Life & fun · alternatives · 2026
19 alternatives to gclown
gclown is the only thing that keeps me going these days. #!/bin/sh cat <<"EOC" GCLOWN ) ( / \ .-"""""-. / \ ( \/ __ __ \/ ) ) ; / _\ /_ \ ; ( ( | / \ / \ | ) \ (, \0/_\0/ ,) / \_| / \ |_/ | (_\___/_) | .\ \ -.- / /. { \ `===' / } { `.___.' } jgs { } `"="="="="="` EOC gcloud "$@"
Below are 19 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. gclown launched in 2022; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
- 1E
Hello everyone, A couple of months ago I was introduced to Excalidraw and fell in love with it instantly. The only thing I didn't like was that I couldn't easily save my whiteboards and had to put everything in one whiteboard which started to lag my PC after a while. So I made ExcaliHub. It's exactly as it sounds: a hub for Excalidraw. It's free, open source, and I aim to keep it that way. Thanks in advance for any feedback!
2024 · excalihub.dev · its alternatives →
- 2

The AI that really does things. Any OS. Any Platform. The lobster way. 🦞 - GitHub - openclaw/openclaw: The AI that really does things. Any OS. Any Platform. The lobster way. 🦞
Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 3

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 · its alternatives →
- 4IT
I added Co-op online to Lazy Blocks. Using PeerJS & WebRTC, so no server. Hope you enjoy, let me know if you have and feedback, etc. Thank you, Adam -- EDIT Oh! -- Click the "Globe" icon to start online play -- Edit 2 Oh! -- I should mention - the board is infinite, you can scroll and pan and zoom in all directions -- and you can always find the other player with one click
2025 · lazyblocks.xyz · its alternatives →
- 5IM
So, I'm learning VIM and made this yesterday, I pretend to increment it as I learn new stuff. You move with HJKL and that's it for now. Don't let the sublimes consume you. http://worms.io/vimwarrior/
2016 · its alternatives →
- 6IM
Try it at: ssh krnl.duetbrowser.com No sign up, totally free - no download. Let me know what you think. Prior art exists (brow.sh) but I wasn't satisfied with their graphical take. I wanted the raw, old skool terminal days of the early internet - BBS, and old green phosphor library comptuers - but running the modern web, with all the bells and jingle jangle whistles (JavaScript, etc). No funding, no VC, just 100% raw terminal fun. Not sure how long the demo will last, but try it out.
Jul 2026 · its alternatives →
- 7

Hi HN! In the last couple of weeks I've been working on Cranki: Cranki = Crosswords + Anki. (It's a stupid name tbh, haha) I like doing crosswords in Spanish (to learn vocab) but none of the apps out there allowed me to use my own list of words that I come across. So I built one instead. It's entirely client-side. No server, no database, no accounts, etc. Your words and stats are stored in local storage. I built this for myself but let me know if you like it!
Apr 2026 · cranki.app · its alternatives →
- 8

Fully leaned into vibe coding this time around. Started on v0, at some point ejected into running locally (getting v0's exported folder to run locally was a challenge), then iterated with Cursor over the course of a few hours. Really neat how much can be accomplished just conversationally these days.
2025 · macrodata-refinement.arjit.me · its alternatives →
- 9

Hey yall, I built this for my makerspace. We wanted to let each other borrow things, but also didn't want to put up a big shiny sign saying "hey everyone, my garage has a super fancy oscilloscope just sitting there" and also didn't want to necessarily always need to say yes to everything. However, when I show it to people, they've been suggesting using it for other things like board games, or wedding equipment, etc. I'm still trying to find PMF, so please let me know what you think! For the stack, it's all Elixir + LiveView which is really nice, and then Fly.io, Fly's MPG, Tigris Data,…
Aug 2026 · toolpool.garden · its alternatives →
- 10VI
This was submitted before but it didn't seem to get much attention because I don't think the title was very descriptive and the submitter was brand new. I almost didn't click it but once I did I thought the project was pretty awesome and had a lot of promise. Hope this doesn't violate the rules, I have no horse in the game, but the creator is here on the site so hopefully he'll be able to answer your questions.
2022 · docs.vaxiin.io · its alternatives →
- 11YA
I must say I was encouraged to post my project here when I saw the positive response to this post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3780731 Before you make any comments, please keep in mind that the project is written for fun. I'm not forcing anyone to use it. In fact, nobody should use the current unstable version in a serious project. Here is the link: http://github.com/bsg/libserv Please share your thoughts. All criticisms are welcome, even the harsh ones. p.s. The project is still a work-in-progress.
2012 · its alternatives →
- 12

- 13

Hey any astrophysicist reading hn there? Was sick in august (yeah isn't that nice) and made a small python fits table viewer for the terminal with textual. It would be great to have people try it so if you find any issue I can improve it. If you have no FITS file but would like to try regardless there are some test file in `/test`. Ciao!
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 14

Democratisation of local AI is key. I've been working on pushing the limits of commercial hardware, squeezing any extra bit possible. My Scientific Agentic AI hareness helped me to reallocate every single bit of it. I rewrote the Kernel, I went down the CUDA rabbit hole until I have been able to explain any bit and any ms of computational power involved in the process pushing the Qwen 30B-A3B from 8 tok7s to 19 tok/s with llama.cpp up to 22.2 tok/s with my project and 109 tok/s on not novel content and speeding up the prefill by 5-9X
Jul 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 15PC
Built this with my roommate over the weekend. At the end of the game, GPT will share its reasoning for each choice, which yields some funny results and explains why its so hard to win. Enjoy!
2023 · codenames-with-gpt.netlify.app · its alternatives →
- 16

Hey HN! I made a completely open sourced alternative to Weights and Biases with (insert cringe) blazingly fast performance (yes we use rust and clickhouse) Weights and Biases is super unperformant, their logger blocks user code... logging should not be blocking, yet they got away with it. We do the right thing by being non blocking. Would love any thoughts / feedbacks / roasts etc
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 17

If you're currently caffeinated you may or may not want to hop on to this zap-or-confetti mental math operant conditioning chamber Sorry for the low effort app slop but this is what you get haha Certified sound free because that sort of dopamine is just distracting
2025 · arithmetic-skinnerbox.lovable.app · its alternatives →
- 18

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 · its alternatives →
- 19

I have been a devoted vim user for almost 3 decades and frankly it has served me well! Yes I do get tempted to try out the next best thing (though Zed has some serious names so am even more tempted). But frankly something about staying in the terminal that I am just too used to and dont want to change. Though I never bothered updating the vimrc often (did 4 "major" updates in those years) I found myself wanting to update my vimrc for vimspector. This time instead of again trying to understand vimscript and reading the various docs, I let claude code on it and dang it has been a fun journey…
Oct 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →