Topics / #unix

Unix projects on GitHub

Unix-like operating systems and shell workflows

As of , the most-starred Unix projects on GitHub are the-book-of-secret-knowledge (250.7K stars), the-art-of-command-line (162.5K stars) and youtube-dl (141.3K stars). GitHub.Locker tracks 81 Unix repositories with 2.3M stars combined. The fastest-growing on October 16 was the-book-of-secret-knowledge, with +311 stars in a day.

81Projects
2.3MStars in total
+851Stars in a day
Browse in the catalog →github.com/topics/unix ↗

Hot right now

Most stars gained in a day · Oct 16

+311

the-book-of-secret-knowledge

trimstray/the-book-of-secret-knowledge · ★ 250.7K

A massive curated collection of lists, manuals, cheatsheets, blogs, hacks, one-liners and CLI/GUI/web tools that the author gathers from everyday sysadmin, DevOps and security work.

+47

microduck

pollen-robotics/microduck · ★ 9.5K

Microduck is a tiny biped duck robot (about 25cm, 800g), and this repo is the robot's brain: Rust daemons that run a 50Hz control loop driving fifteen servos using reinforcement-learning policies exported to ONNX.

+39

Ventoy

ventoy/Ventoy · ★ 80.1K

Ventoy is an open source tool that creates a bootable USB drive which can boot directly from ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files without extracting or reformatting them.

+34

git

git/git · ★ 63.8K

This is Git, the fast, scalable, distributed revision control system with a rich command set that gives both high-level operations and full access to internals.

The all-time top

81 projects · by stars

  1. #1 · trimstray/the-book-of-secret-knowledge

    the-book-of-secret-knowledge

    A massive curated collection of lists, manuals, cheatsheets, blogs, hacks, one-liners and CLI/GUI/web tools that the author gathers from everyday sysadmin, DevOps and security work.

    250.7K
  2. #2 · jlevy/the-art-of-command-line

    the-art-of-command-line

    A single-page guide collecting essential command-line tips, tricks, and notes for using Bash on Linux and other Unix-like systems, from basics through advanced scripting and debugging.

    162.5K
  3. #3 · ytdl-org/youtube-dl

    youtube-dl

    youtube-dl is a command-line program to download videos from YouTube and many other video sites.

    141.3K
  1. 4

    nvm

    95.6Knvm-sh/nvm · Shell

    nvm (Node Version Manager) is a POSIX-compliant bash script that lets you install, switch between, and manage multiple versions of Node.js on the same machine.

  2. 5

    fzf

    83.6Kjunegunn/fzf · Go

    fzf is a general-purpose command-line fuzzy finder and interactive terminal toolkit. You pipe any list into it and interactively filter it with fuzzy matching, then it writes your selection to stdout.

  3. 6

    Ventoy

    80.1Kventoy/Ventoy · C

    Ventoy is an open source tool that creates a bootable USB drive which can boot directly from ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files without extracting or reformatting them.

  4. 7

    cpython

    77.7Kpython/cpython · Python

    This is the official source code repository for CPython, the reference implementation of the Python programming language, written mainly in C.

  5. 8

    ripgrep

    69.2KBurntSushi/ripgrep · Rust

    ripgrep (rg) is a line-oriented command-line tool that recursively searches directories for a regex pattern, automatically respecting .gitignore rules and skipping hidden and binary files by default.

  6. 9

    git

    63.8Kgit/git · C

    This is Git, the fast, scalable, distributed revision control system with a rich command set that gives both high-level operations and full access to internals.

  7. 10

    bat

    60.8Ksharkdp/bat · Rust

    bat is a cat(1) clone that prints files in the terminal with syntax highlighting for a large number of programming and markup languages, plus Git modification markers in the sidebar.

  8. 11

    tmux

    49.9Ktmux/tmux · C

    tmux is a terminal multiplexer that lets you create, access, and control multiple terminals from a single screen, and detach/reattach sessions later.

  9. 12

    acme.sh

    47.8Kacmesh-official/acme.sh · Shell

    acme.sh is a pure Unix shell script client for the ACME protocol that automatically issues, renews, and installs free SSL/TLS certificates from CAs like Let's Encrypt or ZeroSSL.

  10. 13

    cheat.sh

    41.8Kchubin/cheat.sh · Python

    cheat.sh is a unified cheat-sheet service: ask about a UNIX command or a programming language and get a concise answer right in your terminal, browser or editor. It aggregates the best community-driven cheat sheet repositories, on par with StackOverflow.

  11. 14

    AdGuardHome

    37.5KAdguardTeam/AdGuardHome · TypeScript

    A free, open-source network-wide DNS server that blocks ads and trackers for every device on your home network: it re-routes tracking domains to a 'black hole', so no client-side software is needed on the devices themselves.

  12. 15

    zellij

    35.8Kzellij-org/zellij · Rust

    Zellij is a terminal workspace (often called a terminal multiplexer) that lets you split your terminal into panes and tabs, with layouts, plugins, and a focus on being easy to use out of the box while still powerful.

  13. 16

    fish-shell

    34.3Kfish-shell/fish-shell · Rust

    fish is a user-friendly command line shell — the program in your terminal that interprets the commands you type. Its whole point is being pleasant to use from the very first minute.

  14. 17

    serenity

    33.9KSerenityOS/serenity · C++

    SerenityOS is a graphical Unix-like operating system for 64-bit x86, Arm, and RISC-V computers, built entirely from scratch.

  15. 18

    nacos

    33.5Kalibaba/nacos · Java

    Nacos is a platform from Alibaba for dynamic service discovery, configuration management, and service management, aimed at building cloud-native microservices and AI applications.

  16. 19

    modern-unix

    33Kibraheemdev/modern-unix

    A curated collection of modern, faster and saner alternatives to common Unix commands - an index of CLI tools like bat, ripgrep, fd, fzf and zoxide.

  17. 20

    awesome-macos-command-line

    31Kherrbischoff/awesome-macos-command-line

    A curated awesome list of commands and tricks for doing useful things from the macOS terminal shell. It is a reference you read, not a piece of software you run.

  18. 21

    phantomjs

    29.4Kariya/phantomjs · C++

    PhantomJS is a headless WebKit scriptable with JavaScript: a real browser engine that loads and manipulates web pages without any visible browser window.

  19. 22

    libuv

    27.3Klibuv/libuv · C

    libuv is a multi-platform C support library focused on asynchronous I/O. It was originally built for Node.js and is also used by Luvit, Julia and uvloop.

  20. 23

    elixir

    26.7Kelixir-lang/elixir · Elixir

    Elixir is a programming language designed for building scalable and maintainable applications, running on the Erlang VM (BEAM).

  21. 24

    LxgwWenKai

    26.3Klxgw/LxgwWenKai · Shell

    LXGW WenKai (霞鹜文楷) is an open-source Chinese font derived from Fontworks' Klee One, a Japanese textbook-style typeface, extended by a solo developer with simplified and traditional Chinese characters.

  22. 25

    exa

    24.5Kogham/exa · Rust

    exa is a modern replacement for the ls command that ships with Unix and Linux: a small, fast, single-binary Rust tool that lists files with colours, better defaults, and awareness of symlinks, extended attributes, and Git.

  23. 26

    coreutils

    24.3Kuutils/coreutils · Rust

    A Rust rewrite of the GNU coreutils — the classic command-line utilities like ls, cp, cat and sort — aiming to be a drop-in replacement with output matching GNU exactly.

  24. 27

    ruby

    23.8Kruby/ruby · Ruby

    The Ruby programming language itself: an interpreted, object-oriented language that is simple, straightforward, and extensible. This repository is the official Ruby source tree.

  25. 28

    postgres

    22.4Kpostgres/postgres · C

    PostgreSQL is an advanced open-source object-relational database management system - a full SQL database server you run to store, query and manage application data.

  26. 29

    How-to-Make-a-Computer-Operating-System

    22.4KSamyPesse/How-to-Make-a-Computer-Operating-System · C

    This is a free online book that walks you through writing a simple UNIX-based operating system in C++ from scratch.

  27. 30

    PEASS-ng

    20.7Kpeass-ng/PEASS-ng · C#

    PEASS-ng is a suite of local privilege escalation enumeration tools: LinPEAS for Linux/Unix/macOS and WinPEAS for Windows. They scan a machine for privesc paths and print misconfigurations with nice colors so you can spot them easily.

  28. 31

    ish

    20.6Kish-app/ish · C

    iSH is an open-source iOS app that gives you a Linux shell on your iPhone or iPad. It emulates an x86 processor in usermode and translates Linux syscalls, so Linux command-line programs run on iOS as they are.

  29. 32

    n

    19.5Ktj/n · Shell

    'n' is a simple command-line tool for managing multiple Node.js versions on your machine, letting you install, switch between, and remove Node.js versions without subshells or shell profile hacks.

  30. 33

    awesome-zsh-plugins

    18.1Kunixorn/awesome-zsh-plugins · Shell

    A community-maintained awesome list collecting ZSH frameworks, plugins, themes and tutorials — annotated links to hundreds of shell projects, curated since 2014 with about 18k GitHub stars.

  31. 34

    nix

    17.9KNixOS/nix · C++

    Nix is a purely functional package manager for Linux and other Unix systems that makes installing software reliable and reproducible.

  32. 35

    mold

    17.7Krui314/mold · Rust

    mold is a high-performance drop-in replacement for the standard Unix linker, built for one thing: making the link step of large C, C++ and Rust builds several times faster.

  33. 36

    z

    17.1Krupa/z · Shell

    z is a command-line helper that remembers which directories you use most and takes you straight to them from a few keystrokes — its tagline is 'jump around'.

  34. 37

    Stockfish

    16.9Kofficial-stockfish/Stockfish · C++

    Stockfish is a free, strong UCI chess engine derived from Glaurung 2.1 that analyzes chess positions and computes the optimal moves.

  35. 38

    ipython

    16.8Kipython/ipython · Python

    This is IPython — the enhanced interactive Python shell, pitched as 'productive interactive computing'. You use it instead of the bare python REPL for exploratory coding and data work.

  36. 39

    rbenv

    16.7Krbenv/rbenv · Shell

    rbenv is a version manager for the Ruby programming language on Unix-like systems. It lets you install multiple Ruby versions and switch between them per-project so each app runs on the Ruby version it needs.

  37. 40

    redox

    16.6Kredox-os/redox · Rust

    Redox is an open-source operating system written in Rust that uses a microkernel architecture, aiming to be reliable, secure and usable while providing a full set of components like a file system, display server and core utilities.

  38. 41

    lynis

    16.5KCISOfy/lynis · Shell

    Lynis is a security auditing and hardening tool for Linux, macOS, BSD, and other Unix-like systems. It scans the host it runs on for vulnerable software, misconfigurations, and weak settings, and gives hardening tips while also assisting with compliance testing (HIPAA, ISO27001, PCI DSS).

  39. 42

    solarized

    16Kaltercation/solarized · Vim script

    A precision color scheme: one sixteen-color palette (eight monotones, eight accent colors) with matched dark and light modes, built for terminals, editors and other GUI applications.

  40. 43

    direnv

    15.5Kdirenv/direnv · Go

    direnv is an extension for your shell that loads and unloads environment variables depending on the current directory, keeping project-specific settings out of your ~/.profile.

  41. 44

    glfw

    15.4Kglfw/glfw · C

    GLFW is a small open-source C library for creating windows, OpenGL/OpenGL ES/Vulkan contexts and surfaces, and handling input and events across platforms.

  42. 45

    Learn-Vim

    15.2Kiggredible/Learn-Vim · Dockerfile

    Learn Vim (the Smart Way) is a free guide book that teaches the useful parts of Vim and Vimscript without requiring you to read the entire help manual.

  43. 46

    powerline

    14.8Kpowerline/powerline · Python

    Powerline is a statusline plugin for vim that also provides statuslines and prompts for many other applications, including zsh, bash, fish, tmux, IPython, Awesome, i3 and Qtile.

  44. 47

    QGIS

    14.6Kqgis/QGIS · C++

    QGIS is a free, open-source, cross-platform desktop GIS (geographic information system) for viewing, editing, and analyzing spatial data like maps, satellite imagery, and geospatial databases.

  45. 48

    prezto

    14.6Ksorin-ionescu/prezto · Shell

    Prezto is a configuration framework for Zsh, the Unix shell. Out of the box it enriches the command line with sane defaults, aliases, functions, auto completion, and prompt themes.

  46. 49

    mosh

    14.6Kmobile-shell/mosh · C++

    Mosh (Mobile Shell) is a remote terminal application that replaces SSH for interactive sessions, keeping the connection alive through network changes, sleep, and lossy links while locally echoing keystrokes for instant feedback.

  47. 50

    shelljs

    14.4Kshelljs/shelljs · JavaScript

    ShellJS is a portable implementation of Unix shell commands (cat, cp, mkdir, grep, sed, etc.) built on top of the Node.js API, letting you write shell-style scripts that run the same on Windows, Linux, and macOS.

  48. 51

    gollum

    14.3Kgollum/gollum · Ruby

    Gollum is a simple wiki system built on top of Git: each wiki is just a Git repository of text or markup files, served through a local web interface you can read and edit from your browser.

  49. 52

    john

    13.8Kopenwall/john · C

    A fast, offline password cracker. Its primary purpose is detecting weak Unix passwords, but the jumbo build supports hundreds of hash and cipher types and runs on Unix, macOS, Windows and more.

  50. 53

    GTFOBins.github.io

    13.8KGTFOBins/GTFOBins.github.io · YAML

    GTFOBins is a curated list of Unix-like executables that can be abused to bypass local security restrictions in misconfigured systems — for example, binaries a restricted user can turn into a root shell.

  51. 54

    ninja

    13.3Kninja-build/ninja · C++

    Ninja is a small build system with a single focus: speed. It is a program that runs your project's build steps — compiling and linking — quickly.

  52. 55

    bash-guide

    12.4KIdnan/bash-guide

    A free, structured Bash guide covering everyday command-line operations (files, text, directories, SSH/network, process monitoring) and shell programming fundamentals like variables, arrays, functions, loops, regex, debugging and multi-threading.

  53. 56

    thc-hydra

    12.4Kvanhauser-thc/thc-hydra · C

    Hydra is a parallelized network login cracker by van Hauser / THC: a proof-of-concept tool showing researchers and security consultants how easily a remote system can be broken into through weak passwords. It supports over 50 protocols.

  54. 57

    libevent

    12Klibevent/libevent · C

    Libevent is a C library that provides an asynchronous event notification API, so programs can react to file descriptor readiness, timers, and signals without writing their own platform-specific event loop.

  55. 58

    test-your-sysadmin-skills

    11.9Ktrimstray/test-your-sysadmin-skills

    A free collection of 284 Linux/Unix sysadmin test questions with example answers, built to check your own knowledge or to run interviews and exams for sysadmin positions.

  56. 59

    lua-nginx-module

    11.8Kopenresty/lua-nginx-module · C

    It embeds the Lua scripting language directly into NGINX, letting you handle HTTP requests with Lua code using directives like 'content_by_lua_block' instead of relying only on plain config or custom C modules.

  57. 60

    libvips

    11.7Klibvips/libvips · C

    libvips is a fast image processing library with low memory needs, written in C. Compared to similar libraries it runs quickly and uses little memory, and it is demand-driven and horizontally threaded.

  58. 61

    git-blame-someone-else

    11.7Kjayphelps/git-blame-someone-else · Shell

    A prank shell script for git: it rewrites a commit so someone else appears as the author of your code. The author openly calls it a joke, not a serious tool.

  59. 62

    darwin-xnu

    11.3Kapple/darwin-xnu · C

    This is the source code of the XNU kernel, the core of Darwin, the operating system behind macOS and iOS. It is the kernel that ships on Apple devices, published as source for reading, building and debugging.

  60. 63

    gnet

    11.2Kpanjf2000/gnet · Go

    gnet is a high-performance, lightweight, non-blocking, event-driven networking framework written in pure Go, built on epoll and kqueue to work at the transport layer with TCP, UDP, and Unix Domain Socket.

  61. 64

    basic-computer-games

    11.1Kcoding-horror/basic-computer-games · C#

    This is a project that ports every game from the classic 1978 book 'BASIC Computer Games' into modern, memory-safe programming languages, so people can learn programming by comparing implementations.

  62. 65

    awesome-dotfiles

    10.9Kwebpro/awesome-dotfiles

    A curated list of dotfiles resources: articles, tutorials, example configuration repos, and tools for managing your shell and editor setup.

  63. 66

    tui-rs

    10.9Kfdehau/tui-rs · Rust

    tui-rs is a Rust library for building rich terminal user interfaces and dashboards, inspired by the JavaScript library blessed-contrib and the Go library termui.

  64. 67

    spotifyd

    10.8KSpotifyd/spotifyd · Rust

    Spotifyd is an open-source Spotify client that runs as a background UNIX daemon instead of a GUI app, streaming music just like the official client but more lightweight.

  65. 68

    gunicorn

    10.7Kbenoitc/gunicorn · Python

    Gunicorn — 'Green Unicorn' — is a Python WSGI HTTP server for UNIX. It's the process that runs your Python web app and serves it to the world.

  66. 69

    proxychains-ng

    10.7Krofl0r/proxychains-ng · C

    ProxyChains-NG is a UNIX program that hooks network-related libc functions in dynamically linked programs via LD_PRELOAD and redirects their TCP connections through SOCKS4a/5 or HTTP proxies. It is the continuation of the unmaintained proxychains project.

  67. 70

    libgit2

    10.6Klibgit2/libgit2 · C

    libgit2 is a portable, pure C implementation of the Git core methods, shipped as a linkable library with a solid API so applications can build Git functionality right in.

  68. 71

    i3

    10.6Ki3/i3 · C

    i3 is a tiling window manager for X11 — a program that controls how application windows are arranged on your screen.

  69. 72

    miller

    10Kjohnkerl/miller · Go

    Miller is a command-line toolkit like awk, sed, cut, join, and sort, but built for name-indexed data such as CSV, TSV, JSON, and JSON Lines: you address fields by name instead of counting column positions.

  70. 73

    microduck

    9.5Kpollen-robotics/microduck · Rust

    Microduck is a tiny biped duck robot (about 25cm, 800g), and this repo is the robot's brain: Rust daemons that run a 50Hz control loop driving fifteen servos using reinforcement-learning policies exported to ONNX.

  71. 74

    aos-ce

    8.5Kunicity-aos/aos-ce · Rust

    AOS Community Edition is an open-source 'agent operating system' that gives AI agents an inspectable, composable environment, built around the aos CLI, an HTTP API, pre-built capsules, and audit tooling.

  72. 75

    apfel

    6.5KArthur-Ficial/apfel · Swift

    Apfel is a CLI tool and local OpenAI-compatible server that exposes the built-in FoundationModels LLM shipped on Apple Silicon Macs, letting you prompt it from the shell, pipe text through it, or point OpenAI SDK clients at it — entirely on-device.

  73. 76

    coreutils

    5.3Kmicrosoft/coreutils · Rust

    A Microsoft-maintained build of uutils/coreutils, findutils, and grep - the familiar Unix commands (ls, cp, cat, grep, find) packaged as a single native multi-call binary for Windows.

  74. 77

    vis

    5.1Kmartanne/vis · C

    Vis is a modern, vi(m)-like modal text editor that combines vi's editing style with sam's structural regular expression command language, adding native multiple cursors/selections and Unicode support.

  75. 78

    src

    3.9Kopenbsd/src · C

    A read-only git mirror of the official source tree of OpenBSD, the open-source Unix-like operating system — converted from the project's original CVS repository so the full source can be browsed and cloned on GitHub.

  76. 79

    coursebook

    3.8Kcs341-illinois/coursebook · TeX

    This is an open-source introductory systems programming textbook (the Coursebook) used by the CS 341: System Programming course at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, covering low-level C programming and Linux internals.

  77. 80

    fx

    3.5Kvercel-labs/fx · Zig

    fx is a Unix-like coding agent harness and CLI written in Zig, built for research and embeddability inside larger systems, with a strong focus on minimalism and performance.

  78. 81

    libfyaml

    346pantoniou/libfyaml · C

    libfyaml is a high-performance YAML 1.2 and JSON parser/emitter for C, built for zero-copy operation with full document-tree and event-streaming APIs, and it passes the full YAML testsuite.

Often tagged together