Proprietary applications and online services dominate many areas of computing, but there are often excellent open source alternatives. Whether you want to replace an expensive subscription, move away from a closed ecosystem, run software on Linux, self-host important services, or simply gain more control over your computing, open source software offers a wealth of choice.
LinuxLinks has explored thousands of free and open source applications. One of our major ongoing series looks specifically at alternatives to proprietary products and services from some of the world’s largest technology companies.
An alternative does not necessarily reproduce every feature of the proprietary product it replaces. Instead, we look for open source software that provides comparable core functionality and offers a practical way to accomplish the same tasks.
Our recommendations span desktop software, cloud services, graphics and multimedia applications, productivity tools, development software, networking, databases, business applications and much more.
Open Source Alternatives by Company
| Microsoft | Desktop, cloud, productivity, collaboration and enterprise software. |
| Search, cloud, productivity, communication and online services. | |
| Adobe | Graphics, photography, video, PDF and publishing software. |
| Apple | Desktop apps, services, multimedia and productivity software. |
| Autodesk | CAD, 3D design, engineering and animation tools. |
| Oracle | Databases, development, business and enterprise software. |
| Cisco | Networking, security, collaboration and infrastructure tools. |
| IBM | Analytics, infrastructure, enterprise and business software. |
| Atlassian | Project management, collaboration and development tools. |
| Corel | Graphics, illustration, photography and video software. |
| Intuit | Accounting, personal finance and business software. |
Why Consider an Open Source Alternative?
Open source software gives users access to its source code and the freedom to use, study, modify and redistribute the software according to its licence. That does not automatically make every open source program better than a proprietary competitor, but it can provide important advantages.
Open source alternatives can reduce dependence on a single vendor, avoid recurring licence fees, provide greater control over data and deployment, and allow software to continue evolving even if its original developer changes direction. Self-hosted software can also offer an alternative to handing data to third-party cloud services.
For Linux users, open source software has another obvious attraction: many proprietary applications either offer limited Linux support or do not support Linux at all.
The best choice ultimately depends on what you need. Our individual guides examine the available options and highlight the strongest open source alternatives for each product or service.
Explore More Open Source Software
Looking for software without a particular proprietary product in mind? Explore our Best Free and Open Source Software collection, covering hundreds of software categories.
Command-line users can also explore our Alternatives to Popular CLI Tools series, which looks at modern alternatives to familiar command-line utilities.
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