Once in a while, I'll bookmark a site not because I might find it handy later on, but simply because the site leaves me in awe of its great look, icons, or overall design, which usually make me want to create some artwork of my own.

While there are many commercial sites that look fascinating, today I’m honoring an incomplete selection of open-source project sites that I think look gorgeous, which means that in addition to the great software they offer, they also put in a lot of effort and work into offering a great and intuitive design, all for no financial gain.

Let us now take a look at some visually appealing and inspiring designs.

LinuxLive (LiLi) USB Creator

open source project websites

The first time I discovered an alternative to Unetbootin, the live CD creator, and came across LiLi, I couldn’t help but admire all the great detail in the entire site. Everything from the LiLi logo to the icons to the feature tour and even the Donate button look incredibly polished. I even felt compelled to email the LiLi developer to ask who the website designer was because boy, was this site gorgeous!

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Not only is the LiLi website gorgeous but so is the actual app that lets you create live CDs, which is another topic but if you’re curious to see what the beautiful program looks like, check out the complete review.

Elementary OS

open source project web

Elementary OS is a Linux distribution that focuses on ease of use and elegance and comes with lightweight apps installed, e.g. Midori for a web browser, and Postler as the default mail client. There are many other Linux distros with similar feature sets that mean to be absolutely easy-going on computers without taxing system resources, but the reason I bring Elementary OS up is because of how good the project website looks. Everything in the site, including the blog, the feature tour and the downloads section looks so simple and neat that it will make you want to downloading the OS for a spin immediately.

open source project web

Mozilla Firefox

open source project web

The web browser you know and love definitely has a splendid-looking website hosting the browser download, the mobile clients and the always-experience-enhancing addons. The Firefox logo has seen its share of updates, and has always left me impressed of its sheerness. I get the same feeling with the website, which now shines in mostly orange and baby blue, and has a revamped addon site. Even the Thunderbird project  and the Mozilla blog sites look very pleasing to the eye.

open source website

SproutCore [Broken URL Removed]

open source website

SproutCore is a JavaScript framework that you can use to write web-based applications with less code, more fun. There are many other frameworks that aim to do the same thing, but SproutCore is one of the more popular ones and in fact, the team behind SproutCore was acquired by Facebook last year. While SproutCore seems to remain an independent project (but has led to the release of a related product, Ember.js), the SproutCore site without a doubt offers a neat front to the project, whatever its fate is.

open source website

Zorin OS

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Thinking about trying Linux? There are many variants (see why here) that you could download and test-drive today (or not). If you need some help figuring out which ones would best suit your needs, see our Best Linux Distributions page here. Zorin OS is, in fact, on this list because it’s aimed for Windows users that want to try out or switch altogether to Linux. It’s got a familiar look and can be installed alongside your current operating system. Want to read more? See our review here.

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Open Atrium

open source project websites

More than a year ago, I penned an article listing half a dozen great tools for teams to collaborate online. I might not have included Open Atrium, but today this site probably deserves a spot on the aforementioned article. I will mention it on this list because it looks fantastic and it’s source is available to the public! Not only that, Open Atrium is platform designed to make teams communicate better. Its feature set includes group calendars, to-do lists, shoutboxes, dashboards and more.

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Now that you’ve seen some beautiful open source project websites, it’s your turn to tell us what you think. Have you got other example sites? Let us know in the comments section below!

Image Credit: Web Design Image Via Shutterstock