Testing experimental software is a hassle right now. You either wait for a stable release, or you dive into the pit of nightly builds hoping the whole thing doesn't fall on your head.
That gets worse on image-based systems like GNOME OS, where the base image is read-only and you can't just swap out a package and move on.
GNOME wants to fix that with a new app it's prototyping, tentatively called Test Center.
Something new to tackle testing
It is meant to act as a one-stop solution for installing, running, and removing anything experimental, whether that's an app or a piece of the system itself.
For apps, you skip the usual grind of hunting down CI artifacts or building your own Flatpak bundle by hand. A developer hands you a link, you tap it, and the build shows up tagged as experimental, set to expire on its own.
System components run on sysext images instead of Flatpaks, though the idea plays out the same way. Take something like parental controls, still early in development, you'd grab the sysext tied to that merge request through Test Center, and it lands on your system as an overlay rather than a replacement.
Remove it, and you restore your system to the same state before the experimental change was applied.
Plus, there's a good reason system-level testing has been such a mess up to now.
According to Modal Collective, the closest thing on a regular package-based distro is packaging your changes into an unofficial repo like a COPR or PPA and asking testers to install from there themselves.
Once they do, the experimental packages don't sit next to the stable ones, they replace them outright. Break something, and it's on you to fix it. You won't get proper updates again until you do.
What's next?
All this effort is part of the GNOME OS Developer Tool Suite, a project that's been in funding through Germany's Prototype Fund since June 2026. Tobias Bernard, Jonas Dreßler, and a few others are working on this under the Modal Collective umbrella.
In a related plan, an easier way to distribute command-line developer tools on image-based systems is also part of the same project, though the team says more details on that are coming in a separate post.
If you're developing for GNOME OS and have opinions on what's currently annoying about testing and development workflows, the team wants to hear from you on Matrix, in the #gnome-os room, or in person at the GNOME OS BoF during GUADEC.
I started using Trello around 2013-14 to work on a team project. Trello was new and rising at the time for its simplicity of providing a collaborative Kanban board.
After its acquisition and recent AI surge, Trello has changed a lot. But I still miss its simplicity in Kanban style tools I have tried so far.
As I lean more towards, open source and self-hosting, I have collected a bunch of projects that can be considered in the same league as Trello.
My search for open source Trello alternatives were based on mainly finding simple kanban boards with team collaboration and public boards option. Integration to external services, mobile apps and the ability to import Trello projects are also worth considering. Since we are in AI era, automation and AI agent access can also be not ignored.
So, let's begin to see what open source tool can replace Trello for you.
Kan.bn
Kan is a sleek, modern looking Kanban task board. Built with Typescript, Kan provides a modern user interface and experience. It comes with all of the classic Trello features so you get boards and workpaces, labels and filtering. You also have the ability to comment and check activity logs on the tasks.
There is no automation or AI feature at the time of writing this article. Which is not entirely a bad thing because sometimes simplicity itself is a feature.
One thing that does bother me is the lack of smartphone apps. I like to keep a track on tasks while on the move.
That doesn't mean Kan doesn't provide ways for efficient work. They are already working on implementing templates so that you can easily create same type of tasks. Integrations with external tools is also a work in progress.
The biggest feature for people moving away from Trello is that you can import your Trello boards directly in Kan. That makes it a true open source alternative to Trello.
Use it if you want to move your existing Trello tasks to a self-hosted tool with modern look and feel.
Planka
If you want to use something that looks and feels like Trello, look no further than Planka. Look at the screenshots, and you'll feel like you are looking at Trello itself.
You get all the usual Trello and kanban board features. You have lists with tasks and those tasks can have deadline and time tracking. Kanban, grid and list views are available. You should also be able to import your Trello tasks here.
REST API with 50+ webhook events helps you integrate task management with external tools in your workflow.
Organizations can have single sign on along with Google, Azure AD and more.
There are no official mobile apps for now. If you must use one, there is a community app in progress. I would suggest waiting for the official mobile apps, instead.
Licensing and pricing are issues here. There are two versions: community and pro. Both versions are available in hosted and self-hosted formats. The pro version has additional features like user roles, recurring cards, UI customization for organization branding etc. You can self-host the community edition for free. Everything else has a price tag, including self-hosting the pro version.
Licensing is 'fair use' and it is not clear that they use a clear, open source solution. I would keep them in 'source open' category.
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Use it if you want a Trello style Kanban task board for your organization and you are okay using a source open software with no public boards.
Vikunja
Vikunja is primarily and open source, self-hostable Kanban board that you can use on your own and with your team. You can add labels, create relation between tasks, add deadlines and priorities.
Tasks and boards and can be shared with public, too. This makes it is easy to collaborate with external people and they don't even have to create an account.
Apart from Kanban, you also get list, tabular and Gantt chart views. Recurring tasks, sub tasks, due date notification, you get them all.
I like the idea of the "quick add magic". It's a helpful featuere specially if you work with AI to create task description. In the description, use keywords like mention a date and it adds that as a due date. This saves you the trouble of manually assigning labels, due dates, priorities etc.
Vikunja doesn't have smartphone apps but it does let you import your Trello projects.
Written in Go, Vikunja claims to be speedy. How to verify the claim? Well, there is a demo board you can test, no lon in required.
It is AGPL licensed and you can self host it on your own or opt for managed hosting from Vikunja itself.
💡
Use it if you want a true open source, self-hostable tool to manage tasks individually or for an organization.
Wekan
Wekan is one of the OG open source Trello alternatives. You can self host it on your servers. It feels more enterprise and organization oriented than individuals and lean team. The interface is a bit dated for my liking but still good enough for managing tasks without eye candy.
The promise is simple. You get boards, lists and tasks. It is collaborative and since its enterprise oriented, there is option to purchase commercial support.
There are mobile apps listed on their website but I didn't find anything on the Trello import. No AI integration as far as I can see.
💡
Use it if you want a true open source, self-hostable tool for an enterprise.
Tududi
Funny sounding name aside, Tududi is somewhat of a Clickup alternative. You have boards, areas (work, life, personal) and the ability to create notes. Which is a great way to share common docs with the team.
There are plenty of features to like here. Recurring tasks, subtasks, priorities, labeling, deadlines. All the usual stuff is already here with a few smart features. Progress can be tracked with completion stats and productivity patterns.
No smartphone apps but responsive design makes it easy to follow tasks on web browser on your mobile devices. Don't see automation or AI features here, either. Not sure about public board, too.
It can be self-hosted via Docker or you can use the hosted service from the developer.
💡
Use it if you want an open source Kanban tool with the ability to add docs.
Leantime
While not exactly a Trello clone, Leantime is a project management tool created specifically with ADHD and neurodivergence in mind. So you get more color codings, emoji-based priority features.
There is a "personal view" that shows all your tasks in one place irrespective of which board they belong to. This is something I have seen in ClickUp.
You can also take notes that won't be saved in the main tasks and would only be used in personal view.
You can track productivity with built in reports and see how the project is coming together.
Another thing that I feel is helpful is the ability to create a blueprint for a project. So instead of creating the main project board immediately, this can be used for the (pre) planning phase.
Leantime also has builtin whiteboard for creating mind maps and wireframes to visually represent your thoughts.
💡
Use Leantime if you have people with ADHD in your team and you are not looking for an exact Trello replacement.
Fizzy
From the makers of Basecamp, Fizzy is a relatively new tool and claims to make "Kanban as it was supposed to be". Which means it is keeping things simple by giving you boards with only the most essential features.
We have been using Fizzy for the past several months for managing our tasks here at It's FOSS.
Auto close is the feature that you won't easily find in other project management tools. Once you add a task, it gets added to Maybe list by default. And if the task sees no activity (edits, comments, moving to other lists), it gets moved to a "Not now" list that is hidden from the main view.
Another thing here is that no matter how many lists (columns) you add, you can only view two of them at a time. Helps with focus, apparently.
Fizzy has smartphone apps that makes it easier to manage tasks without sitting in front of a computer.
My biggest gripe with Fizzy is that it doesn't have a deadline feature. Everything is either Maybe, Intermediate lists or Done. And then removing tasks from Done list is done one by one manually, no multi-select here. So if your board has hundreds of finished tasks and you didn't delete them immediately, you have to delete them one by one. Or you just let them stay in the Done section which kind of looks odd when the number increases.
Public boards are available in Fizzy so you can use it for sharing project roadmaps. Webhooks let you integrate to external tools.
Fizzy also has CLI version and thus allowing you to use an AI agent for accessing and managing the board, if that's your thing.
There is no direct way for importing Trello projects in Fizzy. So that's something worth noting. Also, Fizzy is source available, not open source.
You can self-host it or use the hosted service which is free anyways.
💡
If deadlines is not something you need and you are okay with source available, Fizzy is a good choice as it is free even in hosted version.
Bonus: Schedule
Now this one is completely different than the rest of the Trello alternatives mentioned here. Schedule is a simple, kanban style todo list of your Linux desktop. It doesn't have collaboration features, cannot be self hosted or accessed via web browsers.
It's a desktop application. You install it, you create your boards, add tasks and work on them. Sometimes you need that. Either you don't work with a team or external collaborators or you just want a separate place for your personal projects.
Use this for personal task management on your desktop only.
Which tool should you use to replace Trello?
I have deliberately not included these in my list here:
Nextcloud Deck: Kanban feature is good but it's just one part of a different type of software suite.
Plane, Mattermost and OpenProject: Full-fledged project management suite. Overkill for just Kanban feature.
Kanboard, Restyboard, Taskboard: No longer actively developed.
Nocobase, Baserow: More of no code CRM oriented tools than just Kanban boards.
And to answer the question...it all depends on your requirements.
If you want a simple Kanban tool that looks modern, go with Kan. You can use it for free or self host it or opt for the paid hosted version. Fizzy is also a good choice if you don't need deadline features. Vikunja is also rising in popularity and worth a dekko.
I would suggest checking each tool and its features and see if they will be your ideal open source Trello alternatives.
Your turn now. Which Kanban tool do you use? Did you find something worth trying in this list? Share it in the comments,
Slack is the solution most teams think of first when they are in the market for a chat application. It is known for being feature-packed, fast, and consistently updated, making it a go-to for millions of teams across the world.
But no matter how good it is, it is not open source. 🙃
Thankfully, the open source space has no shortage of alternatives. Rocket.Chat, Mattermost, Zulip, and Matrix-based clients like Element have all built up loyal followings among teams who want to own their data.
Now there's a new name to add to that list. It's called Chatto, and it's still early in its development cycle, with a stable 1.0 release yet to arrive.
Chatto goes open
After spending the past few months developing Chatto, Hendrik Mans has decided to offer the project openly under AGPL-3.0+ with a few Apache-2.0 exceptions for certain components.
It's built as a self-hosted option for teams who would otherwise reach for Slack, Teams, or Discord. Hendrik wanted something light on resources, simple enough that an administrator can just run the executable and get started.
It covers the essentials you would expect from a chat app. That includes channels, rooms, file sharing, video embeds, and a roles and permissions system for fine control over which user gets what kind of access.
You also get screen sharing, along with end-to-end encryption on every voice and video call, and the number of people that can join comes down to what kind of capacity your server has.
Going forward
Right now, there's no dedicated desktop or mobile client. Chatto's roadmap lists both as something that could be worked on, but they're still in the discovery phase, meaning that they are still deliberating on whether to offer those.
Beyond the client apps, the roadmap lists a dedicated Slack to Chatto migration tool, along with GDPR-compliant data export, thread locking, and thread deletion as planned feature additions.
Hendrik is currently working on new room types, bot accounts with dedicated API tokens, Chatto hub integration, and server-wide user suspension. Next in line are an emergency lockdown mode for admins, slow mode, in-app message reporting, and server invites.
For anyone who'd rather skip the self-hosting altogether, Chatto Cloud is entering public beta soon too. It'll run on European-owned infrastructure, with neat perks like automatic scaling and nightly backups.
Don't worry about vendor lock-in either, as moving data in or out of it will be made accessible.
Back in 2020, I wrote about Open Book: a DIY, open source e-reader project from developer Joey Castillo that you could solder together yourself... at least in theory. It had a 4.2 inch e-paper screen, seven physical buttons for navigation, and the kind of "anyone with a soldering iron can build one" ambition that attracts a certain kind of small userbase.
Six years later, Castillo is back with Open Book Touch. It is built on the same idea just that it's more of a ready-to-use, out of the box kind of product this time. If need be, you can still take it apart and modify it as needed. The new project just went live on Crowd Supply.
With "own your data" becoming a way to resist against Big Tech's walled garden, an open source alternative to Kindle's ecosystem is exactly the kind of thing that appeals to many of us open source lovers. No account needed, no DRM, nothing "phoning home". If you have a good ebook coolection, a device like this is worth adding to wishlist, at least for me.
Processor: ESP32-S3 dual-core, Wi-Fi + Bluetooth LE
Memory: 16 MB flash, 8 MB PSRAM
Formats: EPUB and plain text, no DRM
Storage: microSD card slot
Interface: USB-C with integrated LiPo charging
Dimension: 78 × 120 × 10 mm, about 85 g
Open source: MIT-licensed firmware, open hardware (to be released at shipping)
The base model is $149, with a limited "Author's Edition" going for $249 during the campaign only.
The most obvious change from the original Open Book is right there on the front. Where the old board had a directional pad, a select button, and dedicated page-turn buttons, Open Book Touch is a single symmetrical slab, just 1 cm thin, with a capacitive touchscreen doing all the work instead. That's why it is called Open Book Touch, perhaps.
The exclusion of physical buttons makes sense because it is a tiny device. The touchscreen sits on a 4.26 inch e-paper panel at 480 × 800 pixels, working out to roughly 220 ppi, sharper than you'd expect at that size. It's a 1-bit display at its core meaning fast, crisp black and white for page turns. Slower 2-bit grayscale mode is reserved for the lock screen, so a book cover or your own photo renders in more shades of gray.
Frontlight uses five warm and five cool LEDs together, so you get a warm tone for reading in bed or something cooler for daylight, rather than being stuck with the single-temperature light.
At its core lies an ESP32-S3, paired with 16 MB of flash and 8 MB of PSRAM, the kind of arrangement you'd want for parsing EPUB files on a microcontroller instead of a full Linux SBC. The firmware itself is C++ on ESP-IDF and FreeRTOS, with SQLite quietly tracking your library's metadata.
Typesetting gets some attention too: justified text with proper hyphenation (English, Spanish, French, and Italian dictionaries are included), inline dithered images, and text set in bitmap versions of open source Lucida Bright and Lucida Sans fonts, complete with true bold and italic weights.
Language support is pretty impressive for a new device. GNU Unifont ships on the device as a fallback covering around 70,000 glyphs, the interface itself is localized into seven languages including Arabic and Hebrew. They have also implemented the Unicode bidirectional algorithm so right-to-left scripts shape correctly instead of just rendering backwards.
There's no DRM support here, by design. Books load from a microSD card or over local Wi-Fi. You may also manage metadat of library with SQLite.
There is no companion app here. This 'feature' could be an inconvenience, too, if you like reading on more than one devices like your computer or smartphone. Perhaps later, something can be thought about it,
The 800 mAh (minimum) LiPo battery is user-replaceable, and the 3D-printed snap-fit case is designed to be taken apart, with printable CAD files included if you want to make your own in a different color.
That win was supposed to mean a manufactured run of at least 100 units landing on DigiKey's shelves. From what I recall, that specific retail run doesn't seem to have fully materialized.
Castillo sold bare PCBs himself through Tindie starting mid-2020, and by that October, more than 100 Open Book and E-Book FeatherWing boards had shipped to makers willing to solder them together at home.
So it did shipped, sort of, just not like DigiKey retail run originally promised. But real boards did reach real people as a DIY kit rather than a finished product. The project kept evolving after that, through an RP2040-based "Open Book Abridged" and, eventually, a full reimagining that led to Open Book Touch.
The original Open Book had all its schematics and firmware public on GitHub from day one, before a single board existed. Open Book Touch is a bit different for now. Castillo has open sourced Focus, the C++ application framework that powers the device's interface, and the firmware is MIT-licensed.
But the board files, enclosure CAD, and the Open Book Touch-specific firmware itself are staying private until the campaign ships, going public to backers first and everyone else after. This is what's promised by the developer.
Get Open Book Touch
Open Book Touch is live on Crowd Supply now. At the time of writing, the campaign has raised $25,658 of its $45,000 goal from 131 backers, with about five weeks left to go.
Pledges start at $149 for the standard Open Book Touch (free US shipping, $12 elsewhere), with a $249 "Author's Edition" in a special enclosure available only during the campaign.
Crowd Supply is targeting early 2027 to get the first units to backers, fulfilled through its usual partner, Mouser. Manufacturing runs through NextPCB's Launchpad program, with the e-paper panel itself coming from Good Display.
🚧
As with any crowdfunding campaign, treat the timeline as an estimate. Back it because you want to support the project, not because you're counting on the ship date.
If you just want the reading experience Castillo designed, the $149 tier gets you the full thing. Go for the $249 Author's Edition only if the nicer enclosure matters to you, since the electronics inside are identical.
As consumers, we are used to correlating handhelds with the big names like Valve's Steam Deck, Lenovo's Legion Go, and ASUS' ROG Ally. But these machines are geared towards gaming and are priced like it too.
Lately, a different segment has been getting just as much attention. Indie creators and small hardware outfits who are shipping handhelds built around open hardware, swappable parts, and running full Linux distros.
We have picked out eight such handhelds that range from fully assembled devices to bring-your-own board kits that expect you to bring your own board, battery, and storage.
1. CardputerZero
M5Stack has kept its Cardputer line going since 2023, updating it every so often. The original ran on an ESP32-S3, and so did the follow-up, the Cardputer-Adv, just with a bigger battery and more sensors bolted on. Howeverm, neither of them ran real Linux.
The CardputerZero changes that. It swaps the ESP32 for a Raspberry Pi Compute Module Zero, which is equipped with a Broadcom BCM2837 with a quad-core Cortex-A53 running at 1GHz and 512MB of RAM.
You get a 1.9-inch non-touch LCD with HDMI output up to 1080p, a 46-key keyboard, and a 1500mAh battery to keep it running, all of which fits into an 84 x 54 x 23.1mm shell you could mistake for a fat credit card.
The Standard model throws in an 8MP camera and a full IMU sensor suite; features the cheaper Lite version drops entirely. Both variants keep Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Ethernet, and a built-in app store that lets you flash community firmware without requiring a computer.
The Mecha Comet looks like a chunky Android phone at first glance, until you notice the 40-pin magnetic connector running along the bottom edge. Snap on a QWERTY keyboard with a trackpad, a gamepad with a dual D-pad, or a bare GPIO breakout, and the same device becomes a different tool entirely.
For the software, it runs Mechanix, Mecha's own Fedora-based distro powered by Linux 6.12, with the bootloader, kernel, and root filesystem all being published as open source. They are also committing to releasing the full PCB schematics once mass production starts.
You get to choose between two configurations; the cheaper one will get you an NXP i.MX 8M Plus, a quad-core Cortex-A53 clocked at 1.8GHz, paired with 4GB or 8GB of LPDDR4 RAM. Step up to the higher tier, and you get an i.MX 95 with a six-core Cortex-A55 setup, yielding roughly double the GPU throughput.
Both of these are equipped with an NPU and share the same 3.92-inch AMOLED touchscreen that outputs at 1080 x 1240.
The Orange Pi Neo has been in the works since early 2024, being built as a joint effort between Orange Pi and Manjaro Linux.
The planned hardware for it is an AMD Ryzen 7 7840U chip, a 7-inch 1920x1200 display running at 120Hz, dual touchpads modeled after the Steam Deck's, and Hall effect joysticks with RGB lighting.
Sadly, it is running quite late, and the recent hike in DDR5 RAM and SSD prices has only added to the delay, with Philip Müller, Manjaro's project lead, saying that they are waiting for a good time to launch.
I added this to the list because, on paper, this looks like a capable Linux-powered handheld; would've been a bummer to skip.
Waveshare has designed the PocketTerm35 around a dedicated RP2040 microcontroller that handles the keyboard, screen brightness, and volume control duties, freeing up the main board to just run Linux.
That main board can either be a Raspberry Pi 4B or a Pi 5, both of which slot in as the actual compute hardware doing the work. Software-wise, it runs a full Linux desktop with a terminal and command-line tools included, and it's compatible with RetroPie for retro gaming.
It is sold in four different configurations. Two come with a Pi 4B or Pi 5 already installed along with a preloaded SD card and heatsink, and two are accessory-only kits for anyone supplying their own board.
Ahmad Amarullah, an Indonesian maker, has spent considerable time refining what eventually became the piBrick PocketCM5. The final design pairs a Raspberry Pi CM5 with a BlackBerry BBQ20 keyboard, complete with its own integrated trackpad, inside a compact 80 x 145 x 19.6mm shell.
The screen is a 3.92-inch AMOLED panel running at 1080 x 1240 and a 90Hz refresh rate, output over MIPI/DSI. Full-size HDMI and micro-HDMI are both present too, so you're never lacking in ways to get an image onto a bigger screen.
Ports are expansive for something this size. You get 1x USB 3 Type-A, 1x USB 3 Type-C, 1x USB 2 Type-C, and 1x USB 2 Type-A, plus an internal USB 2.0 header, an I2C connector, and a GPIO extension header for anyone who wants to wire something in.
Every part of it, the PCB schematics, the 3D-printable case, and the keyboard firmware, is published openly on GitHub. The full DIY kit without the CM5 is listed on Tindie but was out of stock at the time of writing.
soulscircuit's Pilet hit its Kickstarter goal within five minutes of its debut. It is pitched as a retro open source computer that was initially built to house the Raspberry Pi 5, but, later, switched to the Raspberry Pi CM5 instead.
It is offered in two sizes, the 5-inch Pilet 5 with a retro console layout, and the 7-inch Pilet 7, a tablet variant running KDE Plasma. Both share a 1280x800 touchscreen and a custom battery module for USB charging.
RootBoard is a pocket-sized Linux terminal designed by tinkerer Dian Lieu, built as an open hardware shell rather than a finished gadget. The keyboard controller, firmware, and software are all left fully open for makers to inspect and modify.
The shell wraps a 3.5-inch color display with a 70-key QWERTY keyboard and a built-in speaker, but there's no touchscreen here. You navigate using the keyboard or an external mouse instead.
And you will need a Raspberry Pi Zero, Zero W, or Zero 2 W, as the RootBoard doesn't feature a CPU, memory, or storage.
A German outfit, called MNT Research has come up with the MNT Pocket Reform, their take on a compact Linux handheld that takes pointers from the Reform laptop series.
It ships with Debian preinstalled, with custom versions of GNOME and Sway both preloaded as desktop options. Schematics, firmware, and case design files are all published under an open license, along with the rest of the Reform hardware lineup.
If you go for this, you get to pick between three processor modules, an NXP i.MX8M Plus (via Crowd Supply), a Rockchip RK3588, or a Qualcomm QCS6490. You can swap between them later since the CPU sits as a removable card rather than being soldered down.
There's also the 7-inch display that sits above a mechanical ortholinear keyboard and an optical trackball.
I have been gaming on Linux more than usual lately; that's part due to my main gaming rig being out of reach and part me wanting to play more on this platform than Windoze. I played a few indie games to pass the time and eventually went looking for new games to check out during the Steam Summer Sale.
That is when I found Space Haven, a native Linux space-themed colony sim with base building, survival, and combat elements built into it.
It is the work of Bugbyte, a Turku-based indie game studio who initially introduced the game on Kickstarter back in 2019, running a successful crowdfunding campaign, and eventually making it out of Early Access.
Here's how my playthrough of it went.
Worth your time?
I say yes! If you are someone who is a buff for building intricate bases and micromanaging the smallest of details, then this game can be a good play for you.
I completed the tutorial before starting a full playthrough, which walked me through the basics quite well, but it did take some considerable time to finish.
There's a lot to keep track of once you are actually playing. Crew health and mood depend on beds, food, privacy, and toilets, so you cannot just build a ship and forget about the people living on it.
Powering the ship adequately matters just as much, where you place power generators and power nodes to route power distribution throughout your ship, keeping life support equipment like the oxygen generator and water purifier running to keep the crew alive.
Below you can see how I had to add a power node to provide electricity to the oxygen generator, with power-related metrics visible on the right. In this case, I was completing a quest objective to expand the ship's power grid.
Installing a small power node (left) and mining an asteroid (right).
Resource extraction comes next. Pod hangars support mining, building, and starfighter types, and once you assign a mining pod hangar, it automatically sends out a pod to a selected resource and starts mining.
For moving beyond the current region, hyperspace jumps are the only way. After ensuring that you have installed a Navigation Console and Hyperium Hyperdrive, you can use the Starmap to chart your way forward.
Then there's the combat. The ship can be protected by placing Point Defense Turrets for shooting down incoming asteroids as well as enemy drones and spacecraft. The crew members themselves can be drafted and equipped with weapons too!
You can send them aboard derelict ships to salvage for resources, and any aliens or clankers they run into get shot on sight once you give the order.
Room for improvements
Two things bugged me while playing. The camera stays locked to one angle; there is no way to rotate the view to see the ship or its contents from a different side. Loading a new map also means clicking through a checkmark button every single time before you can proceed, which will get annoying.
What I have covered here is only the surface of what Space Haven has to offer. There is a lot more to dig into, including deeper ship combat, faction missions, and even prison management, if you go further than I did.
Even with the fun I had, it would be wrong to exclude an issue that can be a dealbreaker for you. Crew members treat every task as a separate event instead of chaining related jobs together, placing a single wall block before wandering off, or returning to base after each mining haul instead of heading straight back out.
That is something the developers can fix in a future patch. For me, it was not much of a dealbreaker, as I am used to making things hard for myself. ☠️
🎮 How to Play?
As this is a native Linux game, you can run it on any computer that meets the minimum hardware requirements, provided the distro you install it on has the necessary components to run recent video games.
It costs $24.99, with prices going lower during sales. You can grab it from GOG for a DRM-free copy that you can share with others, or from Steam if you want access to mods.
Most microcontroller boards on the market today rely on Python, usually in the form of MicroPython or CircuitPython. If you've ever wanted something leaner without giving up that no-compile, REPL-driven workflow, Lua is the option worth considering.
But then most microcontroller boards are not built for Lua even if you can run Lua on them.
That's the gap BrisbaneSilicon, a small Brisbane-based semiconductor outfit, is trying to fill with ELM11-Feather. It is a Feather-compatible board that runs Lua natively.
Native languages: Lua (application), C (driver), SystemVerilog/VHDL (hardware), all on one board
Chip: GOWIN FPGA (no separate CPU core, the FPGA runs everything)
I/O: 23 pins, each configurable as GPIO, PWM, UART, SPI, or I²C
RAM: 1 MB
Dimensions: 22.86 x 64.65 x 4.85 mm (0.9 x 2.54 x 0.191 in)
Weight: 5.2 g
Form factor: Feather-compatible, works with existing FeatherWings
ELM11-Feather is priced at $29.
More than the specs, the architecture choice is the highlight here. There's no traditional microcontroller on this board. Instead, a GOWIN FPGA does the work, running a dual-core setup with an independent Lua REPL on each core. That's the "clever bit". Because Lua is running on an FPGA rather than a fixed MCU, BrisbaneSilicon can expose the entire stack, hardware included, to the user for modification.
Each of the 23 I/O pins can be configured as GPIO, PWM, UART, SPI, or I²C, which is a lot of flexibility per pin compared to boards that hardwire a fixed number of each. The board also carries 1 MB of RAM, a hardware watchdog, 5 user-programmable LEDs, and a built-in 500 mA LiPoly charger with a status LED, all inside Feather's compact footprint (22.86 x 64.65 x 4.85 mm) at 5.2 g. Being Feather-compatible means it slots into the existing ecosystem of FeatherWing add-on boards without any adaptation.
Full-Stack Programmability
BrisbaneSilicon calls this "Full-Stack Programmability," and that is main selling point of the board. The idea is that the same product can be extended at three separate layers at once: the Application Layer runs Lua, the Driver Layer runs C, and the Hardware Layer runs VHDL/SystemVerilog through a swappable "Hardware Overlay."
In practice, this means a user could design a custom hardware module (say, a quadrature encoder), write the C driver for it, and then expose it to their Lua scripts as a plain function like quadrature_encoder_speed(). Nothing about that workflow requires touching a separate toolchain for each layer either, since BrisbaneSilicon's own IDE, called Arvore, is built to unify all three.
Arvore handles project creation, uploading, and extending the Lua API from one interface, and a beta is already available to download. For anyone who doesn't want to install a custom hardware overlay by hand, the IDE has a config screen for that too. Purists who'd rather do everything from the command line aren't locked out either, that path still works.
BrisbaneSilicon says the hardware schematics and firmware API will both be released under the MIT license once the campaign wraps and production begins.
Compared to a few other boards in the same rough space:
pico2-ice (RP2350 + ICE40UP5K): more GPIO and RAM, but no native scripting language and a higher price
Adafruit Feather STM32F405: cheaper, but no FPGA and no hardware-layer extensibility
Adafruit HUZZAH32 (ESP32): better battery life, but far fewer I/O options and no scripting-to-hardware pipeline
🛒 Pricing and Availability
The ELM11-Feather crowdfunding campaign launches this week on Crowd Supply.
The board is priced at $29. Shipping cost isn't listed yet, and BrisbaneSilicon hasn't given a firm ship date either. The company does say it has already manufactured and tested a small batch of 5 boards ahead of the main production run, which is a bit more reassurance than most campaigns start with, though the only risk it flags is component availability for the GOWIN FPGA and the BL702 chip.
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As with any crowdfunding campaign, treat the timeline as an estimate. Back it because you want to support the project, not because you're counting on the ship date.
