The correction matters because the larger point is sound but needs sharper wording. ShareX, Microsoft PowerToys, Files, and Notepad++ remain Windows-native projects with no official Linux releases. Their absence is also not a simple failure of open source. Each is deeply attached to Windows APIs, Windows desktop behavior, or a Windows-focused product strategy. Publishing source code under GPL, MIT, or LGPL does not make an application portable by itself.
For Windows users who rely on these tools, that leaves a practical advantage: moving a daily workflow to Linux can mean replacing a familiar, integrated application with several utilities that cover pieces of the job. For Linux users, it means there are increasingly credible alternatives—but, in most cases, not an official build carrying the same settings, extensions, update path, and support expectations.
Scolect’s Linux absence is real, but its Windows-only label is not
Scolect is the clear discrepancy in the original list. Its version 2.1.1 release, dated April 20, 2026, is distributed for Windows and macOS, with the developer saying Linux support is “coming soon.” The project is open source under LGPL-2.1 and promises local-only usage data, app categorization, limits, and focus tools across its two supported desktop platforms.
Its missing Linux edition is still meaningful because automated activity tracking depends on seeing active windows and desktop sessions reliably. Linux’s mix of desktop environments and display protocols complicates that work. Scolect explicitly identifies support for varied desktop environments as its obstacle, which is more candid than treating a Linux port as a simple recompilation task.
But Linux users are not without a local-first option. ActivityWatch provides builds for Windows, macOS, and Linux, including AppImage, DEB, AUR, and Nix packages. Its official documentation also illustrates why “Linux support” needs qualification: its standard window watcher supports Linux on X11, while Wayland monitoring may require a different watcher. That is the more useful comparison. Scolect may offer a more polished, focused interface for its supported platforms, but ActivityWatch supplies the broad platform coverage and extensibility that Scolect does not yet have.
The actual takeaway is narrower than MakeUseOf presented it: Scolect is a Windows-and-macOS app that lacks Linux support, rather than a Windows-only holdout.
ShareX remains Windows-only, while its workflow is escaping Windows
ShareX is still one of the strongest examples in the list. The project calls itself a Windows screenshot, screen-recording, file-sharing, and productivity tool, and its current release path is built around Windows distribution channels: its own installer and portable package, the Microsoft Store, Steam, and GitHub releases. Its appeal is not merely capture quality. ShareX lets a user bind a hotkey to capture a region, annotate it, save it, upload it to a selected destination, shorten a resulting link, and copy it to the clipboard in one task chain.
That integration is what Linux alternatives often fail to reproduce as a single application. Desktop screenshot tools can capture. OBS can record. OCR engines can extract text. Image editors can annotate. Upload scripts can send files to a server or object store. ShareX combines those functions with a long-standing configuration model designed around automation and custom upload destinations.
Yet the claim that Linux has “nothing quite like it” has become less secure. SnapX, an independently maintained ShareX fork, now advertises support for Linux, macOS, Windows, and FreeBSD. The SnapX project says it supports 95% of ShareX uploaders and retains compatibility with ShareX’s
.sxcucustom-uploader configuration format. It uses Linux portals for capture rather than the Windows capture technologies used on Windows.
That does not make SnapX an official Linux version of ShareX. It is explicitly unsupported by the ShareX project, and a fork must earn trust through real-world packaging, Wayland behavior, maintenance, and security response. Still, it changes the migration calculation. A ShareX user moving to Linux should examine SnapX before attempting to recreate a complicated capture-and-upload routine from separate applications.
PowerToys exposes the value of Windows-specific integration
PowerToys is open source under the MIT license and takes contributions publicly, but Microsoft’s product is unambiguously for Windows. Microsoft’s installation documentation requires Windows 10 version 2004 or later, or Windows 11, on x64 or ARM64 hardware; the PowerToys repository describes it as a collection of utilities that customize and streamline Windows.
That platform commitment is the point of PowerToys. FancyZones needs to manage Windows window behavior. File Locksmith speaks to file-handle problems common in Windows administration. PowerRename, Peek, Registry Preview, Hosts File Editor, Keyboard Manager, PowerToys Run and the newer Command Palette all work best because they connect to familiar Windows shell surfaces and system components.
PowerToys’ latest development also weakens any attempt to reduce it to a static collection of convenience tools. Microsoft’s June 2026 PowerToys 0.100 release includes more than 30 utilities, while recent releases have expanded command-line support and added or updated features such as Command Palette integrations, CursorWrap, Peek, FancyZones, Image Resizer, and File Locksmith. The result is a suite whose value compounds for administrators and power users who standardize desktop workflows across Windows machines.
Linux desktop environments offer many analogues: KDE Plasma, GNOME extensions, KWin scripts, shell launchers, keyboard remappers, bulk renamers, color pickers, and tiling utilities. The shortfall is coherence. There is no official Microsoft-backed “PowerToys for Linux,” and a user accustomed to toggling a suite of utilities from one settings application has to make more choices about desktop environment, package source, configuration format, and maintenance.
For Windows IT teams, that is an operational distinction. PowerToys can be installed with WinGet and supports configuration through
winget configure; Linux equivalents can be powerful, but they are generally selected and managed as individual components.
Files is open source, but its target is the Windows shell
Files is sometimes misunderstood because it is a modern file manager written by an independent community rather than Microsoft. Its own project site is direct: Files is an open-source file explorer “built for Windows,” and its download route points users to Windows installation. The app’s feature set—tabs, dual-pane navigation, tags, column view, archive management, cloud-drive integration, previews, and Git integration—makes it an attractive replacement for File Explorer, not an attempt at a cross-platform file-management framework.
The Windows focus is architectural as well as cosmetic. Files is built around WinUI and the Windows App SDK, which gives it access to Windows storage APIs, shell conventions, Microsoft Store distribution, OneDrive-oriented behavior, and Windows-specific integration points. A Linux port would mean more than redrawing its interface; it would require decisions about GTK, Qt, KDE Frameworks, portals, mounting, thumbnails, permissions, archive handlers, cloud integration, and the different expectations of each distribution.
Linux users have mature file managers, including Dolphin, Nautilus, Thunar, Nemo, Caja, and Double Commander. But Files’ absence still matters to Windows users who have invested in its interface and workflow. Moving from Files to Linux does not mean losing file management; it means losing Files, including its particular treatment of tabs, layouts, tags, cloud drives, and Git work inside a Windows-oriented shell.
Notepad++ is still tied to Windows despite its open code
Notepad++ has never pretended to be cross-platform. Its official repository describes the editor as running in the Microsoft Windows environment and says it supports every Windows version still supported by Microsoft. Current releases include 32-bit, x64, and ARM64 Windows packages, but no native Linux binary.
That does not diminish its relevance. Notepad++ remains a small, fast editor with an unusually durable combination of tabbed editing, syntax support, column operations, macros, regular-expression search and replace, plugin support, and low overhead. Linux has capable native editors—Kate, Geany, Gedit, Mousepad, Vim, Neovim, Emacs, and Visual Studio Code among them—but feature parity is not habit parity. A Notepad++ user often carries years of shortcuts, plugin expectations, session behavior, and simple editing routines.
Wine may run some versions of Notepad++, but Wine is a compatibility layer, not a native Linux release. It adds another dependency to maintain and can complicate desktop integration, file associations, plugins, updates, and support. For a text editor, where native choices are plentiful, that trade-off is often harder to justify than adopting a Linux-native alternative.
The broader record is therefore more interesting than a five-app list suggests. Four of the five named applications are genuinely Windows-only in their official native distribution, while Scolect is already cross-platform between Windows and macOS. ShareX, PowerToys, Files, and Notepad++ show that open-source Windows software can remain deliberately rooted in Windows when its defining features depend on the Windows shell, Windows APIs, or a Windows-first maintainer community.
Linux users can replace the functions. They cannot always replace the exact workflow—and in ShareX’s case, a promising fork now offers a closer path than the original article acknowledged.
References
- Primary source: MakeUseOf
Published: August 9, 2026 at 10:00 AM UTC
Linux gets most open-source software first but these 5 tools stayed Windows-only
Great apps Linux users can't have yet.
www.makeuseof.com
- Related coverage: learn.microsoft.com
How to Install PowerToys on Windows 11 and Windows 10 | Microsoft Learn
Install PowerToys, a set of utilities for customizing Windows, using an executable file or package manager (WinGet, Chocolatey, Scoop).learn.microsoft.com - Related coverage: learn.microsoft.com
What are the device compatibility requirements for Windows 10 or Windows 11? - Microsoft Q&A
What are the device compatibility requirements for Windows 10 or Windows 11?learn.microsoft.com - Related coverage: support.microsoft.com
Windows file system access and privacy | Microsoft Support
Learn about privacy concerns with apps having file system access and find out how to allow or deny apps and services from accessing your file system.support.microsoft.com - Related coverage: support.microsoft.com
Windows File Recovery | Microsoft Support
Learn how to use Windows File Recovery app to restore or recover lost files that have been deleted and are not in the recycle bin.
support.microsoft.com
- Related coverage: getsharex.com
Best Screenshot Tools - ShareX Blog
Honest comparisons of screenshot, screen recording, annotation, and sharing tools for different users and workflows.getsharex.com - Related coverage: windowscentral.com
Microsoft will open source the Windows App SDK, it confirms | Windows Central
The company has confirmed that WinUI 3 is on the path to become open-source, but there's lots of work to be done first before that can happen.www.windowscentral.com - Related coverage: windowscentral.com
Legacy Windows Notepad revived with modern features | Windows Central
If you yearn for the days of a simple, lightweight text editor, this could be worth a try.www.windowscentral.com - Related coverage: tomshardware.com
RetroPad is a ‘full-feature-parity version of Notepad from XP’ in just 2,749 bytes — x86 assembly coded apps comes from Windows legend Dave W Plummer | Tom's Hardware
You can grab the RetroPad code and .exe from GitHub.www.tomshardware.com