D geometry software: figures are defined dynamically by describing formal geometrical constraints.
Scipy - SciPy is a Python-based ecosystem of open-source software for mathematics, science, and engineering.
Scratch - With Scratch, you can program your own interactive stories, games, and animations — and share your creations with others in the online community.
Stellarium - Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer.
Tux4Kids - Tux4Kids develops high-quality software for kids, with the goal of combining fun and learning into an irresistable package.
Email
Evolution - Evolution is a personal information management application that provides integrated mail, calendaring and address book functionality.
Geary - Geary is an email application built for GNOME 3. It allows you to read and send email with a simple, modern interface.
Mailnag - Mailnag is a daemon program that checks POP3 and IMAP servers for new mail.
Thunderbird - Thunderbird is a free email application that’s easy to set up and customize and it’s loaded with great features.
Wmail - Gmail & Google Inbox unofficial desktop client for linux.
AngrySearch - Linux file search, instant results as you type.
Double Commander - Double Commander is a cross platform open source file manager with two panels side by side. It is inspired by Total Commander and features some new ideas.
Marlin - The sexiest fish in the large sea of file managers, Marlin is well-designed with a focus on speed, simplicity, ease of use.
Nautilus - Nautilus (Files) is a file manager designed to fit the Gnome desktop design and behaviour, giving the user a simple way to navigate and manage its files.
Nemo - Nemo is the file manager for the Cinnamon desktop environment.
QDirStat - Qt-based directory statistics - KDirStat without any KDE, from the original KDirStat author.
Ranger - Ranger is a console file manager with VI key bindings.
Civilization5 - Sid Meier’s Civilization® is recognized as one of the greatest strategy franchises of all-time.
Cockatrice - Cockatrice is an open-source multiplatform supported program for playing tabletop card games over a network.
Desura - Desura is a community driven digital distribution service for gamers, putting the best games, mods and downloadable content from developers at gamers fingertips, ready to buy and play.
GBrainy - Gbrainy is a brain teaser game and trainer to have fun and to keep your brain trained.
Minecraft - Minecraft is a game about placing blocks and going on adventures. Explore randomly generated worlds and build amazing things from the simplest of homes to the grandest of castles.
Minetest - Open-source Minecraft written is C++ (uses less resources) and includes modding API.
Wine - Wine (originally an acronym for "Wine Is Not an Emulator") is a compatibility layer capable of running Windows applications on several POSIX-compliant operating systems, such as Linux, Mac OSX, & BSD
Xonotic - Arena shooter inspired by Unreal Tournament and Quake.
Graphics
Aftershot - A powerful alternative to Adobe Photoshop!
Agave - Agave is a very simple application for the GNOME desktop that allows you to generate a variety of colorschemes from a single starting color
Blender - a free and open source complete 3D creation pipeline for artists and small teams.
Fotoxx - Fotoxx is a free open source Linux program for image editing and collection management.
GIMP - GIMP is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring
Hugin - an easy to use cross-platform panoramic imaging toolchain based on Panorama Tools.
Inkscape - A powerful, free design tool for you , whether you are an illustrator, designer, web designer or just someone who needs to create some vector imagery
Krita - Open Source Software for Concept Artists, Digital Painters, and Illustrators
Luminance HDR - Luminance HDR is an open source graphical user interface application that aims to provide a workflow for HDR imaging.
OpenShot - OpenShot is a free, simple-to-use, feature-rich video editor for Linux.
Pinta - Pinta is a free, open source program for drawing and image editing.
Pitivi - A free video editor with a beautiful and intuitive user interface, a clean codebase and a fantastic community.
Radiance - Radiance - A Validated Lighting Simulation Tool
RawTherapee - A good looking but lesser known photo editing app.
Shotwell - Shotwell is a photo manager for GNOME 3.
StopMotion - Linux Stopmotion is a Free Open Source application to create stop-motion animations. It helps you capture and edit the frames of your animation and export them as a single file.
Xara Extreme - Xara Xtreme for Linux is a powerful, general purpose graphics program for Unix platforms including Linux, FreeBSD
Internet
Anatine - A twitter desktop app with many customizations.
Brave - Brave is a fast, good desktop browser for macOS, Windows, and Linux.
Chrome - A popular Web Browsers with a lot of plugins/apps.
Chromium - Chromium is an open-source browser project that aims to build a safer, faster, and more stable way for all users to experience the web.
Firefox - A popular Web Browsers with a lot of plugins/apps.
Midori - A lightweight free browser that runs well on low spec systems. .
Tor - Tor is free software and an open network that helps you defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy.
Vivaldi - A new and rising browser with a lot of customizations.
LyX - Mature document editor that renders into LaTeX ..
WPS office - One of the best office app bundle for linux.
Productivity
Ambient Noise - Install ambient noise for extra focus on Linux
Autokey - A desktop automation utility for Linux allows you to manage collection of scripts and phrases, and assign abbreviations and hotkeys to these.
Basket Note Pads - This multi-purpose note-taking application helps you to easily take all sort of notes.
Go For It - Go For It! is a simple and stylish productivity app, featuring a to-do list, merged with a timer that keeps your focus on the current task.
My Todo - Mytodo is an open source to-do list program that puts you, the user, in command of everything.
NotepadQQQ - Notepadqq is a Notepad++-like editor for the Linux desktop.
Plank - Plank is meant to be the simplest dock of apps on the planet.
Pomodone App - PomoDoneApp is the easiest way to track your workflow using Pomodoro technique®, on top of your current task management service.
Papyrus - Papyrus is a different note manager which is focusing on Security, Better user interface. Papyrus are trying to provide an easy to use and smart user interface for users.
Recent Noti - An indicator for recent notification.
Redshift - Redshift adjusts the color temperature of your screen according to your surroundings. This may help your eyes hurt less if you are working in front of the screen at night.
Shutter - Shutter is a feature-rich screenshot program for Linux based operating systems such as Ubuntu.
Zim - A graphical text editor used to maintain a collection of wiki pages, great for notes and documents. Stored in plain text files for easy version control.
Fail2ban - Fail2ban scans log files (e.g. /var/log/apache/error_log) and bans IPs that show the malicious signs -- too many password failures, seeking for exploits, etc.
Konsole - Best terminal for KDE dekstop environment.
RXVT - A terminal emulator for X11, a popular replacement for the standard ‘xterm’.
RXVT-Unicode - rxvt-unicode is a fork of the well known terminal emulator.
Terminator - it’s quite clear that the most powerful terminal emulator on Linux is the feature-filled Terminator.
Termit - Simple terminal emulator based on vte library, extensible via Lua.
Xterm - The xterm program is a terminal emulator for the X Window System. It provides DEC VT102 and Tektronix 4014 compatible terminals for programs that can't use the window system directly.
Yakuake - A Quake-style terminal emulator based on KDE Konsole technology.
Utilities
Actionaz - Automation tasks utility for ubuntu/Linux
Bleach bit -BleachBit quickly frees disk space and tirelessly guards your privacy. Free cache, delete cookies, clear Internet history, shred temporary files, delete logs, and more ...
Bomi Player - A powerful and easy-to-use multimedia player.
Kodi - An award-winning free and open source (GPL) software media center for playing videos, music, pictures, games, and more.
MPlayer - MPlayer is a movie player which runs on many systems, play any kind of videos.
MPV - A free, open source, and cross-platform media player.
SMPlayer - Free Media Player with built-in codecs. Play all audio and video formats.
SVP - SVP allows you to watch any video on your desktop computer using frame interpolation as it is available on high-end TVs and projectors.
VLC - VLC is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVDs, Audio CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.
Others
GrubCustomizer - Grub Customizer is a graphical interface to configure the GRUB2/BURG settings and menuentries.
Tmux - It lets you switch easily between several programs in one terminal, detach them (they keep running in the background) and reattach them to a different terminal. And do a lot more.
wicd-curses - Command line WiFi connection manager.
Desktop Environments
Budgie - Budgie is a desktop environment designed with the modern user in mind, it focuses on simplicity and elegance.
Cinammon - Cinnamon strives to provide a traditional user experience. Cinnamon is a fork of GNOME 3.
Gnome - The GNOME desktop environment is an attractive and intuitive desktop with both a modern (GNOME) and a classic (GNOME Classic) session.
GNOME Flashback - GNOME Flashback is a shell for GNOME 3 which was initially called GNOME fallback mode. The desktop layout and the underlying technology is similar to GNOME 2.
KDE Plasma - he KDE Plasma desktop environment is a familiar working environment. Plasma Desktop offers all the tools required for a modern desktop computing experience so you can be productive right from the start.
LXDE - The Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment is a fast and energy-saving desktop environment.
LXQt - LXQt is the Qt port and the upcoming version of LXDE, the Lightweight Desktop Environment.
Mate - Mate provides an intuitive and attractive desktop to Linux users using traditional metaphors. MATE is a fork of GNOME 2.
Pantheon - Pantheon is the default desktop environment originally created for the elementary OS distribution.
Unity - Unity is a shell for GNOME designed by Canonical for Ubuntu.
Xfce - Xfce embodies the traditional UNIX philosophy of modularity and re-usability.
Display manager
Console
CDM - Ultra-minimalistic, yet full-featured login manager written in Bash.
Console TDM - Extension for xinit written in pure Bash.
nodm - Minimalistic display manager for automatic logins.
Graphic
Entrance - An EFL based display manager, highly experimental.
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Items marked with are open-source software and link to the source code. Items marked with are free (as in free beer).