Dev tools · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to The Unix Magic poster, annotated (updated)
This is a site that maps the references on Gary Overacre's 1980s UNIX Magic poster to short write-ups with sources. I posted an earlier version about a year ago [1]. Since then I rewrote some of the annotations, added deep-linking to individual markers and a frame/sidebar view, gave the site a terminal-style redesign, and fixed historical inaccuracies (daemon etymology, nroff origin, B language vs. Multics, etc.). Contributions and comments welcome; each marker is a GitHub issue. site: https://unixmagic.net [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43019136
The Unix Magic poster, annotated is a reference site that documents the historical references depicted in Gary Overacre's 1980s Unix Magic poster. It provides sourced write-ups for each element shown on the poster… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.
- 1
Hi HN, We've discussed the Unix Magic poster before (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27029196). Like many of you, I love this poster and all the Unix references hidden in it. I built this as a static site that lets us annotate the Unix Magic poster by placing markers on references and adding descriptions to explain them. I've added a few so far, but there's much more to document. What I love about this approach is that contributions happen not just on the site itself but also through PRs, where we can discuss and refine the details of each reference. Feel free to send a…
2025 · drio.github.io · its alternatives →
- 2
Record terminal sessions as SVG animations. Contribute to nbedos/termtosvg development by creating an account on GitHub.
2018 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 3
- 4
xkcd styled chart lib. Contribute to timqian/chart.xkcd development by creating an account on GitHub.
2019 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 5
A modernized and annotated code companion to Paul Graham's "On Lisp". - DalekBaldwin/on-lisp
2015 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 6
- 7IW
The book page links to a blog post that explains how I got about it (and has a link to sample content), but the TL&DR is that I could not find a lot of books that were on "our" history _and_ were larded with technical details. So I set about writing one, and some five years later I'm happy to share the result. I think it's one of the few "computer history" books that has tons of code, but correct me if I'm wrong (I wrote this both to tell a story and to learn :-)). My favorite languages are Smalltalk and Lisp, but as an Emacs user, I've been using the latter for much longer and for my…
Feb 2026 · berksoft.ca · its alternatives →
- 8
Build terminal dashboards using ascii/ansi art and javascript - yaronn/blessed-contrib
2015 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 9
Always Googling those pesky Terminal commands? Use AI to find the commands for you from within the command line.
2022 · oh-heck.dev · its alternatives →
- 10
Stickers for fans of unix, software, coding and open source
2018 · stickermule.com · its alternatives →
- 11CI
2016 · commits.io · its alternatives →
- 12
I recently brought Infocom's original UNIX z-machine source code back to life on modern systems. The modified source code, instructions on usage, a build of the z-machine, and examples of embedded game executables are available. There is also a detailed write-up about the state of the original source code, the porting process, and the invaluable role Justine Tunney's Cosmpolitan project played in bringing the Zork trilogy (and more) to Windows/Mac/Linux/bsd for arm/x86 machines over the course of a lazy Sunday.
2025 · christopherdrum.github.io · its alternatives →
- 13
cat for images, by RUST
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 14
A Unix-inspired shell and RAM filesystem for the Commodore 64 (6502 assembly)
Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 15
A simple markup language for creating rich terminal reports, presentations and infographics - yaronn/wopr
2015 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 16
Or more precisely, my little site maker... It is a personal tool that I thoroughly enjoyed making, and enjoy using to write my website . A caveat before any more; nobody was supposed to promote this insanity. Like, terrible things have been done involving inotify and xdotool. But. It showed up on HN some months ago. That too while it was still, shall we say, fermenting. It got "done" some time thence, and of course one could not let the half-past just be. So here we are, for better or worse. Thank you HN mods for helping me repost! _\\// The README explains all, animated GIFs and…
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
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A command line text editor written in Node.js, focused on JavaScript. - tome/README.md at main · boutell/tome
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 19
I don't know Rust. Friday after work I realised that 90% of my IDE time now is just the commit/diff view — and even good IDEs feel heavy for that. So over the weekend I built a dedicated native tool for just that. Kyde is a macOS git commit + diff editor with one goal: be fast, do Git well. I'm curious whether anyone else mostly opens their IDE for git operations these days. It's open source, and there's a signed app in Releases.
Jun 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 20
Hey all! I'm happy to announce we've finally released our 2nd macOS app, Draw Over It, a tiny desktop app that enables drawing, highlighting, or annotating directly on top of anything on your Mac. I've always wanted something like this for instant and unobtrusive sketching and annotation for pair programming and demos. I always found the standard web-based diagram and drawing tools a bit too cumbersome. So we built a simple overlay that could appear over any window or app with one shortcut. It doesn't collect any user data and doesn't require any system permissions - it's sandboxed. It all…
Oct 2025 · draw.wrobele.com · its alternatives →
- 21
A fast, rootless sandbox and virtual resource runtime for any workload, including untrusted and AI-generated code. Daemonless: a real, kernel-enforced container in ~3.5 ms from an OCI image, out of one static binary - getkern/kern
Aug 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 22
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 →
- 23
npx codebase-posters inside any git repo opens a local exhibition: 18 pieces painted live from your commit history. everything renders from git log, nothing leaves your machine.
Jul 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 24
A short introduction to the Unix command line
2015 · learnenough.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 →