Life & fun · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Plasmite – a lightweight IPC system that's fun
At Oblong Industries one of the basic building blocks of everything we built was a homegrown C-based IPC system called Plasma. The message channel was an mmap'd file used as a ring buffer. All messages were human-readable, performance was good, configuration was trivial. What was especially useful (and unusual in IPC systems it seems) was the property that message channels outlive all readers and writers, and even survive reboots, because they're just files. For local IPC you don't need a broker or server process. All the engineers who ever worked at Oblong loved Plasma, so I've recreated…
Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Prices are shown for the 2 we have checked on their own sites, 2 of them free or with a free tier.
- 1
If you work in C++, and you would like 2+ programs to share data structures (and/or native I/O handles a.k.a. FDs) among each other, there is a good chance Flow-IPC - will make it considerably less annoying to code than typical approaches; and - may massively reduce the latency involved. Those sharing Cap'n Proto-encoded data may have particular interest. Cap'n Proto (https://capnproto.org) is fantastic at its core task - in-place serialization with zero-copy - and we wanted to make the IPC (inter-process communication) involving capnp-serialized messages be zero-copy,…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 2
Hello everyone, Today we released iceoryx2 v0.4! iceoryx2 is a service-based inter-process communication (IPC) library designed to make communication between processes as fast as possible - like Unix domain sockets or message queues, but orders of magnitude faster and easier to use. It also comes with advanced features such as circular buffers, history, event notifications, publish-subscribe messaging, and a decentralized architecture with no need for a broker. For example, if you're working in robotics and need to process frames from a camera across multiple processes, iceoryx2 makes it…
2024 · ekxide.io · its alternatives →
- 3CN
2013 · kentonv.github.com · its alternatives →
- 4
Simple and scalable pub/sub message bus written in Erlang
2015 · cabol.github.io · its alternatives →
- 5
Dear HN community! Looking forward to hearing your feedback on ACE (assured confidential execution), technology that implements VM-based trusted execution environment (TEE) for embedded RISC-V systems with focus on a formally verified and auditable firmware. We target high-assurance systems that can benefit from compartmentalization and hardware-backed isolation. The key ingredient called security monitor (firmware) is implemented in Rust. The formal specification is defined as annotations directly in code and gets translated to Coq using RefinedRust automation. ACE design is now part of the…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 6
The serendipity of an office, even when you're distributed
2021 · its alternatives →
- 7
The power of Codex with local, self-hosted models and voice
Jul 2026 · opencodesuper.app · its alternatives →
- 8
Lightweight, fault-tolerant message streams
2020 · liftbridge.io · its alternatives →
- 9IB
2015 · mappedbus.io · its alternatives →
- 10
Hi HN, I’m Mike, the founder and creator of Wave, a cross-platform open-source terminal that supports inline rendering, modern UI, and persistent sessions. I love the command line; I’ve been using it for over 25 years, starting with a Linux box I made with spare parts in my college dorm room. But while other devtools have been modernized, the terminal has been stuck, with the same basic functionality for over 40-years. What if your command line terminal could display more than just text? That’s crazy right (I can hear the screams of thousands of graybeard sysadmins). Not all the time, but…
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 11
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 · its alternatives →
- 12VI
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 →
- 13
Inter-process C++ communication library to enable allocation managed between processes/threads and send/receive of allocated regions between producers/consumer processes or threads using this IPC buffer. (and yes it implements an M:N ring buffer too) - Usage · RaftLib/ipc Wiki
2021 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 14
Large-scale server monitoring application written in Golang - gmemstr/Platypus
2019 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 15
Scapefree tier, from $9.99/mo▲59Hey HN, we've been using Claude Code daily for months, and built Scape to fix our biggest pain point: managing multiple worktrees quickly & reducing the mental load of switching between them quickly. What we built: Scape is a macOS menu bar app that sits on top of Claude Code and gives you: - One-click worktrees: click a button, get a new git worktree with a Claude session already working on it. Develop in parallel without leaving your current branch. - Toolkit: per-session actions like "Create PR", "Commit & Push", "Run & Fix Tests." Add your own with bash scripts or prompts. -…
24d ago · scape.work · its alternatives →
- 16
Open-source pub/sub and streaming platform.
Jun 2026 · danube-messaging.com · its alternatives →
- 17SA
2019 · schm1dt.ch · its alternatives →
- 18CS
Chris Hulbert, Splinter Software, is a contracting iOS developer based in Australia.
2011 · splinter.com.au · its alternatives →
- 19
List, wake and scan nodes in a network. Contribute to pojntfx/liwasc development by creating an account on GitHub.
2021 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 20
2016 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 21
I've never posted on ShowHN before, but I wanted to share my Xmas 2025 project; to try a new approach to controlling our kids screen time. This also involved massively over-engineering a solution in order to play with a shiny new gadget (and avoid the in laws at Christmas, obviously) I've shared some learnings on AI coding with embedded devices, and how I approached the product design/hardware selection side of things. The Web App is at https://screenie.org - and I'm Open Sourcing the device and web app code later today (links to follow on that site)
Jan 2026 · partridge.works · its alternatives →
- 22BA
I recently came across this small ESP32 project and found the design ideas behind it very interesting. BPU (Batch Processing Unit) is a lightweight embedded scheduling core focused on keeping output pipelines stable under pressure (UART backpressure, limited bandwidth, bursty producers). Instead of blocking or growing unbounded queues, it: enforces per-tick byte budgets, coalesces redundant events, degrades gracefully under sustained load, exposes detailed runtime statistics. The repository includes design notes, flow diagrams, and real execution logs, which makes the runtime behavior very…
Feb 2026 · its alternatives →
- 23
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 · its alternatives →
- 24
WebRTC’s capabilities are amazing, but the setup headaches (signaling, connection/ICE failures, patchwork docs) can kill momentum. That’s why we built PulseBeam—a batteries-included WebRTC platform designed for developers who just want real-time features to work. What’s different? Built-in Signaling Built-in TURN Time limited JWT auth (serverless for production or use our endpoint for testing) Client and server SDKs included Free and open-source core If you’ve used libraries like PeerJS, PulseBeam should feel like home. We’re inspired by its simplicity. We’re currently in a…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
Also compare
- Comprehensive inter-process communication (IPC) toolkit in modern C++ alternatives
- Iceoryx2 – Fast IPC Library for Rust, C++, and C alternatives
- Cap'n Proto, by the ex-maintainer of Protocol Buffers alternatives
- Erlbus – scalable pub/sub message bus written in Erlang alternatives
- Confidential computing for high-assurance RISC-V embedded systems alternatives
- Voice Channels by Quill 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 →