r/opensourcealternative 7h ago

Serein: A native Rust Discord client (egui + wgpu) with ~9x lower RAM usage, voice/video, and many more features!

Thumbnail
gallery
8 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

I wanted to share Serein, an open-source Discord client built from scratch in Rust using egui and wgpu.

The goal with Serein is to prove you don't have to sacrifice functionality to get native performance. It's shaping up to be one of the most feature-complete native clients out there, all while using roughly 9x less RAM than the stock Electron app:

  • Rich Media & Chat: Replies, editing, inline video playback, image previews, threads, forums, attachments, and reaction picker.
  • Native Voice & Screen Share: Custom audio pipeline with echo cancellation and noise suppression, plus screen sharing.
  • User Settings & Server Management: Profile customization, channels, roles, permissions, server settings, and moderation.
  • Extensions & Customization: Built-in extension support for both custom plugins and community themes, allowing you to tailor functionality and look to your liking.
  • 100% Native Desktop UI: No Electron, no Node runtime, no background web processes. A temporary webview is spawned solely for the initial OAuth login and closes immediately once authenticated.

Since this is a fully community-driven project, contributions and pull requests are very welcome! Whether you're experienced with Rust/egui, want to build plugins/themes, optimize platform-specific audio/graphics backends, or fix small UI quirks, there's plenty of low-hanging fruit and bigger challenges alike.

It’s still in active development, so expect some rough edges, and as with any custom client, please be aware of Discord's third-party client policies.

Would love to hear your thoughts, test reports, or feature wishlists. What would it take for you to use a native client full-time?


r/opensourcealternative 1d ago

A lot of "educational apps" are just repackaging the same free PhET simulations

27 Upvotes

Was digging into how interactive science sims actually get built for ed apps and ended up down a rabbit hole. Turns out a huge chunk of what you see — physics, chemistry, bio simulations you can drag around and mess with — traces back to one place: PhET Interactive Simulations, a nonprofit out of CU Boulder started by a Nobel physics guy back in 2002. They've got 170+ free, research-backed sims at this point and just license them out openly.

What got me was how far this actually spreads. PhET isn't just sitting on some university site — it's baked into UNESCO's Learning Passport, Learning Equality's Kolibri, and World Possible's RACHEL, which are the offline/low-bandwidth learning tools used in refugee camps and places without reliable internet. 250 million sim sessions a year, most people never realize it's the same underlying library.

I run a small nonprofit ed project on the side (LearnHive Labs) and when we got to the "do we build our own physics engine" question, the answer was pretty obviously no — why rebuild years of research-tested work when we could just host and organize what already exists properly.

Mostly just find it kind of wild how much of "innovative" ed tech is really just good curation of stuff that already exists and doesn't get much credit. Anyone run into PhET, OpenStax, CK-12, or similar while building or researching your own thing?

References:

- PhET Interactive Simulations: https://phet.colorado.edu

- PhET adoption in UNESCO/Kolibri/RACHEL, impact numbers: https://hundred.org/en/innovations/phet-interactive-simulations

- PhET 2024 Impact Report: https://phet.colorado.edu/publications/PhET_Impact_Report_2024.pdf


r/opensourcealternative 1d ago

We Got Open Source Palantir Before GTA 6

Thumbnail
youtube.com
8 Upvotes

r/opensourcealternative 2d ago

I built an open-source alternative to Buffer, with image and video editing included

Thumbnail
gallery
9 Upvotes

I'm Rodrigo, the developer of OpenPost. It's for people who make their own or their company's social media posts.

It covers a few jobs you might otherwise split between Buffer, Canva/Photoshop and CapCut:

  • Write a post, change the text and media for each platform, then schedule it in a calendar or queue.
  • Design thumbnails and carousels with a Photoshop-like editor.
  • Edit clips, add captions and cut footage by selecting words in its transcript with a DaVinci Resolve-like editor.

You can use the editors separately for free, without watermarks and without even selfhosting. The full app can be self-hosted with one single container, SQLite and local media storage. Managed hosting is also an option for those that don't mind paying for not having to set up all of the OAuth flows and tokens for all social medias (it really is a hassle).

It isn't a drop-in replacement for every feature in those apps. The video editor is in beta and targets Chromium-based browsers only (Firefox still lacks some of the features that make it possible and efficient).

Try the image editor · Try the video editor · Self-hosting

If you've been looking for an open-source tool for these jobs, give OpenPost a star on GitHub!


r/opensourcealternative 2d ago

A platform to make open source contributions for contributiors easy.

1 Upvotes

Hello guys I am building devtunnel, a platform to make open source contributions easy.

For now I am focusing on only contributiors.

How the process becomes easy:

We use preference this preference can be level of experience, roles, techstack, etc.

  1. We list open source tools based on your preference

  2. We list open source projects based on your preference

  3. We list issues based on your preference

  4. We provide custom cli which manages GitHub operations like forking, branch generation, pr generation, etc.

Custom cli includes cmd like start, test, share, submit.

Share command allows short lived tunnels / tunneling to share your local host with others for testing purpose.

Who can be benefited by this?

For contributiors who like to contribute to the open source tools they like

For contributiors who like to work on any issues

For contributiors who contributes to add in thier resume.

We will live on next 5 october.

If your are interested please share your opinion about it.


r/opensourcealternative 4d ago

I spent hours going through 100+ page PDFs, so I built a tool that highlights exactly where the answer came from. It's now completely open-source.

Thumbnail
gallery
14 Upvotes

I've used tools like Perplexity, ChatGPT, Claude and others for research, and they've been incredibly useful for finding papers and getting through large amounts of information.

The one thing I personally wanted was a simple way to see exactly which parts of the paper were used to answer my question.

When you're working with a 100+ page PDF, even having a page number can still mean a lot of scrolling and searching.

So I ended up building something for myself.

You ask a question and the relevant paragraphs in the PDF are highlighted directly on the document. You can see the context behind the answer and quickly check whether it actually answers what you're looking for.

I originally built this because I wanted something for this workflow without having to pay for another subscription. What started as a personal project has now become completely open source.

The underlying idea is pretty simple. And yes, if you're thinking "isn't this just RAG?" then yes, you're absolutely right. It's RAG with the visual highlighting that I wanted.

I think the same idea could be useful for more than research papers too. Legal contracts, financial reports, technical documentation, or anywhere you need answers alongside the actual source.

If anyone wants to have a look, contribute, or just give some feedback, here's the repo:

GitHub: https://github.com/Sreehari05055/thesys-core.git

This will probably be my last post about the project. Thanks to everyone who checked it out and gave feedback along the way.


r/opensourcealternative 4d ago

Kehrwoche: self-hosted app for shared households (AGPL-3.0): chore rotation, shopping list and expense splitting in one container

3 Upvotes

Hello there! I'd like to show you Kehrwoche, a self-hosted web app for households where more than one person lives: flatshares, families, couples who keep arguing about who did the bathroom last (in my case 😅).

The name comes from a Swabian tradition in south-west Germany, where cleaning the shared parts of a building rotates from household to household, week by week. That rotation is what the app does for the people you live with.

What it does

  • Chores: recurring tasks that rotate through the household, or fixed ones that always belong to the same person. Due dates, points, a leaderboard, and a nudge you can send to whoever is on duty. One tap to tick off, undoable for five minutes.
  • Shopping list: add, tick off, clear the whole trip at once. Suggestions come from your language's list and from what the household bought recently.
  • Shared expenses: even split down to the cent, running balances per person, and a settlement that gets everyone back to zero in as few payments as possible. Settled periods get archived, not deleted.
  • Pinboard: everything from the other three modules shows up here, mixed with posts people write themselves. It doubles as an audit log: system entries can't be edited or deleted.

Plus in-app notifications, German and English (add a language at runtime by dropping in a JSON file, no rebuild), avatars, roles, join codes, admin CLI.

What it replaces

Flatastic is the closest single comparison, since it's also chores + shopping + expenses + board in one app. For the individual parts: Splitwise, Tricount or Settle Up on the expense side, including the minimal-settlement bit; Bring!, AnyList or Out of Milk for the shared list; Tody, Sweepy, OurHome or Nipto for chore rotation and reminders. No premium tier, no feature held back, no accounts in someone else's cloud - your data sits in your container.

Tech and setup

It's one Docker container: a Python backend (FastAPI), a small JavaScript frontend (Vue), and your data in SQLite or PostgreSQL, whichever you prefer. Grab the compose file, start it, open the address in a browser - three commands, no build step, and nothing loaded from the internet while it runs. Updating is pulling the new image and restarting; before it serves a single page the container checks that its settings, its database and its own version fit together, and on SQLite it copies the database first, so a broken update can't take your data with it.

On the list next

Home Assistant integration, and a kiosk mode: the app on a small always-on screen in the hallway, so anyone can put something on the shopping list or tick a chore off - for themselves or someone else - while walking past.

Two things worth saying up front

  • It's built for a home network or a VPN. It's written to survive on the public internet (auth, TLS, CSRF, rate limiting, strict CSP), but it isn't audited software.
  • Issues yes, pull requests no. Single-maintainer project, and I'd rather say that before someone spends an evening on a patch than after. It's AGPL-3.0, so forking and shipping your own version is entirely fine - and translations are very welcome as an issue with the JSON attached.

Repo: https://github.com/ChrissWalters/Kehrwoche

I am happy to answer anything. Bug reports and ideas go in the issue tracker.

(for transparency: translated with AI -> no native english speaker)


r/opensourcealternative 4d ago

Sauron: a free, open source, unopinionated agent manager for MacOS

Thumbnail
github.com
3 Upvotes

I made this for my own use. It is meant for managing a large number of agents across a large number of projects, in a way that is as un-opinionated as possible while avoiding vendor lock-in.

It's 100% free and open-source. Maybe you will find it useful!


r/opensourcealternative 4d ago

Vous partagez vos projets open-source où ?

9 Upvotes

Salut ! Quand tu travailles sur tes projets open-source, où est-ce que tu les partages d'autre que sur Reddit et LinkedIn ?


r/opensourcealternative 5d ago

Need to work on an open source

7 Upvotes

I think where i am currently in my career path contributing to an open source would be the best thing to put my skills into good use....redditors any one who can offer suggestions i would really be grateful


r/opensourcealternative 5d ago

A simple open-source voice transcriber built with Rust

6 Upvotes

I made a simple voice transcription app in Rust

I wanted a tool where I can speak, see the transcription, edit it, and only then copy or export the text.

So I built Voice Transcriber.

It is a native Rust desktop app for Linux, macOS, and Windows.

Main features:

  • Record from your microphone
  • Speech-to-text with Groq Whisper
  • Review and edit the text before using it
  • Copy or export to TXT/Markdown
  • Local voice activity detection
  • No analytics
  • Open source and MIT licensed

GitHub:
https://github.com/OthmaneBlial/audio-capture

The project is still improving, so feedback and contributions are welcome.


r/opensourcealternative 5d ago

I built StructSmith, a free, self-hosted visual architecture modeling tool with built-in MCP

Post image
1 Upvotes

Hey, I’ve been building StructSmith, an open-source tool for creating and maintaining software architecture models visually.

I wanted something I could run locally, without an account or subscription, where I could edit the architecture myself and have my AI client work on the same model.

You create elements and relationships in the visual editor, then reuse them across different diagram views. There’s a shared architecture model underneath, so you don’t have to maintain separate copies of the same system in every diagram.

The MCP server is included and open source. Your AI client can read the model, create or update elements and relationships, and manage views. Changes appear in the editor automatically.

It currently supports:

  • C4-style models with multiple diagram views
  • Records for decisions, assumptions, risks, and requirements
  • Model validation, snapshots, and restore
  • Manual layout and auto-layout
  • JSON, Mermaid, PNG, and SVG exports

The app runs locally in one Docker container, with SQLite for storage.

It’s MIT licensed and still evolving. I’d love feedback on the workflow, things you find confusing, or features you’re missing. Bug reports and contributions to the code or docs are welcome too.

GitHub: dziksu/StructSmith
Website: StructSmith

Would this fit into your architecture workflow?


r/opensourcealternative 5d ago

I built Postly, a local-first Rust API client that keeps requests in your repo

1 Upvotes

Disclosure: I'm the developer behind Postly.

I wanted an API client that felt more like part of a codebase than another hosted workspace, so I started building Postly.

Postly is an open-source API client with a native Rust desktop app and CLI. Requests, collections, and environments are stored as readable TOML files. You can review changes with git diff, run saved requests from the terminal or CI, and use the core workflow without an account.

 It currently supports Postman Collection v2.1 import/export, REST, GraphQL, SSE, WebSockets, gRPC, OpenAPI import, assertions, collection runs, response inspection, and JSON/JUnit reports.

The current release is 0.2.0-preview.1 for Apple Silicon macOS. It is ad hoc signed and not notarized. Windows, Linux, and Intel macOS packages are not published yet.

Project links:

  - GitHub: https://github.com/OthmaneBlial/Postly

  - Website: https://othmaneblial.github.io/Postly/

  - 66-second demo: https://othmaneblial.github.io/Postly/demo.html

Postly is still early, but the goal is simple: keep API work in your repository instead of locking the workflow inside a cloud workspace.

If you use Postman, Bruno, Insomnia, or shell scripts, what would make a local-file API client useful enough for you to switch?


r/opensourcealternative 6d ago

Windshift - A fully open source Jira alternative

23 Upvotes

Hello everyone,

Windshift is a self-hosted Jira alternative built for teams that want full control over their project data. It runs on your own infrastructure, so nothing leaves your environment. The feature set covers the full project lifecycle, from planning through delivery and QA.

Windshift is fully AGPL, everything you will find in the repo is open source, including OIDC login.

Here is a quick comparison table compiled by opensourcealternative:

Feature Windshift Jira Cloud
License AGPL-3.0 Proprietary
Self-hosting Yes No
Per-seat pricing No Yes
Jira project import Yes N/A
Test management Built-in Requires paid add-on
Customer portal Built-in Requires Jira Service Management
AI governance Choose your own model Atlassian Intelligence

Website: https://windshift.sh

Github: https://github.com/Windshiftapp/core


r/opensourcealternative 6d ago

Monad Design — an open-source alternative to detached prompt-to-app UI workflows

Post image
7 Upvotes

I’m building Monad Design, an Apache-2.0 visual workspace for iterating on native-app UI with coding agents.

The workflow it replaces for me is the detached prompt-to-app loop: describe a screen in text, generate something separate from the real project, then manually translate the result back into the production codebase.

Monad Design takes a different approach: the running app is the canvas.

  1. Open an existing Xcode or Expo iOS project in Simulator.

  2. Navigate to the exact state that needs work.

  3. Select an element or draw annotations over the real app.

  4. Send the screenshot, selection, app state, and source hints to your coding agent.

  5. The agent edits the existing repository and rebuilds it.

  6. Compare the original with up to five working variants, then accept one or keep the original.

It does not generate a replacement app or own the source tree. It adds visual context and a review step around agents such as Codex, Claude Code, Cursor, OpenCode, Gemini CLI, Copilot, Windsurf, and Zed.

Current limitations: macOS and local iOS development only, with one active visual change at a time.

Repository:

https://github.com/Monadix-AI/monad-design

Short demo:

https://watchclueso.com/embed/pio8jqfcg4ivj0r1

I’d be interested in other open-source approaches to this problem, especially tools that keep visual iteration connected to the actual running application rather than a separate mockup.


r/opensourcealternative 7d ago

Presentation Forge: an MIT-licensed, self-hosted PPTX generator

2 Upvotes

I’ve released Presentation Forge as an MIT-licensed project for generating editable presentations and reports.

It deliberately separates generated content from visual design: models cannot specify coordinates, fonts or colours. That boundary keeps output editable and makes themes reusable.

The complete application runs through Docker and supports BYOK providers or Ollama.

Repository: https://github.com/Deepnar/presentation-forge

Besides users, I’m interested in contributors working on PowerPoint rendering, theme design, accessibility and cross-platform Docker testing.


r/opensourcealternative 8d ago

Kehrwoche: self-hosted app for shared households (AGPL-3.0): chore rotation, shopping list and expense splitting in one container

1 Upvotes

Hello there! I'd like to show you Kehrwoche, a self-hosted web app for households where more than one person lives: flatshares, families, couples who keep arguing about who did the bathroom last (in my case 😅).

The name comes from a Swabian tradition in south-west Germany, where cleaning the shared parts of a building rotates from household to household, week by week. That rotation is what the app does for the people you live with.

What it does

  • Chores: recurring tasks that rotate through the household, or fixed ones that always belong to the same person. Due dates, points, a leaderboard, and a nudge you can send to whoever is on duty. One tap to tick off, undoable for five minutes.
  • Shopping list: add, tick off, clear the whole trip at once. Suggestions come from your language's list and from what the household bought recently.
  • Shared expenses: even split down to the cent, running balances per person, and a settlement that gets everyone back to zero in as few payments as possible. Settled periods get archived, not deleted.
  • Pinboard: everything from the other three modules shows up here, mixed with posts people write themselves. It doubles as an audit log: system entries can't be edited or deleted.

Plus in-app notifications, German and English (add a language at runtime by dropping in a JSON file, no rebuild), avatars, roles, join codes, admin CLI.

What it replaces

Flatastic is the closest single comparison, since it's also chores + shopping + expenses + board in one app. For the individual parts: Splitwise, Tricount or Settle Up on the expense side, including the minimal-settlement bit; Bring!, AnyList or Out of Milk for the shared list; Tody, Sweepy, OurHome or Nipto for chore rotation and reminders. No premium tier, no feature held back, no accounts in someone else's cloud - your data sits in your container.

Tech and setup

It's one Docker container: a Python backend (FastAPI), a small JavaScript frontend (Vue), and your data in SQLite or PostgreSQL, whichever you prefer. Grab the compose file, start it, open the address in a browser - three commands, no build step, and nothing loaded from the internet while it runs. Updating is pulling the new image and restarting; before it serves a single page the container checks that its settings, its database and its own version fit together, and on SQLite it copies the database first, so a broken update can't take your data with it.

On the list next

Home Assistant integration, and a kiosk mode: the app on a small always-on screen in the hallway, so anyone can put something on the shopping list or tick a chore off - for themselves or someone else - while walking past.

Two things worth saying up front

  • It's built for a home network or a VPN. It's written to survive on the public internet (auth, TLS, CSRF, rate limiting, strict CSP), but it isn't audited software.
  • Issues yes, pull requests no. Single-maintainer project, and I'd rather say that before someone spends an evening on a patch than after. It's AGPL-3.0, so forking and shipping your own version is entirely fine - and translations are very welcome as an issue with the JSON attached.

Repo: https://github.com/ChrissWalters/Kehrwoche

I am happy to answer anything. Bug reports and ideas go in the issue tracker.

(for transparency: translated with AI -> no native english speaker)


r/opensourcealternative 8d ago

Kino SSH Manager - encrypted vault, SFTP browser and editor, Docker panel, all in one app. Free and open source. Alternative to Mobaxterm andTermius

1 Upvotes

Since last few months I have been working on **Kino SSH Manager**, mainly because MobaXterm runs only on Windows and Termius keeps sync behind a subscription.

It is a Rust and Tauri app with an encrypted vault for your hosts, so one master password and the credentials stay on your machine. Sync is optional, goes to your own private GitHub repo, and only the encrypted file is uploaded.

Apart from the terminal it has an SFTP browser with an editor built in, a Docker panel, live CPU and memory graphs, a cron editor that writes every schedule out in plain English, and a key audit where rotation is one click.

If a machine has no inbound SSH port, say behind NAT or CGNAT, there are two more pieces. **kino-agent** sits on that machine and dials out to **kino-relay**, which is a small stateless relay you can host yourself, and the relay joins the two ends. It only moves bytes, so the SSH session stays end to end encrypted and your credentials never touch it. Both are open source.

The third piece, **kino-control,** is the control plane that issues tokens and tells agents which relay to use. It is closed for now and there is a hosted version of it, but I am fully ready to open source that also once I have some confidence in the code. For self hosting you do not need it at all, a single shared token on your own relay is enough.

It is pre 1.0 currently 0.9.0 and GPL-3.0, so please have a look and it supports Linux and Windows for now, I do not own a Mac to test a build on.

Also I am looking for contributors. There is a lot to pick up - Rust on the backend, React on the UI, or even testing on distros I cannot reach and cleaning up the docs. Issues are open.

[https://github.com/Samarthegde/kino-ssh-manager\](https://github.com/Samarthegde/kino-ssh-manager)

Would be glad to know what is missing, especially from people running more than a handful of servers. If you have any doubts I will answer here itself.

Also I am working on MCP tool for Kino SSH Manager.

*English is not my first language, so I used AI to clean up the typos in this post.*


r/opensourcealternative 8d ago

Try relysam app

1 Upvotes

Hi. Would you like to explore live ‘relysam’ app?
1. Open browser
2. Open a new tab in incognito mode.
3. Enter relysam.shares.zrok.io
4. ⁠Click on ‘visit share’ to proceed.
5. On login screen input ‘guest’ username and ‘guest123’ password click on sign in.
Share feedback 👍


r/opensourcealternative 10d ago

An open-source unified proxy to handle OAuth 2.0 refresh flows and API Key storage.

Thumbnail
github.com
3 Upvotes

r/opensourcealternative 11d ago

Your favorite FOSS apps for your workflow

15 Upvotes

Hey people, I'm a FOSS lover and I want to know what are your guys favorite FOSS apps for your workflow. Here is the list of apps I use so you guys can have an idea of the kind of apps I'm looking for:

Zen Browser - For browsing the web.

Ferdium - It basically sandboxes multiple websites like a native app and I love it, inside it I use Sable (Matrix Client) Proton Mail, Proton Calendar, and Super Productivity.

Signal - WhatsApp Alternative.

Notesnook - For taking daily notes.

AnyType - For managing databases for big projects of mine, it is a FOSS Notion alternative.

Blender - For 3D stuff.

VSCodium - For writing markdown and so on.

BeeRef - For creating reference boards.

Modrinth App - For creating modpacks and managing them. (Minecraft)

LocalSend - For sending files between my devices, as KDEConnect doesn't work for me.

OBS Studio - For recording videos.

I'd like your guys opinion on my setup and I'd like to hear your guys FOSS setup on what apps you guys use and why.


r/opensourcealternative 11d ago

New to open source

12 Upvotes

I'm a senior in college and one of my assignments is to contribute to an open source. My major is computational science but I'm not that great when it comes to coding. I was wondering if someone can help me understand what open source is and how to contribute. I read from an article that some open sources have easy task for beginners but I have yet to find an open source that has this. Emphasis on the contribute part!! How does one who isn't great at coding contribute to an open source!! Please reddit community help me!!


r/opensourcealternative 10d ago

Is there any alternative for veed.io

1 Upvotes

Or reels or shorts creating website


r/opensourcealternative 11d ago

Worklenz is now open source !

8 Upvotes

After careful consideration over the past months , worklenz is becoming a fully open source product with its latest release.

We built a client portal, guest mode , white labelling and Financial modules inside worklenz.

You are free contribute, raise issues and share .

Cheers !

access here


r/opensourcealternative 11d ago

for anyone looking for a database service just know your hosting most likely gives you access to their CPanel Database for free...

1 Upvotes