Where do you search for open source software?

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I was looking for a tool to monitor a file for changes, and didn’t find much using my search engine. After I searched on GitHub I found what I needed. Not wanting GitHub the be the only place where projects are discoverable, I was wondering if there could be something like a search engine for open source repositories?

Where do you look for open source software you want to use, learn from or contribute to?

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I often use the awesome-selfhosted list when looking for web applications. It’s not exclusively open source projects but it is mostly and licenses are clearly labelled.

I was wondering if there could be something like a search engine for open source repositories

I’ve seen a few of those pop up but they’re often backed with questionable or business focused intentions, often from “growth-hacking” vc start-ups looking to use them for promotion since they’re a low-friction audience generator.

I’ve come across libhunt which seems pretty useful for exploration but I’ve not used it too much myself yet.

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I actually tend to search my distros repositories before i do a web search. The search function of Arch’s pacman actually tends to find relevant stuff, even more so if i include the AUR.

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It depends a lot on the specific need. For desktop applications, the Arch Wiki has an interesting list: List of applications - ArchWiki

For Wayland-specific applications, the sway wiki has a pretty long list too: Useful add ons for sway · swaywm/sway Wiki · GitHub

Asking on IRC can be useful too.

inotify-tools has some some level tools. For something higher level, consider entr(1).

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I usually look around in nixpkgs first, then awesome-selfhosted (linked above), and if I still haven’t found what I’m looking for, I ask on the Fediverse. Been working wonderfully so far.

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You can also look around on Codeberg and Sourcehut

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I started the delightful project on Codeberg, as an alternative to awesome project on Github. It distinguishes itself by curating exclusively FOSS, Open Science and Open Data related resources in its sub-lists (and can be created/maintained by anyone). Lists are auto-published to Delightful Club website (:two_hearts: kudos Yarmo Mackenbach of Keyoxide).

More lists highly welcome. @pi-cla recently created a fabulous one on Transit resources, and there’s also a Forgejo contrib list, among others. I co-maintain the Fediverse-related lists (with a huge backlog to add :grimacing: )

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I’ve started to use Marginalia Search as it surfaces stuff from less spammy parts of the web. There may be an article written by a developer about certain software or it could be a direct link to a project.