Software I Use and Recommend

Distros

• Alpine Linux - As small and simplistic as it gets.
• Arch Linux - Modern, minimal, a good package manager, well supported, and ran by hobbyists.
• Artix Linux - Arch without SystemD.

Base Software

• busybox - The Swiss Army Knife of Embedded Linux.
• toybox - A rewrite of busybox with a focus on clean code.
• yash - A easy to customize, fast, yet minimal shell.

Compilers/Languages

• tcc - A small fast C compiler that later became QEMU.
• lua - The most portable, embeddable, small, flexible, principled, 30K lines of C I’ve seen.
• kdl - A human friendly documentation language.
• groff - A implementation of troff macros for making papers and such without LaTeX (or even worse; LibreOffice).
• graphviz - A simple graphing software that can be used for making UML diagrams, dependency chain maps, etc.]
• howard-bc - A fully GNU compatible bc implementation, with an inbuilt bignum library.
• wak - A awk implementation in 4500 SLOC of no dependency C.
• pandoc - An universal document converter

Libraries

• musl - A minimal standard C library implementation that’s much more flexible than glibc.
• netbsd-curses - A implementation of ncurses that’s much smaller and less bloated.

Other Command Line Software

• hugo - Extensible static site generator based on templates.
• iamb - Vim Like matrix client with sixel image support.
• pass - A simple password manager written in bash.
• pv - Pipe viewer, view the data output of a pipe.
• sc-im - A simple spreadsheet and CSV editor.
• sunwait - Get the Sunrise and Sunset times
• tmux - Terminal Multiplexer, provides tabbing and session management inside the terminal.
• vis - Minimal yet extensible vi clone based on structural regex’s.
• earlyoom - Since the kernel can’t do its own job.

Xorg Programs

• dmenu - General purpose select menu.
• dwm - Dynamic Widow Manager.
• i3wm - Small window manager with different layouts and customization ability.
• nsxiv - Image viewer with gifs, scripting, and grid mode support.
• st - Simple terminal, does its job with as small a footprint as possible.
• xwallpaper - Simple wallpaper setter.

Wayland Programs

• sway - A fork of i3wm for wayland, integrates tasks that xrandr and xwallpaper would normally do into the window manager.
• foot - Foo Terminal, Minimal Wayland Terminal.
• swiv - A fork of SXIV for wayland.
• waybar - A highly extensible wayland bar.

General Purpose GUI Programs

• dunst - Minimal notification manager and daemon.
• drawing - Image editor with a simple UI, the MS paint of Linux.
• mpv - Minimal extensible media player.
• zathura - Vim-like document reader for PDF and other formats.
• dillo - A retro-style low footprint, although less than functional, browser with gemini and gopher support.
• ludo - A minimalist, sleek, painless retroarch alternative.
• i3blocks - Shell script based bar generator for i3wm’s bar.

Web Apps

• ironcalc - An open source alternative to google docs
• OpenStreetMap - An open source alternative to google maps