Operating Systems

A lot like FreeBSD but with more of a effort towards correct code, security on servers, and the Unix philosphy, it's extremely hard to get working on a desktop and drivers are lacking, but if it works go for it, it's atleast as good as FreeBSD in most cases

A fork one of the most versatile linux distributions around. it doesn't have a graphical user enviroment by default, however it is easy to install one, and it being a barebones system allows you to customize it way beyond most other distros. not to mention, the AUR allows you to find basically anything you can dream of in terms of software. it has a more difficult learning curve, but is well rounded, without systemd, it also has releases with desktop enviroments preinstalled.

Shells

The remake of bash in toybox lightweight and fast, lacking features like tab completion and colors, so is essentially dash for bash scripts at this point.

Debian Almquist SHell is the Debian port of ash, it's a super lightweight shell that's great for script execution, if on artix, use dash-static-musl from the aur, i highly recommend you link this to /bin/sh.

OpenBSD Korn Shell, one of the best shells on unix, extremely lightweight, version of it generally doesn't matter oksh, loksh, mksh, pdksh, but when on artix i recommend using the mksh-static from the AUR. recommend using it as your user shell with dash as /bin/sh, how to change your user shell. you need to set your ENV var to be able to config your .shrc.

Terminal Software

Runs commands as another user, is super lightweight, great for single user pcs. also, Conf Doas.

A text editor inspired by Vi, Vim, and plan9 Sam, based around Structural Expressions.

A golang text editor essentially TUI sublime

A golang tui git client

A multiplexer inspired by DWM

a terminal matrix client.

posix shell script prompt thats easy to fork and implement into any shell.

A suckless RSS feed reader

A simple RSS feed reader.

A lynx like Web browser.

Yay is a AUR helper, also note, you need sudo or, Yay with Doas

A file manager.

simple implementation of top, really nice.

A process/task manager, really low resource and simple.

easy way to check memory usage of a program accurately

A simple system info Utility written in c, fast, inspired by neofetch.

Binary VI, VI like hex editor.

A notification bubble without a daemon can be piped into from tiramisu

Option selection, think cli dmenu.

A notification daemon that can be piped into whatever you please.

X/Wayland Software

Suckless terminal, light weight, scales poorly, but highly modable, great for hobbists, but on wayland

older ST wayland fork, seems to have moved away from wld.

simple menu for launching applications etc.

Suckless X Image Viewer

Document Viewer, with modules for, cb(r/z), pdf, epub, djvu, and more.

PDF/EPUB/CBZ Reader

Web browser, A fork of FireFox focused around XUL

VLC is video and audio player

MPV is video and audio player forked from mplayer

GNU Image Manipulation Program, essentially GNU Photoshop

Peak File Archival Performance.

IDE, De-microsofted, better than anything else but is electron.

XFCE ImgBurn, lightweight disc burning application

Game launcher, steam/playnite alternative, great emulator support, and wine support

Emulators

Dos Emulator, can be ran in your Terminal and other special things, sometimes useful.

DosBox but actually accurate, can run windows 98 and basically any games.

Windows compatiblity layer, has backports from proton, and other fixes by GE.

Android in a box, abusing the fact android uses Linux

MacOS compatiblity layer.

Commodore Emulation.

Really accurate and featured PSP emulator.

The best PS2 emulator, not great but in a lot of cases the only option.

The only PS3 Emulator.

The best and most open DS emulator.

Decently Accurate but not perfect, and insanely featured GCN/WII emulator.

N64 emulator, minimal, supports plugins.

A accurate but featured graphics plugin for N64 emulators, use with Mupen64Plus.

Sega saturn emulator.

Dreamcast emulator

16bit Atari emulator.

8bit Atari emulator.

Multisystem emulator, supports a ton of consoles while also being minimal it includes a ps1, nes, gb, gbc, gba, a bsnes based snes emulator, and more.