Work · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Vicinae – A native, Raycast-compatible launcher for Linux
Hi HN! I’ve always been a fan of application launchers, and I was impressed by the approach the Raycast team took — especially their extension system. About six months ago I started building something similar for Linux, aiming to integrate deeply at the OS level and give extensions a lot of power. Vicinae is written in C++ with Qt Widgets. I chose Widgets over QML for more imperative control of the UI, especially around extension handling. So far that’s worked well — modern C++ is great. To support my goals I built a number of custom widgets, including a fully virtualized list that can…
Vicinae is a Linux application launcher inspired by Raycast that integrates deeply with the operating system. Built in C++ with Qt Widgets, it supports Raycast extensions written in React and TypeScript, allowing users… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.
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Hey HN! I'm a huge fan of Raycast, but as a Linux user, I was always disappointed it wasn't available on my main OS. This summer, I decided to just build it myself. This project has the goal of being interoperable with Raycast itself, including a majority of the extensions. It's built with Tauri and Rust on the backend, with a Svelte frontend. The biggest challenge was getting it to run existing Raycast extensions, which required building a custom React renderer as well as making a custom API. I also wrote a quick post, which I hope to expand on in the future, about this project. You can…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 2
10 months ago I posted on HN to announce the initial release of Vicinae, an "everything" command palette compatible with the Raycast extension ecosystem, only available on Linux. Today, after months of work, I'm finally releasing the first macOS version of Vicinae, with full feature parity with the Linux version! From a technical standpoint, it is still a Qt/C++ app with a Node.js powered extension runtime (like Raycast). Something as deeply system-integrated requires calling a lot of native APIs, and when I started the port I wasn't quite sure how easy it would be. Turns out it went a…
Jul 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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We’ve been working on Vaev, a minimal web browser engine built from scratch. It supports HTML/XHTML, the CSS cascade, @page rules for pagination, and print-to-PDF rendering. It even handles calc(), var(), and percentage units—and yes, it renders Google.com (mostly). This is an experimental project focused on learning and exploration. Networking is basic (http:// and file:// only), and grid layouts aren’t supported yet, but we’re making progress fast. We’d love your thoughts and feedback.
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Run KolibriOS, Linux or Windows 98 in your browser
2013 · copy.sh · its alternatives →
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I've long wanted to harness QEMU/KVM for my desktop virtual machines, but I'm befuddled by virt-manager's lack of support for working NVIDIA 3D acceleration, dogmatic embrace of ugly XML, and the puzzling UI decision of having to click what seems like 15 buttons to attach an ISO to a VM image. When I further learned that NVIDIA's broken 3D acceleration is the fault of libvirt as opposed to QEMU's virtio driver, I had an idea... Behold, vm-curator! A fast and friendly VM management TUI written in Rust. You can create, configure, organize, and manage VMs directly with QEMU. No libvert. No…
Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Flox▲375Hey Everyone! Ron here, part of the NixOS Foundation and building Flox. Just coming out of this years NixCon and pretty excited to show hn below :) As of today, NVIDIA officially recognizes Canonical, SUSE, CIQ, and Nix—via Flox—as supported distributors for CUDA. Full blog - https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/developers-can-now-get-cud... This is a huge win for the Nix community. For years, CUDA on Nix was possible but painful—builds could take hours, and redistributing prebuilt binaries was blocked by NVIDIA's licensing requirements. NVIDIA's growing engagement with key…
2024 · flox.dev · its alternatives →
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Hi HN! Korean high school senior here, about to start CS in college. I built a browser engine from scratch in C++ to understand how browsers work. First time using C++, 8 weeks of development, lots of debugging—but it works! Features: - HTML parsing with error correction - CSS cascade and inheritance - Block/inline layout engine - Async image loading + caching - Link navigation + history Hardest parts: - String parsing(html, css) - Rendering - Image Caching & Layout Reflowing What I learned (beyond code): - Systematic debugging is crucial - Ship with known bugs rather than chase…
Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Pseudo-3D shooter written completely in gawk using raycasting technique - TheMozg/awk-raycaster
2016 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Hey HN, I'd like to share a fun project I've been working on: mizu.js. It's a js library that add functional attributes support into your html, designed to be a simple and flexible alternative to fully-fledged web frameworks (such as Vue, React, and Angular), while offering more capabilities than other lightweight options (like Alpine.js and htmx). As it's written using modern ES features and due to its isomorphic nature, it can be run in both browsers and runtimes (Node, Deno, Bun) without any changes. This makes it ideal for client-side and server-side rendering, as well as static site…
2024 · mizu.sh · its alternatives →
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Hello HN, Just wanted to show this little 2D game engine that I've been working on for some time (around 2 years on the editor part, longer on some of the components). It's quite full featured but obviously this a project of such magnitude already that the work never really ends. That being said it's definitely already at a point where games can made and published. The editor runs natively on Windows and Linux using Qt5. The games can run on both Win and Linux as well as on WASM with WebGL. Feature wise there's a bunch of the stuff you'd expect. Audio, graphics, scripting,…
2022 · github.com · its alternatives →
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RetroTick parses PE/NE/MZ binaries, emulates an x86 CPU, and stubs enough Win32/Win16/DOS APIs to run classics like FreeCell, Minesweeper, Solitaire and QBasic, entirely in the browser. Built with Preact + Vite + TypeScript. Demo: https://retrotick.com GitHub: https://github.com/lqs/retrotick
Feb 2026 · retrotick.com · its alternatives →
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Brisk is an open-source C++ GUI framework with a declarative approach, offering powerful data bindings, GPU-accelerated graphics, and dynamic widget management. It supports macOS, Linux, Windows, and simplifies UI creation with modern paradigms and CSS-like layouts. Initially developed for a graphics-intensive project with a complex and dynamic GUI, the framework is currently under active development.
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Not sure if I would post this for the last day of #marchintosh OR wait for tomorrow the 1st of April. Both apply equally. Anyway, here's a pet project of mine, I made it as a glued on for another pet project of mine, but it developed a life of it's own now and can soar skyward toward success, fame, and glory.
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
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To try it out, simply build the project yourself from source, or use attached bootable ISO image of the system (in Releases on Github) and run it in QEMU. https://blog.vxn.dev/rou2exos-rusted-edition
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 17IM
Hi! I made a React compatibility library for a Virtual DOM library (https://github.com/aidenybai/million). The idea is to have much faster rendering (a compiler optimizes virtual DOM beforehand) while ensuring the same developer experience React provides. This is very, VERY early stage, so be prepared for weird bugs / plugin incompatibility / etc. If you have any suggestions, I'd be more than happy if you replied in a comment with it! You can spin up the demo here >> https://stackblitz.com/github/aidenybai/million-react-compat
2022 · its alternatives →
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Hi HN, To truly understand how operating systems and network protocols work, I decided to combine two classic learning tools: the xv6 teaching OS and a from-scratch TCP/IP stack. I'm excited to share the result: my own from-scratch TCP/IP networking stack running directly inside the xv6-riscv (https://github.com/pandax381/xv6-riscv-net) kernel. The project uses a modern virtio-net driver, allowing it to run seamlessly in QEMU and communicate with the host machine. Key features: - From-Scratch Stack: The core is powered by microps…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Hey all! I've been using this stack personally for a while now and decided to automate it a bit by turning it into a template I can reuse. Hope others might find it helpful!
2025 · bhvr.dev · its alternatives →
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I use this library I made for Vectors and Quaternions in many personal projects. I've open-sourced it, in case anyone else would get use out of it. I use this on various projects, including quadcopter firmware, a graphics engine, a cosmology simulation, and several molecular dynamics applications. No_std compatible.
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 21IB
Have fun learning more about the Qt Quick Rendering engine, starting with a ground plane, in this Minecraft-esque 3D block building game.
2021 · kdab.com · its alternatives →
- 22MP
I have been working on this game somewhat sparsely for the past three years or so. However, it is still in a very early stage, and there is a lot of work to do. One of my friends encouraged me to post about it here, since he felt people might find interesting how I don’t use any libraries for it. The game can be played on a browser by virtue of WebAssembly. There are native ports using either MiniFB or SDL2, but you have to build those yourself. I decided to write the game in C because I feel like it is a simple language that a lot of people can understand well enough, and I didn’t think I…
2023 · zamfofex.neocities.org · its alternatives →
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A collection of powerful productivity tools all within an extendable launcher.
2020 · raycast.com · its alternatives →
- 243R
2020 · ahuth.github.io · its alternatives →
Also compare
- A Raycast-compatible launcher for Linux alternatives
- Vicinae – open-source, Raycast-compatible command palette, now on macOS alternatives
- Ulauncher alternatives
- Vaev – A browser engine built from scratch (It renders google.com) alternatives
- My x86 emulator written in JavaScript alternatives
- VM-curator – a TUI alternative to libvirt and virt-manager 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 →