Open Source: Incredible Apps For Every OS


Games and Final Thoughts

Free, Open Source Games:

It’s hard for free games to compete with the highly-financed triple-A titles on the market today.  However, if you're the kind of person who likes not only to play cool games but to be able to pick-apart their source code for educational purposes or customization, here are a couple of gaming picks:

0 A.D.
0 A.D. is a historical RTS game that features six unique civilizations, realistic maps and terrain, naval warfare, multiple play modes and a full-featured editor.  The game is still in development, but it is already a very nice (and graphically impressive) Civilization-style game.




Alien Arena
“Do you like old school deathmatch with modern features? How about rich, colorful, arcade-like atmospheres? How about...retro Sci Fi? Then you're going to love what Alien Arena has in store for you! This game combines some of the very best aspects of such games as Quake III and Unreal Tournament and wraps them up with a retro alien theme, while adding tons of original ideas to make the game quite unique.”

I myself was never much a fan of the Q3-style FPS games.  But that’s probably because twitch-kiddies always handed me my... er, hat.  However, if that sounds like something you would enjoy... you can’t end up with buyers remorse at a price of zero dollars.




The preceding list barely scratches the surface as to what’s available out there.  There are literally thousands of available apps and tens of thousands of libraries (and even many complete operating systems) in the FOSS ecosystem. 

If you know of one that’s worthy of recognition, jump in and tell us about it in the HotHardware Operating Systems and Software forum.


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