Alternatives
Products that do what debork does
fix yer linux
- 1SF
I've built a thing! A few months back someone (not me) posted my Mac app Droplings to HN. It was incredibly rough around the edges back then, and in alpha. Well, it's finished now and sparkles like crazy. Please take a look! :)
2012 · servus.io
- 2ZZ
2020 · ramsdenj.com
- 3LR
I was tired of having to search for a USB drive every time I mess something with my computer so I decided to create this small EFI file that can be put in your EFI partition to boot from it. It has everything you should ever need to mount your filesystem and chroot to it so you can fix it. You just need to drop the file in your EFI partition and you can boot to it from your BIOS menu. I would appreciate feedback and ideas to make it better.
2025 · github.com
- 4DW
2021 · github.com
- 5EC
I participated in the Nvidia + Vercel 2 hour hackathon in SF tonight, and built something I've wanted, but hadn't tried building. I implemented an MCP Server and VS Code extension to allow Claude Desktop to place breakpoints, step through code, and execute expressions (assuming language support). So you can ask it a question that requires actually stepping through the code and now it can actually do that - check values for you, etc. It's _definitely_ not perfect. Have improvements? Please make a PR!
2025 · github.com
- 6PS
I was debating when to post this, but I've been using it locally in a variety of situations for several months and I think it's pretty stable (and usable!). There are more features I'd like to add, but I wanted to see if there was much interest before spending much more time on it right now.
2025 · github.com
- 7FG
Built this as a guide for users of my hosting service. Everything here was run on a real instance. The Mesa/LLVM dependency is genuinely painful on a 1GB disk, and I couldn't find a way around it. WindowMaker won the window manager battle purely on dependency chain cleanliness; it pulls in no GTK, no Python, no audio stack. Happy to answer questions about any of the choices made. Screenshots at the end.
Mar 2026 · tierhive.com
- 8KP
I thought it'd be interesting to use Linux PSI (Pressure Stall Information) for an LLM runtime to trim the KV cache. This is mainly useful imo for edge devices like the Jetson Orin super nano kit which have unified memory. I haven't benched much, but plan to do so more over time and see if I can make a real use of it as I run local LLMs. Let me know if it makes sense :P (I of course vibed this idea)
Jun 2026 · github.com
- 9IN
I wrote an article about how to get Nix on your Steam Deck! Big takeaways for me: * Steam Decks are very fun to hack on * Linux Consoles are good * There are more knobs in systemd units than I remember * Flatcar Linux is a thing that exists * Remoting into a console is fun * A/B boots are less interesting than one might expect when you're used to NixOS
2022 · determinate.systems
- 10ZA
2024 · github.com
- 11AC
It's quite limited but does the job, I invite anybody not aware of what cram tests are to give them a try, being on Unix with the original cram or Windows with this one ;)
Nov 2025 · github.com
- 12PU
After seeing a cool demo of a hack on Twitter, I built a cross platform version of it that works well and uses streaming. From anywhere on Mac and Linux, trigger Ollama and optionally feed it your clipboard. I built it yesterday and it's already very useful to me. I'm pretty excited about it and wanted to share!
2024 · github.com
- 13CP
Hi HN! I've never posted anything on here before, but this project was too fun to pass up. I've been learning a lot about agents lately, and wanted to see if I could replicate some of the results of Windsurf and Cursor. Generally I love these tools, but when you're stuck behind an "enterprise" firewall, they don't work as well. This sad state of affairs motivated me to understand SWE agents more. Does it work? Yes. Is it as good as Cursor and Windsurf? Not quite, but it's pretty darn close, depending on the model you use. I'm lacking a few features like semantic indexing, MCP support, but…
2025 · github.com
- 14IM
I've been working on getting NixBSD (Nix package manager + FreeBSD) to boot alongside NixOS on a shared ZFS pool. The result is a <2GB disk image you can try in QEMU or virt-manager. What works: - GRUB chainloads FreeBSD's bootloader - Both systems share a ZFS pool - Everything is defined in a single Nix flake - Fully reproducible builds (some dependencies are now cached on Cachix) Planned: - Support native compilation of NixBSD (currently cross-compiled on Linux) - Many shortcuts were taken to get this working, needs lots of cleanup - Add a semi-automated installer like nixos-wizard Try it:…
Jan 2026 · github.com
- 15SM
Hi HN! I've posted this a few weeks back without much HN traction - today we've added a free community tier, so anyone can try it out. TL;DR: We’ve launched StableBuild, a new tool to easily freeze and pin Docker images, operating system packages, Python packages, and arbitrary build dependencies; in 5 lines of code: https://stablebuild.com . As the CTO at an ML startup w/ 75 people (https://edgeimpulse.com/) I’ve grown incredibly frustrated with non-deterministic builds. Last year basically every week one of our containers (we have 40+ unique ones in prod)…
2024 · stablebuild.com
- 16MH
Just wanted to make my first post about something interesting I've been working on for some time. Any ideas/suggestions for new hardware or software I should try out are welcome, though I will only have time for a major overhaul in a month or two where I want to redo and document everything a bit better than how it is currently. Hope this can inspire someone to start their own homelab or give some ideas to already existing ones!
2024 · github.com
- 17IV
So, I've never written a line of Rust in my life. I wouldn't know an `&mut this` from a mutandis. But I saw a tweet about a month ago that said, in this new era of AI, you'd be able to just take a library that you love, throw a TUI around it, and call it an app. So I spent about 200 bucks last month, here's what I came up with: Imbolc is a DAW that runs entirely in your terminal. It talks to scsynth over OSC and ships 58 instruments and 39 effects. VSTs are a work in progress, also GarageBand loops if you want to recreate "Umbrella". The codebase is about 60k? lines of Rust across 5 crates,…
Feb 2026 · github.com
- 18LF
Hi HN, I just wanted to share what I have been working on for the past few months: A firmware analyzer for embedded Linux systems that helps uncovering security issues running entirely in the browser. This is a very early Alpha. It is going to be rough around the edges. But I think it provides quite a lot of value already. So please go ahead and drop a firmware (only .tar rootfs archives for now) and try to break it :)
Mar 2026 · xray.boldwark.com
- 19CC
We're two engineers that got fed up with context switching. Why do we need to do a git push, open a browser tab, wait for some task to actually start, bite nails (or read HackerNews) for 10 minutes or more while dependencies are being installed for the 100th time and finally end up with an invalid YAML error. And for some reason this usually happens in the final stage of the pipeline leading up to the inevitable git commits "Fixed", "Fixed again", "Test", "Really fixed this time". We can do better. We set out to build Zippy. A CI/CD system that works from your terminal. No context…
Mar 2026 · zippy.sh
- 20AO
I posted Aurion OS a few weeks ago on HN. Since then, the OS has gone from Beta to v1.0 Release with a lot of improvements: Blaze Browser: HTML/CSS/JS rendering with tabs and a developer console (local only, no full http/https support for now) Installer with user account setup and app selection Multi-resolution support (800x600 to 2560x1440, I plan to add 4096x2160 pixels in next versions) Unix-style luka@aurion prompt Serbian keyboard layout Python interpreter and Make build system 50+ terminal commands Window manager improvements and bug fixes 1.8MB ISO (entire OS including…
Apr 2026 · aurionos.vercel.app
- 21DM
I have been coding over four decades, in many languages, on many projects (including Firefox, Final Cut Pro, the Newton, and Fullwrite Professional if you can remember that far back; all these using my "dead-name"). I wrote something small and simple to scratch an itch. It's the UNIX philosophy: small "one-trick ponies", each *really* good at their one trick, then the user can hook them together to solve actual problems. I'm a CLI guy, and for almost everything, I already have this. But not for debugging. The itch I scratched was the connector that enables this philosophy for debugging. That…
Jun 2026
- 22SB
Dec 2025 · shellbreaker.com
- 23TS
Hey HN, I’m excited to share Tiling Shell, an open-source GNOME extension I created to bring a more modern, user-friendly window management experience to Linux. Many existing solutions feel outdated and lack in user experience, so my goal with Tiling Shell is to bring a fresh, integrated approach that works well for both newcomers and advanced users. Demo video: https://youtu.be/RBoO5lgR1kA?t=20 by Omg Ubuntu Key Features: - Easily manage, edit, create, and delete custom layouts with a built-in editor. - Works seamlessly across multiple monitors, even with different scaling…
2024 · github.com
- 24XV
Hello, I just released the (eventually) final version of my xcapture eBPF performance tool that now uses modern eBPF (libbpf, BTF, CO-RE, passive sampling using task iterators, task-local storage, etc). The previous BCC-based v2 version got a good discussion here last year [1], but due to BCC being less flexible and now deprecated, I decided to pull the plug and start from scratch with the latest eBPF features available. I'm targeting Linux kernels 5.14 and up. So Ubuntu 20 with HWE kernel (5.15) already works, RHEL9 works, Oracle's RHEL8 clone OEL8 with Oracle's UEK7 kernel (5.15) also…
2025 · tanelpoder.com
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