This Free Open-Source Repo Is Rebuilding Excel, Photoshop & AutoCAD
Is there a free, open-source way to replace Excel, Word, Slack, Photoshop and even AutoCAD? HeyPuter's "Everything" repo is trying to rebuild the world's software from scratch. It's open source, MIT licensed, and all in one GitHub repository.
What's inside:
50+ apps in 9 categories
Office: spreadsheet, documents, presentations
Team: chat, meetings, email
Creative: photo, video, audio, 3D
Engineering: CAD, circuit design
Business: CRM, help desk, accounting, invoicing, point of sale
Plus chess and sudoku
Every app names what it replaces. The spreadsheet goes up against Excel and Google Sheets, CAD takes on AutoCAD, and the API client goes after Postman.
How to try it:
Install Node 22
Clone the repo: github.com/HeyPuter/everything
Open any app folder
Run npm install, then npm run dev
The honest part: it's early. Many apps have no public demo yet, and I haven't tested how complete each one is. Still, the repo has passed 3,000 stars. Can one open-source project rebuild the software industry? Probably not overnight. But one good free replacement for something you pay for every month is worth a look.
Repo: HeyPuter/everything
Puter (the team behind it): HeyPuter/puter
#opensource #freesoftware #github
2 likes · 1 comment · 305 views
Looked at authors other project, heyputer/puter, and I am perhaps missing their motivation, but I stand by the result.
This is the kind of thing I might have written in my youth: "Hey, all these disparate computers and systems, and my generation has this amazing new platform: javascript web views. Maybe I can solve this problem by making a new platform, that runs everywhere!"
Doing this for its own sake is Hacking. It's a fun project and would require a lot of learning through experience.
However, it suffers from the xkxd://Standards problem in the first case, and in the second misses the fact that I prefer macOS while some of my colleagues prefer windows. It is also fundamentally naive. Perhaps arrogance was too strong a word. It might be a lack of experience or might be dunning-kruger, but these tools are far more complex than it appears the author grasps. One comment from HN on the puter project was that it doesn't have any kind of security - it seemed to be as trusting as a 1998 Windows computer.
My main complaint still stands: this was written by someone with little thought about what the user wants. It is clear what the author wants, given previous projects: One giant system that Does Everything. Only the author wants this. Users want specific tools that have been refined and improved by an invested development team with expert domain knowledge.
Mentions
😤 换台电脑就要重装一遍软件。 puter：44036★ 开源云桌面，浏览器打开就是完整系统，文件和工具跟账号走，也能自建。 HeyPuter/puter
This Free Open-Source Repo Is Rebuilding Excel, Photoshop & AutoCAD Is there a free, open-source way to replace Excel, Word, Slack, Photoshop and even AutoCAD? HeyPuter's "Everything" repo is trying to rebuild the world's software from scratch. It's open source, MIT licensed, and all in one GitHub repository. What's inside: 50+ apps in 9 categories Office: spreadsheet, documents, presentations Team: chat, meetings, email Creative: photo, video, audio, 3D Engineering: CAD, circuit design Business: CRM, help desk, accounting, invoicing, point of sale Plus chess and sudoku Every app names what it replaces. The spreadsheet goes up against Excel and Google Sheets, CAD takes on AutoCAD, and the API client goes after Postman. How to try it: Install Node 22 Clone the repo: github.com/HeyPuter/everything Open any app folder Run npm install, then npm run dev The honest part: it's early. Many apps have no public demo yet, and I haven't tested how complete each one is. Still, the repo has passed 3,000 stars. Can one open-source project rebuild the software industry? Probably not overnight. But one good free replacement for something you pay for every month is worth a look. Repo: HeyPuter/everything Puter (the team behind it): HeyPuter/puter #opensource #freesoftware #github
Looked at authors other project, heyputer/puter, and I am perhaps missing their motivation, but I stand by the result. This is the kind of thing I might have written in my youth: "Hey, all these disparate computers and systems, and my generation has this amazing new platform: javascript web views. Maybe I can solve this problem by making a new platform, that runs everywhere!" Doing this for its own sake is Hacking. It's a fun project and would require a lot of learning through experience. However, it suffers from the xkxd://Standards problem in the first case, and in the second misses the fact that I prefer macOS while some of my colleagues prefer windows. It is also fundamentally naive. Perhaps arrogance was too strong a word. It might be a lack of experience or might be dunning-kruger, but these tools are far more complex than it appears the author grasps. One comment from HN on the puter project was that it doesn't have any kind of security - it seemed to be as trusting as a 1998 Windows computer. My main complaint still stands: this was written by someone with little thought about what the user wants. It is clear what the author wants, given previous projects: One giant system that Does Everything. Only the author wants this. Users want specific tools that have been refined and improved by an invested development team with expert domain knowledge.
Since you're attacking me personally, > Does this person have any experience building and releasing software that wasn't built and released for them by a robot? I built heyputer/puter. What have you done? Because your GitHub is pretty empty: github.com/etchalon, and your company's website doesn't redirect to https. Doesn't inspire much confidence when you're not even doing the basic stuff right, does it?
can I do a PR for live collaboration? to be transparent, I'm going to use my own project puter.js for webrtc, but the project is open-source (HeyPuter/puter)