FOSSPicks
FOSSPicks

This month Graham looks at Penpot, ProcMon, diskgraph, Shaarli, Music Radar and more!
UX designer
Penpot
Penpot is a tool that helps designers create and prototype a user interface (UI). A little different from the desktop and command-line utilities that typically fill these pages, Penpot is a web application, designed to run in your web browser and, most usefully, online. Like WordPress, Nextcloud, and Home Assistant, the online element in Penpot is an essential feature that performs such an important role that the application is worth investigating, regardless of how it presents itself. And like those other brilliant web apps, it has a huge Linux bias and a commitment to open source.
Over the past few years, if you worked on any project that required a designer, it's likely the designer will have used a prototyping tool like Penpot. They're used to sketch up various UI designs, present them to the team, make changes, and eventually fix those changes so that developers can start adding whatever functionality is required. This is why similar prototyping tools work best when they're hosted online: It allows a project's various "stakeholders" to access the designs, make their own suggestions, and leave feedback. Penpot can do all of this and a lot more.
While Penpot is a web app and its developers offer their own portal, which is currently free to use, the open source version can be easily downloaded and self-deployed via a Docker image. This also happens to be the default development environment for anyone who wants to tinker with the code. Despite loading via a web browser, the application itself operates much like Inkscape or Scribus, only with additional social and prototyping features. There are shape drawing tools, a freehand mode, paths, curves, images, and text boxes. All are tightly bound to a grid, object boundaries, many alignment modes, and accessible data values for every element. These can then be grouped into reusable objects.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

News
-
Akamai Will Host kernel.org
The organization dedicated to cloud-based solutions has agreed to host kernel.org to deliver long-term stability for the development team.
-
Linux Kernel 6.14 Released
The latest Linux kernel has arrived with extra Rust support and more.
-
EndeavorOS Mercury Neo Available
A new release from the EndeavorOS team ships with Plasma 6.3 and other goodies.
-
Fedora 42 Beta Has Arrived
The Fedora Project has announced the availability of the first beta release for version 42 of the open-source distribution.
-
Dash to Panel Maintainer Quits
Charles Gagnon has stepped away as maintainer of the popular Dash to Panel Gnome extension.
-
CIQ Releases Security-Hardened Version of Rocky Linux
If you're looking for an enterprise-grade Linux distribution that is hardened for business use, there's a new version of Rocky Linux that's sure to make you and your company happy.
-
Gnome’s Dash to Panel Extension Gets a Massive Update
If you're a fan of the Gnome Dash to Panel extension, you'll be thrilled to hear that a new version has been released with a dock mode.
-
Blender App Makes it to the Big Screen
The animated film "Flow" won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature at the 97th Academy Awards held on March 2, 2025 and Blender was a part of it.
-
Linux Mint Retools the Cinnamon App Launcher
The developers of Linux Mint are working on an improved Cinnamon App Launcher with a better, more accessible UI.
-
New Linux Tool for Security Issues
Seal Security is launching a new solution to automate fixing Linux vulnerabilities.