Ask HN: What is the most interesting FOSS that most people don't know about? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is the most interesting FOSS that most people don't know about?

35 pointsMathCodeLove12 comments

I, like many people on HN, enjoy FOSS. Every now and then I like to just browse GitHub and see what I find, but I know there must still be thousands of repositories I haven't seen yet or that fall outside of my usual domain. What is a FOSS repository or codebase that, in your opinion, is significantly interesting/innovative/etc, but is also relatively unknown amongst the community?

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https://lichess.org/

It's the best online chess platform by far - super slick and fast UI, lots modes and tournaments, analysis tools, many of the best players in the world play there frequently. It's open source and completely free, miles ahead of any paid competitor and the team behind it seem to have admirable integrity and insist on making a great product instead of selling out.

(No idea how it ranks on the "known-unknown" scale, it's obviously a popular website but not the first thing that comes to mind when I think of FOSS.)

Valentina (https://gitlab.com/smart-pattern/valentina)

"Valentina is a cross-platform patternmaking program which allows designers to create and model patterns of clothing. This software allows pattern creation, using either standard sizing tables or an individual’s set of measurements."

Interesting. For anyone else looking for more info (the wiki site linked there doesn't exist, just has the Wiki software's template page): YouTube seems to have a lot of guides to Valentina [1], and this blog post [2] gives some motivation behind why people use it. They say:

> The Forum https://forum.valentina-project.org/ is a great resource. It's active and admins reply quickly.

but unfortunately the forum seems defunct as well. So, it seems the project is still maintained (last commit a month ago), but none of the affiliated sites are.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=valentina+softw...

[2] http://ankeherrmann.com/valentina-patternmaking-software-fir...

OsiriX viewer. I got it to view my before/after CT scans to see exactly what happened in surgery. It's pretty wild being able to see inside yourself.

The site: https://www.osirix-viewer.com

The repo: https://github.com/pixmeo/osirix

EPANET (https://github.com/OpenWaterAnalytics/EPANET & https://www.epa.gov/water-research/epanet )

Chances are the water network that's connect to your home was modelled using this FOSS by the US EPA.

Unfortunately, it was probably done using a commercial tool by Bentley or Innovyze/Autodesk but the underlying modeling engine was from the EPA.

OSCAR.

I use a CPAP machine. It has an app that gives me some data about my nights, but only a broad overview. OSCAR lets me see a full graph of my entire night. Every breath I take is on there.

I had a really tough time adjusting to CPAP and had very little support due to being diagnosed during the height of covid. I never could have gotten used to it without OSCAR. It's an amazing piece of software.

ReactOS https://reactos.org "Imagine running your favorite Windows applications and drivers in an open-source environment you can trust. That's the mission of ReactOS!"

EPICS https://epics-controls.org/

"EPICS is a set of software tools and applications which provide a software infrastructure for use in building distributed control systems to operate devices such as Particle Accelerators, Large Experiments and major Telescopes. Such distributed control systems typically comprise tens or even hundreds of computers ..."

Cloud Compare https://www.danielgm.net/cc/ It's a point cloud editor, bit of a learning curve, but imports and exports wide range of formats, and will work fast on huge files.

BRL Cad, but it is public domain not FOSS.

https://brlcad.org/

Most of the code is under the LGPL license, not in the public domain. The build files are under BSD and/or public domain and BDL and/or public domain for documentation. FWIW being in the public domain with sources available is considered free according to the FSF (not the OSI apparently).

Bitkeeper : https://www.bitkeeper.org/

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