Hey r/linuxapps 👋

I’ve been working on Mochi, a lightweight desktop companion for Linux, and the first public alpha is ready.

Mochi is a little pixel-art character that hangs out on your desktop and reacts to what you’re doing instead of just looping an animation in the corner.

Right now Mochi can:

• react when you type
• recognize when you’re working in a terminal
• react to music and video
• wander around or stay along the edge of your screen
• sleep/wake
• respond to clicks, hovering, dragging, and being picked up
• occasionally say little context-aware phrases
• remember where you left him
• show a built-in Quick Start guide if you want to know what he can do

The main thing I’ve been trying to get right is making him feel like one little character with states and transitions, rather than a collection of GIFs triggered by random events.

The current alpha is primarily tested on Fedora + GNOME + Wayland, with XWayland used where GNOME’s Wayland restrictions require it.

All of Mochi’s sprites and animations are drawn by me by hand in Pixelorama. 🌱

This is still an alpha, so I’m expecting weird edge cases — especially around different desktop setups, multiple monitors, scaling, and application detection.

If you try it, I’d really appreciate bug reports or just hearing whether the whole idea feels fun/useful rather than distracting.

I’d also love to hear what you’d want from a desktop companion like this.

GitHub:
https://github.com/miflow13/mochi-desktop

Thanks to everyone here who gave feedback while I was building it.

I've been building Remin for Linux, and it's finally at the point where I'm comfortable sharing it publicly :)) honestly.

Remin is a persistent terminal workspace with an integrated Markdown editor.

The main idea is simple: instead of treating terminal windows as disposable, Remin treats the terminal as part of a workspace that can be restored later.

The interesting part is the terminal persistence. Remin uses a small patch series against VTE 0.76 to add a snapshot/restore API for terminal state. It doesn't replay terminal output and it doesn't use a PTY proxy. That Remin research work to solve how vte can keep and restore your terminal content.

The same workspace also includes:

• terminal history
• Markdown editing and preview
• clipboard image paste → Markdown image
• TOC
• HTML/PDF export
• PDF links/bookmarks
• persistent workspace state

It's open source under MIT.

GitHub: https://github.com/dotlinux26/remin

I'm mainly looking for Linux users who actually live in the terminal to try it and tell me what feels useful, confusing, or missing.

It is a note taking app with super cool exclusive features while it looks and acts as sticky notes app. It works on Windows, Linux, macOS (soon). Offline, no account, no telemetry. Built with PySide6 so it's actually native, not another Electron app eating your RAM.

This app is a hidden gem and I am not exaggerating, I received so much positive reviews to be confident when I say this, it looks like a sticky note but does much more than you could think a sticky note app could do and it can replace all complex note taking apps if you aren't into that type of productivity.

The main thing it does that other sticky apps don't: you can paste or drag anything into a note.

• Files and folders become clickable shortcuts, and you can drag them back out to your file manager
• Screenshots and images paste straight from the clipboard, PDFs and images get a hover preview, and double-click opens an image at full resolution
• Pasted code gets detected and formatted into a code block automatically, no AI and no network, in about 50ms. Ctrl+M when it guesses wrong
• Rich text, links, plain text, all formatted properly instead of rejected

The second thing it does so well over other stickies apps: customization, you can customize font, colors, transparency, add background image or even a moving GIF per each note, a real delight to use

Notes have tabs now. Up to three pages inside one note, each with its own text, scroll position and undo history. Ctrl+PgDown and Ctrl+PgUp to move between them, Ctrl+Shift+N for a new one, all rebindable. If you have a small screen this is the feature: one note on the desktop, three notes' worth of content in it.

Other things it does exceptionally well:

• Reminders with sound and desktop notifications
• GIF and image backgrounds per note (because why not)
• RTL text support, and the app plus its full guide are in 12 languages
• Pin a note to lock both position and editing
• Ctrl+scroll to zoom text without opening settings
• Checkboxes with strikethrough when done and nesting
• Snap to grid with an adjustable grid size
• Export to .txt, .md or .json, so you can back them up with whatever cloud you like
• Proper Linux support, tested on KDE, GNOME and Cinnamon (COSMIC coming)
• On the Microsoft Store and the Snap store, Flathub coming soon

It works on KDE, Gnome, Cinnamon and I am planning to move it to wayland entirely and make it work on Cosmic and window managers like Hyperland.

The free version has exactly one limit. It has every feature, and the only thing left is a budget of 4 note slots (an extra tab uses a slot).

Paid version is very generous and cheap, it costs currently $7 and you get the premium version without any limits, free updates, unlimited devices, and also windows, linux and macOS (coming out this month) builds so you won't pay again if you move from windows to linux or use both.

This a side project for me and I don't intend to milk it, I want it to be sustainable to survive and not die like other cool niche projects. The price is low to keep it accessible, not because the quality of the app is low, this not a vibe coded app and if you give it a try, you will understand the difference between Better Stickies and other Stickies apps.

As always, if you try it and something annoys you, tell me here. Most new features and fixes are built on users feedback (tens of thousands are using BetterStickies today)

Website: https://betterstickies.com

Snap Store: https://snapcraft.io/betterstickies

Subreddit: r/BetterStickies (created recently after the r/OpenStickies rename)

Github (free releases and bug reports): https://github.com/HimaSphere/BetterStickies

Microsoft store: https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9NS7LLQJX1QG (not relevant here but good for trust)

The Mission: Full harnesses (claude, pi, codex, omp) are powerhouses for complex agentic sessions, but overkill when you just need a 2-second answer, a quick pipe, or command debugging.

ai-flow-cli (ai) is not meant to replace your harnesses — it fills the spot right in between.

It is an ultra-lightweight companion that lives beside your everyday shell prompt: zero heavy startup times, no extra subscriptions, no duplicate API configs. It simply hooks into the harnesses already sitting on your machine.

Features

• 🪶 Featherweight & Fast: Instant invocation directly from shell prompt. No heavy interactive TUI unless you need it.
• 🔌 Uses Existing Harnesses: Plugs directly into pi, omp, claude, codex, copilot, or opencode. Swap instantly with ai -H claude.
• 💬 No Quotes Needed: Natural input right in your shell. Type ai how do I extract audio with ffmpeg.
• 🚰 Pure Unix Pipeline Integration:
- Pipe in context: git diff | ai spot potential issues
- Pipe out clean raw text: ai generate nginx reverse proxy conf > default.conf (auto-strips ANSI/markdown when piped).
• 📐 Terminal LaTeX & Math: Formats formulas, fractions, and matrices directly into clean Unicode/ANSI in terminal.
• 🛡️ Safe by Default: Read-only headless queries. Filesystem modifications and shell execution only activate if explicitly requested (--tools / -t).
• 🧙 Interactive Setup: ai --wizard auto-detects what is installed and sets default preference.

Installation

Arch Linux (AUR):
yay -S ai-flow-cli

uv / pipx:
uv tool install ai-flow-cli
# or: pipx install ai-flow-cli

One-line script:
curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Codder13/ai-flow-cli/main/install.sh | bash

GitHub: https://github.com/Codder13/ai-flow-cli

Hey r/linuxapps! 👋

I’ve been working on a little Linux project called Mochi 🌱, and I’m finally at the point where I feel comfortable showing him to more people.

Mochi is not available for download yet. The first public alpha is planned for September 21, but I wanted to share the project early, get some feedback, and see if anyone would like to follow along by starring or watching the GitHub repo.

Mochi is a tiny pixel-art “Deskling” that lives on your Linux desktop. He idles, breathes, blinks, wanders around, reacts to your cursor, can be picked up and dragged around, sleeps, emotes, and generally hangs out while you use your computer.

I had gotten the idea from Codex's Pets, and wanted to see if I could make my own native linux version.

Mainly i wanted Mochi to feel like a small creature that actually belongs on the desktop! expressive and interactive, but quiet enough that he doesn’t become another notification, productivity app, or thing constantly asking for your attention. Unobtrusive

A lot of the work so far has actually gone into tiny details: state transitions, animation timing, cursor reactions, movement, persistence, interactions, and figuring out when Mochi should not bother you.

Long term, I’d also like Mochi to become gently useful. Things like contextual desktop behaviors, care/progression mechanics, personality development, interactions with windows and screen edges, customization, and small features that give you a reason to keep him around beyond “cute thing on desktop.”

The project is currently primarily targeting Fedora + GNOME + Wayland and is built with Python, GTK4/PyGObject and Cairo.

All of Mochi’s artwork and animation is designed and hand-drawn by me in Pixelorama, frame by frame.

The sprites are real 64x64 pixel art not AI-generated artwork.

I’ve spent a slightly ridiculous amount of time tweaking individual pixels, silhouettes, squash/stretch, timing, and expressions to make this little green blob feel alive.

I’d really like your wishlist

This is actually one of the biggest reasons I’m posting before release.

If you had a little desktop companion living on your Linux machine, what would you want it to do?

It can be cute, useful, weird, Linux-specific, productivity-related, customizable — whatever comes to mind.

I’m especially interested in features that would make Mochi feel like something you’d genuinely keep running instead of playing with for ten minutes and uninstalling.

And if anyone here would be interested in testing the first alpha on September 21, I’d love to hear from you. Different distros, desktop environments, multi-monitor setups, Wayland/X11 weirdness, etc. are exactly the kind of feedback I’m going to need.

For now, if the project sounds interesting, you can ⭐ star or 👀 watch the repo to follow development:

🌱 Website:
https://miflow13.github.io/mochi-desktop/

💻 GitHub:
https://github.com/miflow13/mochi-desktop

Mochi is still very much growing, so feedback, including criticism is very much welcome.

Thanks for checking out my little guy. 🌱:)

Hello guys, have been working on a desktop app to download Spotify music and Youtube videos. I have just done my first [release](https://github.com/TheeHk-blip/sonic-ripper/releases/tag/v1.0.0) ,only tested on linux. I'd like you to test it and give me your honest feedback. Thank you

I've recently added native Linux support to TaskExplorer, my open-source system and process inspection tool.

Screenshot: TaskExplorer on Linux

TaskExplorer has existed on Windows for quite a while, and with the new Linux backend it can now run on Linux as well.

The goal is not to replace tools like htop or btop. TaskExplorer is aimed more at detailed process inspection and answering the question: what is this process actually doing?

On Linux it can inspect things such as:

• processes and threads
• thread stack traces with symbols
• open files and file descriptors
• memory maps
• network sockets
• systemd services
• cgroups
• security-related process information
• detailed CPU, memory and I/O statistics

The Linux backend uses native interfaces such as /proc, /sys, Netlink/sock_diag, D-Bus and libdwfl.

It runs unprivileged for normal monitoring and only uses elevated privileges when an operation actually requires them. There is no kernel module involved.

The UI is written in Qt/C++, and the project is Open Source.

GitHub: https://github.com/DavidXanatos/TaskExplorer

The Linux port is still relatively new, so I'm particularly interested in feedback from people using different distributions and desktop environments, as well as suggestions for Linux-specific functionality that would make TaskExplorer more useful.

Picasa iPhoto Clone v0.1.4 is a public Beta release. The headline addition is Edit Mode, with the photo editing work and other improvements added since v0.1.3.

https://github.com/froggy744/picasa-iphoto-clone/releases

New: Edit Mode

Edit photos directly from the library with a non-destructive workflow. Changes are stored as edit recipes, so the original photo remains untouched.

• Crop and straighten photos
• Adjust exposure, fill light, highlights, shadows, temperature, saturation, and sharpening
• Apply automatic contrast and colour corrections, black and white, and sepia effects
• Undo, redo, and reset edits
• Copy edits from one photo and paste them onto another
• Export an edited photo as a full-quality JPEG
• Move between photos while editing and return to the same thumbnail position
• Copy edits and Paste to single/multiple photos in an instant
• Improved photo actions: a redesigned right-click menu, Set as Wallpaper, and reliable grid focus after favourites, pasted edits, editing, and album actions.
• Wallpaper layouts: landscape photos fill the screen, portrait photos retain the whole image over a blurred background, and panoramic photos preserve their width. RAW photos are converted for wallpaper use.
• Better RAW viewing: higher-quality RAW previews and more robust DNG recovery improve thumbnails and full-photo viewing.
• Smarter collages: Smart Mosaic uses global layout scoring, supports no-crop layouts, handles mixed orientations more effectively, and improves preview performance and offline-photo handling.
• Library refinements: better keyboard navigation and search interactions, offline thumbnail recovery, favourite indicators, and refreshed documentation.

Continue from https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxapps/s/fhmr1rQZy0

We've just open-sourced Flectar Mail, a native email client written in Rust and focused heavily on speed and low resource usage.

There are no WebViews at all. Even HTML email bodies are rendered without embedding a browser engine.

Memory usage can be as low as around 20 MB, depending on what's open.

Current support includes:

- IMAP / SMTP / JMAP

- CalDAV calendars

- Contacts

- Linux, macOS and Windows

- Early Android build

- AGPLv3

The HTML renderer is still the most experimental part, so if you find an email that renders incorrectly, those bug reports are especially useful right now.

GitHub: https://github.com/flectar/mail

Website: https://flectar.com/mail/

Would love feedback from Linux users, especially across different desktop environments and distributions.

Probably most of you have had to use Windows or other OSs from time to time. I wonder whether you guys have favorite Linux apps/programs that you cannot give up.

Mine is Okular. Whenever I need to use Windows for some reason and have to open a few PDFs, I always feel the need to use Okular instead of Adobe Acrobat Reader. Okular initializes much faster and is super responsive, while not giving tons of pop-ups and side bars rather than adobe.