Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Micro-RLE ≤264-byte compression for UART/MCU logs, zero RAM growth

I needed to stuff twice the telemetry through the same 115 kbaud line on a Cortex-M0+ that only had 8 kB flash left. Micro-RLE is the smallest drop-in I could come up with: 264 B of Thumb code, 36 B of state, no malloc, worst-case 14 cycles&#x2F;byte and still lossless for every 8-bit pattern. On the usual sensor streams (ADC, IMU, GPS) it’s 33-70 % smaller than raw output and boots in < 600 µs, so you can fire-and-forget from main() before the PLL even locks. Repo is a single .c file and a 3-function API—replace the weak emit() hook with your UART &#x2F; DMA &#x2F; ring-buffer and you’re…

Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.

1. 1
   Minimax – A Compressed-First, Microcoded RISC-V CPU▲171

   RISC-V's compressed instruction (RVC) extension is intended as an add-on to the regular, 32-bit instruction set, not a replacement or competitor. Its designers intended RVC instructions to be expanded into regular 32-bit RV32I equivalents via a pre-decoder. What happens if we explicitly architect a RISC-V CPU to execute RVC instructions, and "mop up" any RV32I instructions that aren't convenient via a microcode layer? What architectural optimizations are unlocked as a result? "Minimax" is an experimental RISC-V implementation intended to establish if an RVC-optimized CPU is, in practice, any…

   2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

2. 2
   TinyFast▲319

   I am a developer. I have been building stuff for the last 13 years. One common challenge in all my projects is compressing assets to make them as small as possible. I used to end up using online compressors, but this has a lot of privacy concerns. So, I finally set down for couple of weeks and built this simple app. I can just drag and drop assets in it and it shrinks them. It currently supports around 25 file types. I built a lot of iOS apps but this is the first time building a macOS app, so any feedback is welcome.

   2025 · tinyfast.app · its alternatives →

3. 3
   micro-gl▲101

   Run vector graphics on any computer (without GPU or FPU)

   2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

4. 4
   Micro HTTP server in 22 lines of C▲223

   This post is from a protected account.

   2021 · twitter.com · its alternatives →

5. 5TA
   TinyClock – a tiny true 5-arch universal Mac OS X single-binary GUI app▲192

   1. Single universal binary, that can be natively executed on every hardware platform Mac OS X was made for (32&#x2F;64 bit, PowerPC&#x2F;x86&#x2F;AppleSilicon). 2. Minimalistic gadget-style design. If launched as a tool, there is no menubar, no dock icon, no nothing, just the clock window. 3. Support for hidpi and dark mode for environments, that have them. 4. Window title bar for moving the window with a mouse, and a handle to resize it (latter for OS versions, that have it). 5. Can be easily ported to GNUStep and thus other OSes (sources under GPLv3). 6. Simple Makefile build system.

   2022 · tycho.sytes.net · its alternatives →

6. 6
   TinyOS – A minimalist RTOS for Cortex-M written in C▲102

   Contribute to cmc-labo/tinyos-rtos development by creating an account on GitHub.

   Apr 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

7. 7
   A (marginally) useful x86-64 ELF executable in 466 bytes▲85

   Battery info program for x86-64 Linux laptops in 307 bytes of machine code - meribold/btry

   2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

8. 8
   Video Compress Ultra Editor▲80

   Make your videos smaller with zero loss of quality

   2022 · play.google.com · its alternatives →

9. 9
   Anos – a hand-written ~100KiB microkernel for x86-64 and RISC-V▲115

   I pretty much always have a kernel project going on, and have been that way for decades. Over the past couple of years, that's been Anos, which has gotten further along than any of my previous hobby kernels, supporting IPC, multitasking, SMP (x86-64 only right now) and running on real hardware. LLMs (mostly Claude Code) have been used during development, but I learned early on that it's not _great_ at code at this level, so I've restricted its use to mostly documentation and tests. There's _a little_ AI code in the user space, but I have a strict "no AI code" rule in the kernel itself. I…

   Apr 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

10. 10
    microvm – a minimalist machine type for QEMU inspired by Firecracker▲145

    2019 · github.com · its alternatives →

11. 11
    A low power 1U Raspberry Pi cluster server for inexpensive colocation▲175

    A low power 1U Raspberry Pi cluster server for inexpensive colocation. - pawl/raspberry-pi-1u-server

    2021 · github.com · its alternatives →

12. 12
    less than 650 LOC trainable GPT only using NumPy▲90

    Absolute minimalistic implementation of a GPT-like transformer using only numpy (<650 lines). - joennlae/tensorli

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

13. 13OA
    Overfitted a 900KB Transformer to Compress a 100MB CSV into 7MB▲112

    I built an experiment that uses an overfitted transformer and arithmetic coding to compress individual files. Instead of training the model to generalize, I train a 900KB transformer to memorize a single file and predict the next byte. Those predictions are fed into an arithmetic coder to produce the compressed output. On a 100MB NYC taxi CSV, it compresses to about 7MB (~0.5 bits&#x2F;byte). On a 100MB slice of enwik9, it compresses to about 21MB (~1.68 bits&#x2F;byte). It's pretty slow right now (roughly 20–30 minutes of training and 45 minutes each for compression and decompression on my…

    Jun 2026 · its alternatives →

14. 14
    Attempt to bring a cinematic experience in 256 bytes (WASM)▲133

    repo of my sizecoding entries. Contribute to ilmenit/sizecoding development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

15. 15
    Mini_gzip – embeddable, minimal, in-memory Gzip API▲21

    Embeddable minimal in-memory GZIP decompression library for embedded systems - wkoszek/mini_gzip

    2015 · github.com · its alternatives →

16. 16
    µFSM – A state chart library for embedded applications▲154

    Statechart library and editor. Contribute to jonasblixt/ufsm development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2018 · github.com · its alternatives →

17. 17
    My microkernel-based OS built from scratch now has basic Unix commands▲69

    This project contains no code from Linux, BSD, Minix, or any other OS. Everything up until this point is written entirely from scratch, including a pure microkernel (that only implements multiprocessor priority scheduling, memory management, and interprocess communication), a work-in-progress implementation of the standard C library, and a variety of servers that provide drivers and other essential OS functionality. At the time of writing this post, the servers provide drivers for the keyboard, NVMe SSDs (that works on real hardware), a Unix-like virtual file system (with a single root…

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

18. 18
    A minimal FFT code▲100

    2018 · lambdaway.free.fr · its alternatives →

19. 19
    MiniPCs.zip – Charting the Pareto frontier of Mini PCs▲115

    The overall idea is to chart out the thousands of Mini PCs by benchmark and reveal the Pareto Front so you can get the most Compute per Dollar. Definitely a labor of love as I have a number of Mini PCs for my "homelab" (TrueNAS, piHole, Plex, basic stuff). It uses Gemini to extract specs from listings (since they're not often strongly categorized). Quick blog post here: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;luke.zip&#x2F;posts&#x2F;pareto-pcs&#x2F;

    Jun 2026 · minipcs.zip · its alternatives →

20. 20
    I compressed 10k PDFs into a 1.4GB video for LLM memory▲61

    While building a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) system, I was frustrated by my vector database consuming 8GB RAM just to search my own PDFs. After incurring $150 in cloud costs, I had an unconventional idea: what if I encoded my documents into video frames? The concept sounded absurd—storing text in video? But modern video codecs have been optimized for compression over decades. So, I converted text into QR codes, then encoded those as video frames, letting H.264&#x2F;H.265 handle the compression. The results were surprising. 10,000 PDFs compressed down to a 1.4GB video file. Search…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

21. 21
    UltraCompress – first mathematically lossless 5-bit LLM compression▲6

    Verified AI infrastructure for regulated deployment. UltraCompress (our wedge): near-lossless 5-bit compression with SHA-256-reproducible reconstruction - prove the model in production is the one you validated. 23 architectures (0.6B-405B), Hermes-3-405B @ 1.0066x. OpenAI-compatible API. pip install

    May 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

22. 22
    An Actually-Tiny Basic for Arduino▲24

    A Tiny Basic: An Actually Tiny BASIC for Arduino. Contribute to trevorjay/atinybasic development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2020 · github.com · its alternatives →

23. 23
    Tiny C runtime Linux (rt0), HelloWorld 0.6k (i386), sbrk example added▲49

    A minimal C runtime for Linux i386 & x86_64. Contribute to lpsantil/rt0 development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2015 · github.com · its alternatives →

24. 24
    Micro LZMA decoder (x86 assembly code golf)▲56

    Micro LZMA decoder. Contribute to ilyakurdyukov/micro-lzmadec development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

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 →