C Unix

Open-source C projects categorized as Unix

Top 23 C Unix Projects

  1. Ventoy

    A new bootable USB solution.

    Project mention: 🛠️ Setting up Arch | dev.to | 2024-10-13

    Link to installing: Ventoy

  2. InfluxDB

    InfluxDB – Built for High-Performance Time Series Workloads. InfluxDB 3 OSS is now GA. Transform, enrich, and act on time series data directly in the database. Automate critical tasks and eliminate the need to move data externally. Download now.

    InfluxDB logo
  3. libuv

    Cross-platform asynchronous I/O

    Project mention: How to Use Libuv In Your Zig Project | dev.to | 2025-05-10

    Libuv describes itself as a multi-platform support library with a focus on asynchronous I/O. It is widely used in many web servers (e.g., Kestrel) and runtimes such as Node.js and Python (via uvloop). As of Zig 0.14.0, there is no native async I/O, so you must work directly with threads or create your own async API using OS primitives like epoll or kqueue. In many cases, you would likely choose a cross-platform library rather than implementing your own async API. That’s where using libuv, libevent, or libxev (written in Zig) becomes useful.

  4. GLFW

    A multi-platform library for OpenGL, OpenGL ES, Vulkan, window and input

    Project mention: Starting Up The Engine - Nikola Game Engine Devlog 1 | dev.to | 2025-02-28

    As I discussed in my previous devlog, I decided to go with glfw for handling the window creation for this engine. It is a library I used a ton before. And while I do fancy replacing it later, it will suffice for now.

  5. ravynos

    A BSD-based OS project that aims to provide source and binary compatibility with macOS® and a similar user experience.

    Project mention: FreeBSD: How Can We Make It More Attractive to New Users? | news.ycombinator.com | 2024-10-12

    Another angle to look at this is ravynOS, a desktop OS that could attract people interested in MacOS. The project is based on FreeBSD and has lots of customization to provide a familiar desktop experience. While the main site hasn't been updated for a while, the GitHub has a release from this year.

    https://ravynos.com/

    https://github.com/ravynsoft/ravynos

  6. fzy

    :mag: A simple, fast fuzzy finder for the terminal

  7. shadowsocksr-native

    翻墙 从容穿越党国敏感日 ShadowsocksR (SSRoT) native implementation for all platforms, GFW terminator

  8. ltp

    Linux Test Project (mailing list: https://lists.linux.it/listinfo/ltp)

    Project mention: New Mac Mini with M4 | news.ycombinator.com | 2024-10-29

    I would be shocked if they weren't using a test suite, especially given all the platforms and devices Linux supports. POSIX has a test suite, and there are several Linux test suites [1], [2]. Although, I would think that an architecture port is fairly straightforward. It's reverse-engineering and writing all the device drivers, but devices generally have a well-known interface (and, therefore, presumably tests). The OpenGL drivers are being tested against the official OpenGL test suite.

    Of course, there are no guarantees that it runs correctly. Probably doesn't, given that even Apple and Microsoft's software don't run correctly, either. But saying software doesn't run perfectly in all cases is almost tautological.

    [1] https://github.com/phoronix-test-suite/phoronix-test-suite

    [2] https://github.com/linux-test-project/ltp

  9. SaaSHub

    SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives

    SaaSHub logo
  10. Allegro

    The official Allegro 5 git repository. Pull requests welcome!

  11. illumos-gate

    An open-source Unix operating system -- this is a read-only mirror of the official repository at https://code.illumos.org/plugins/gitiles/illumos-gate

    Project mention: When you deleted /lib on Linux while still connected via SSH | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-03-22

    The Solaris documentation says that this is not allowed:

    https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E88353_01/html/E72487/link-8.html

    If it ever were allowed, it was a bug. While the VFS is flexible enough to allow for it, the filesystem driver should not to protect itself from leaking orphan subtrees. There is no code in ZFS as far as I know to determine whether there is an orphaned subtree on an unlink and adding it would be very inefficient, as you would need to do a traversal on every unlink while having some way to detect and avoid cycles.

    The illumos man page is less clear:

    https://illumos.org/man/8/link

    However, the ZFS driver makes it very clear that this is not allowed:

    https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate/blob/master/usr/src/...

    The comment states that this is disallowed under POSIX.

  12. 123elf

    A native port of Lotus 1-2-3 to Linux.

    Project mention: Linux in Excel | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-04-29
  13. bfs

    A breadth-first version of the UNIX find command

    Project mention: Parallel –/Configure | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-04-25

    My actual "production" implementation of this concept does support that: https://github.com/tavianator/bfs/blob/main/configure

    But I wanted the blog post sized version to be simpler for exposition.

  14. RGFW

    A cross platform lightweight single-header simple-to-use window abstraction library for creating graphical programs or libraries.

    Project mention: Is it possible to write plain C iOS app in 2025? | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-04-14

    I’ve written a pure C Mac desktop app in 2024 that called the objective-c bindings directly. It is using a modified version of this library https://github.com/ColleagueRiley/RGFW

    While I don’t think that library does iOS specifically, you can have a look at the code to see how you can call objective-c from c. Spoiler: doing so kind of sucks, and also the library code isn’t the most elegant thing I’ve seen.

  15. winix

    A UNIX-style Operating System for the Waikato RISC Architecture Microprocessor (WRAMP)

  16. astroterm

    A planetarium for your terminal! Explore stars, planets, constellations, and more, all rendered right in the command line—no telescope required. ✨🪐

    Project mention: Astroterm: A Planetarium for Your Terminal | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-01-16
  17. unix

    Mirror of the Restoration of 1st Edition UNIX kernel sources from pdf document.

  18. s6

    The s6 supervision suite.

    Project mention: Way too many ways to wait on a child process with a timeout | news.ycombinator.com | 2024-11-11
  19. cproc

    C11 compiler (mirror)

    Project mention: Tilde, My LLVM Alternative | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-01-21

    >So one of the main problems you run into is that your elegant solution only works about 60-80% of the time. The rest of the time, you end up falling back onto near-unmaintainable, horribly inelegant kludges that end up having to exist

    This is generally true, though for small compiler backends they have the luxury to straight up refuse to support such use cases. Take QBE and Cranelift for example, the former lacks x87 support [1], the latter doesn't support varargs[2]; which means either of them support the full x86-64 ABI for C99.

    [1]https://github.com/michaelforney/cproc?tab=readme-ov-file#wh...

    [2]https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime/issues/1030

  20. tcl

    The Tcl Core. (Mirror of core.tcl-lang.org) (by tcltk)

  21. wpunix

    WordPerfect for UNIX Character Terminals

    Project mention: The atrocious state of binary compatibility on Linux and how to address it | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-04-01

    > GLIBC is an example of a "system library" that cannot be bundled with your application because it includes the dynamic linker itself. This linker is responsible for loading other libraries, some of which may also depend on GLIBC—but not always.

    Running WordPerfect on modern Linux is done by shipping both of those components:

    https://github.com/taviso/wpunix

  22. RHash

    Great utility for computing hash sums

  23. ast

    AST - AT&T Software Technology

    Project mention: What Autoconf Got Right | news.ycombinator.com | 2024-06-01
  24. DragonFlyBSD

    DragonFly BSD System Source Repository (read-only mirror)

  25. proftpd

    ProFTPD source code

  26. SaaSHub

    SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives

    SaaSHub logo
NOTE: The open source projects on this list are ordered by number of github stars. The number of mentions indicates repo mentiontions in the last 12 Months or since we started tracking (Dec 2020).

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Index

What are some of the best open-source Unix projects in C? This list will help you:

# Project Stars
1 Ventoy 66,965
2 libuv 25,294
3 GLFW 13,804
4 ravynos 5,812
5 fzy 3,065
6 shadowsocksr-native 2,779
7 ltp 2,416
8 Allegro 1,966
9 illumos-gate 1,727
10 123elf 1,192
11 bfs 1,061
12 RGFW 971
13 winix 946
14 astroterm 904
15 unix 869
16 s6 817
17 cproc 770
18 tcl 710
19 wpunix 689
20 RHash 625
21 ast 580
22 DragonFlyBSD 570
23 proftpd 544

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