These 5 open-source apps are Windows-only, and Linux users are missing out

Source Domain: www.howtogeek.com

When you hear “open source” it’s natural to immediately think of Linux, but what software license an application uses has nothing to do with which operating system it runs on.

There are plenty of excellent FOSS apps that don’t run on Linux, either because the developers don’t want to, or because the app was created for Windows (or Mac) specifically. That said, some of these apps would be useful on Linux too!

Rufus

Making Windows great again

Since almost no one has an optical drive anymore, the most practical way to install a new operating system on your computer is by using a bootable USB flash drive. While you can use a tool like the Windows Media Creation Tool, a much better option is Rufus.

We love Rufus over here at HTG (well, not all of us) and it’s the only reason I can run Windows 11 on my Plex Mini PC, which does not technically meet the hardware requirements. It works perfectly fine though, and this little open-source utility is why you can still easily get a Windows installation with a local offline account.

But Rufus can do way more than make modified Windows installer drives, you can make bootable pen drives from all sorts of OS sources, including Linux. It’s a little ironic that a program that can make Linux boot drives doesn’t run on Linux itself, but that’s how it is. I definitely miss Rufus whenever I want to make boot drives on my Mac, which is my…

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