21 open-source projects similar to gnif/lookingglass, ranked by shared indexed features. Tags may describe platforms or build tools rather than the same primary purpose. Check each project’s use case, license, and deployment requirements before treating it as a replacement.
ExHyperV is a suite of administrative tools designed for managing advanced Hyper-V configurations, specifically focusing on GPU partitioning, device passthrough, and virtual network switches. It provides a graphical interface to configure virtual machine resources and optimize hypervisor settings. The project is distinguished by its ability to share physical graphics card resources across multiple virtual machines using paravirtualization and partitioning. It also provides specialized utilities for assigning PCIe devices and USB peripherals directly to guest machines for exclusive access. Th
DeskPad is a macOS virtual display manager and window management utility designed to isolate and share specific screen content. It creates software-defined monitors at the operating system level to provide a dedicated drawing surface for mirroring content to an audience without exposing the primary workspace. The tool employs cursor location tracking to automate window focus, automatically bringing application windows to the front when the mouse enters the virtual display area. It allows for the creation and resizing of virtual monitors through system-level preferences to ensure shared conten
BetterDisplay is a comprehensive display management utility and virtual display engine designed to provide granular control over monitor configurations. It functions as a low-level hardware controller that interacts directly with graphics drivers and system APIs to override manufacturer limitations, enabling users to manage resolution, scaling, brightness, and color profiles across complex multi-monitor setups. The project distinguishes itself through its ability to generate synthetic virtual displays and inject custom framebuffers into the graphics pipeline, allowing for arbitrary resolution
Pebble is a reference implementation of wearable firmware intended for embedded system research and firmware analysis. It serves as a technical blueprint for understanding how smartwatch operating systems are structured and executed on constrained hardware. The codebase focuses on low power hardware rendering and the management of pixel data and display buffers to minimize energy consumption. It provides a historical guide for watch application development and the study of wearable software architecture. The system incorporates a hardware abstraction layer, a monolithic firmware image, and a
This project is an X11 window system server that coordinates graphical output and input devices. It functions as a display server, a hardware driver manager for graphics and input modules, and a graphics server capable of rendering directly to a generic framebuffer. The server provides multi-seat display management to isolate input and display devices for different concurrent users. It also implements namespace isolation to separate clients and restrict resource access, preventing interference between different user sessions or processes. The system manages GPU driver integration through dyn
Hyperlight is an embedded virtual machine manager designed to execute guest binaries within hardware-isolated code sandboxes. It utilizes a KVM micro-VM manager to run untrusted third-party code, enforcing strict memory boundaries to prevent unauthorized host access. The project features a guest-host function bridge that facilitates bidirectional communication and a state snapshot tool for saving and restoring the memory state of a sandbox to reduce startup latency. The system includes a toolchain for guest binary cross-compilation and mechanisms for managing resource constraints, such as fi
Incus is a unified orchestration platform for managing system containers, OCI application containers, and virtual machines through a single control plane. It brings together cluster infrastructure management, secure multi-tenancy, software-defined networking, and pluggable storage backend orchestration into one cohesive system exposed via a full REST API and command-line interface. What distinguishes Incus is its ability to run multiple instance types side by side—full Linux system containers, OCI application containers, and QEMU virtual machines—all managed with consistent tooling. Networkin
LXD is a unified platform for managing both system containers and virtual machines through a single REST API and command-line interface. It provides a programmatic HTTP interface for controlling the full lifecycle of instances, enabling automation and integration with external tools. The system runs unprivileged containers with per-instance UID/GID mappings, seccomp filters, and AppArmor profiles for kernel-level isolation, while supporting multiple storage backends including directory, Btrfs, LVM, ZFS, Ceph, LINSTOR, and TrueNAS through a unified driver interface. The platform distinguishes
TFT_eSPI is an Arduino TFT display library and anti-aliased graphics engine used to drive displays via SPI or parallel interfaces on ESP32, ESP8266, STM32, and RP2040 microcontrollers. It provides a DMA-accelerated display driver to increase frame rates and a sprite-based frame buffer to prevent visual flickering. The library features an integrated touch screen interface for processing input from SPI-based controllers. It distinguishes itself with a rendering system capable of drawing anti-aliased shapes and high-quality Unicode fonts to eliminate jagged edges. The project covers a broad ran
microvm.nix is a declarative virtual machine manager and orchestrator for defining, building, and managing isolated guest environments using Nix. It functions as a virtual machine image builder that transforms system specifications into bootable disk images and runner scripts. The project provides a hypervisor abstraction layer, enabling the deployment of guest images across multiple virtualization backends through a unified configuration. It includes specialized tools for PCI hardware passthrough, granting virtual machines direct access to physical host USB and PCI devices. The framework co
seL4 is a formally verified microkernel whose C implementation is backed by machine-checked mathematical proofs of correctness, confidentiality, integrity, and availability. It enforces strict isolation between processes through hardware-enforced address space separation and a capability-based access control system, where each process holds explicit rights only to the resources it has been granted. The kernel exposes hardware resources through a minimal API of system calls that manage threads, address spaces, and inter-process communication, with synchronous IPC supporting sender-identifying b
This project is a Nintendo Entertainment System emulator written in Go. It functions as a hardware simulation that executes game ROMs by mimicking the original console's circuitry, including the processor and picture processing unit. The emulator includes a game library browser that identifies local files and retrieves titles and thumbnails from online databases using file checksums. It also implements a system of memory management mappers to ensure compatibility across various game ROM formats and hardware configurations. The software covers high-level capabilities for game ROM execution an
ZealOS is a 64-bit operating system designed for bare-metal deployment and custom kernel development. It provides a self-contained environment that operates within a single-address-space memory model, where all software executes in a ring-zero privilege level to eliminate context switching and facilitate direct hardware interaction. The system distinguishes itself through a monolithic architecture that integrates just-in-time compilation, allowing source code to be translated into machine instructions during runtime. It bypasses traditional abstraction layers by utilizing direct hardware memo
Sokol is a C hardware abstraction layer and cross-platform graphics library designed for managing windowing, input, and audio across different operating systems. It functions as a GPU resource manager and multimedia application framework, providing a unified API for rendering 2D and 3D graphics across WebGL, Metal, Direct3D, and OpenGL. The project is distinguished by its single-header implementation, which simplifies integration and portability. It utilizes a stateless render pass definition and a one-update-per-frame model to synchronize CPU data to GPU memory and manage resource lifecycles
linuxdeploy is an Android application that installs and runs a full GNU/Linux distribution in an isolated chroot environment on an Android device without modifying the system partition. It bootstraps a complete Linux userland from distribution repositories or rootfs archives, using a debootstrap-style package installation process adapted for Android, and stores the filesystem as a loop-mounted ext4 disk image for efficient space management and portability. The project provides multiple ways to interact with the running Linux environment, including SSH remote access, VNC with X11 display forwa
embedded-notes is a collection of technical study guides and development notes focused on embedded Linux, Linux kernel internals, and C programming. It serves as a reference for embedded systems development and a preparation resource for technical interviews in the field. The project provides detailed documentation on writing device drivers, managing virtual memory, and understanding kernel internals. It also includes guides on IoT network protocols, such as MQTT and TCP/IP, and outlines the architectural details of chip architectures and hardware peripherals. The material covers a broad sur
NuttX is a POSIX-compliant real-time operating system designed for microcontrollers ranging from 8-bit to 64-bit architectures. It provides a deterministic execution environment with a real-time task scheduler and a POSIX embedded kernel to ensure portable code execution across diverse hardware targets. The project distinguishes itself through a comprehensive hardware abstraction layer that provides standardized drivers for I2C, SPI, CAN, and USB across various semiconductor chipsets. It also features an embedded networking stack supporting TCP, UDP, IPv4, and IPv6, alongside industrial proto
Quickemu is a command-line utility designed to automate the deployment and management of virtual machine instances. It functions as an automated provisioner that handles the acquisition of operating system images and the generation of optimized configuration files, allowing users to launch virtualized environments with minimal manual setup. The tool leverages hardware-accelerated emulation to execute virtual machines, mapping host-native resources directly to the guest environment to maintain performance. It utilizes shell-scripted orchestration to manage the lifecycle of these instances, sto
Bazzite is an immutable, atomic-image-based operating system designed for gaming performance and handheld hardware. It utilizes a read-only root filesystem and versioned images to provide atomic updates and instant system rollbacks, ensuring a stable core environment. The system is distinguished by its deep optimization for portable gaming devices, featuring dedicated handheld hardware management for CPU undervolting, fan control, and display refresh rate overclocking. It includes a specialized gaming mode that boots directly into a console-like interface with integrated input mapping and a t
GPAC is an open-source multimedia framework built around a pluggable filter graph pipeline, where modular processing units called filters connect into a directed graph to handle media workflows. At its core, the framework centers all media packaging and manipulation on the ISO Base Media File Format (ISOBMFF), with specialized tools for reading, writing, fragmenting, and encrypting MP4 and related containers. It also provides a declarative scene graph composition system for describing interactive multimedia scenes using MPEG-4 BIFS, X3D, SVG, or VRML syntax, alongside a hardware-accelerated re
Redox is a POSIX-compliant, microkernel-based operating system written entirely in Rust. By utilizing a memory-safe language for the kernel and all system components, the project eliminates common vulnerabilities such as buffer overflows and use-after-free errors. Its architecture relies on a minimal kernel that manages only essential hardware and process isolation, delegating all other system services to unprivileged user-space processes. The system distinguishes itself through a modular design where hardware drivers and system services run as independent user-space daemons, allowing them to