As I watch the way the Big Boys are fiddling about with their operating systems, I find myself feeling more and more bemused - and irritable.

The sheer messiness of Windows 8, and the lack of care behind MacOS X (best described here: http://macperformanceguide.com/blog/2013/20130123_1-Apple-core-rot.html are making me feel very glum about the future of mainstream computing generally. Silly, perhaps - but when multibillion-dollar companies can do such extraordinary things to the systems we all depend on for our daily bread, you can - maybe - see my point.

So it was with great pleasure that I recently installed the latest version of Xubuntu (12.10) on a rather nice Asus 1101 netbook I've had for a couple of years. Despite 2GB of RAM, the latter has limped along with Windows XP aboard; despite cleaning it down regularly, the machine didn't boot in less than ca. 8 minutes - ridiculous!

So I installed JoliOS alongside it, which did indeed run nice and quickly but wasn't actually very practical. Realising I was rarely using the machine, I bit the bullet, wiped the entire hard drive and replaced both Windows and JoliOS with Xubuntu. And lo! I now have a nice, speedy little netbook with an operating system that is actually pretty much state-of-the-art. It boots in around 40 seconds, runs very quickly, loads e.g. LibreOffice, Basket NotePads (despite the latter's KDE libraries), Google Chrome, Thunderbird very fast, runs Dropbox, and links very nicely to my local WebDAV servers. What a little gem!

The front end looks like a very pleasant mixture of Windows and Mac, with the equivalent of a 'Start' menu but also a (usually off-screen) launcher. And with an eminently sensible three-workspace component on the toolbar so you can switch between 3 (or fewer, or more, if you prefer) virtual desktops. Suddenly it's a highly usable machine again. And I'm rediscovering all sorts of nice outliner and information management progs in Linux-land that I'd more or less lost touch with.

There are some interesting shortcomings: there's no Google Drive or SkyDrive clients (although there are workarounds for both). OneNote is a bit of a non-starter (hence Basket NotePads, which is not OneNote-compatible, alas). On the other hand KeepNote runs very nicely in native mode, as do TomBoy and a variety of other cross-platform offerings. I've also got ProjectForum running in the background (with no noticeable impact on performance) as a kind of personal wiki (although PF is actually more powerful than that, being a complete collaborative platform).

If you've got an older machine sitting around, it's worth taking a good look at a lightweight offering like Xubuntu. I recently gave my daughter's boyfriend a very elderly HP notebook (dating from 2000!) with Xubuntu installed on it - it runs like a dream. And Linux applications have been maturing at an impressive rate. LibreOffice alone is spectacularly good.

And just to keep this topic very vaguely relevant to the forum, you might want to check out the very pleasant CherryTree, which is a cross-platform dual-pane outliner.

Very cool. I have an Gateway lt2114u 10.1" netbook with an Intel Atom N450 cpu. (passmark benchmark score: 318) - and it is very slow running Windows 7. I've also loaded Easypeasy (Ubuntu-based netbook distribution) and Chromium OS, and play around with those a bit. Think I'll try Xubuntu. By the way there I've found a great way to install or run distributions:

"YUMI (Your Universal Multiboot Installer), is the successor to MultibootISOs. It can be used to create a Multiboot USB Flash Drive containing multiple operating systems, antivirus utilities, disc cloning, diagnostic tools, and more." http://www.pendrivelinux.com/yumi-multiboot-usb-creator

Even though netbooks are supposedly on the way out - I bought a very inexpensive Acer Aspire ao756 11.6" laptop. it is lighter than my older Gateway, and the Celeron 877 cpu (passmark benchmark: 1358) makes it far more powerful than the Gateway. Amazon.com: Acer Aspire One AO756-2808 11.6-Inch Netbook (Ash Black): Computers & Accessories - http://tmpl.at/T7U2fe - it handles Windows 7 very well. The display resolution is also 1366x768, and the 11.6" size is a lot more usable for me than the 10.1" netbook - keyboard much more tolerable.

I wrote sometime ago of my decision to switch to Linux as a parallel productive system and (hopefully) eventually my main OS: http://www.outlinersoftware.com/messages/viewm/16370

In brief, my experience was similar to Bill's (Madaboutdana). I would add that the limitations in software choice, in particular regarding outliners and info managers, are actually a good thing for a CRIMPer like me. It means that I need to focus on the basics, spending less time in switching from one program to another and more in actually working in them. Overall, I don't think I am missing much, with some special exceptions like MindView which I use as a hierarchical spreadsheet.

I believe I have the exact same machine as Jim and my experience is equally positive. The reviews are not enthusiastic http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Acer-Aspire-One-756-Subnotebook.81609.0.html but I don't think that you can get anything better for the price: it's a 64-bit machine with 4 Gbytes of RAM fully exploited. With Linux (Mint in my case) it flies. If you want better performance you can buy the more expensive model based on the two-core pentium --the one tested in the review above.

And to contribute to the in-topicness of the thread, here's the software I'm running:

B-Folders (multiplatform) --not free
Freeplane (multiplatform)
Notecase Pro (multiplatform) --not free
Outwiker -- much faster than Keepnote, though not three-pane (multiplatform)
QSnipps (multiplatform) --not free
Rednotebook (multiplatform)
TheBrain (multiplatform) --not free
TreeSheets (multiplatform)

Brainstorm, Linkstash, Zulupad (Windows programs) via Crossover Linux

LibreOffice, SoftMaker Office (multiplatform)

TEA text editor (multiplatform)
PyRoom (multiplatform) zen-type minimal editor

Chrome, Firefox, Midori, Opera browsers (all multiplatform)
Filezilla FTP (multiplatform)
Skype (multiplatform)
WebHTTrack offline browser (multiplatform)

Scribus DTP (multiplatform)

Agynamix Simidude shared clipboard (multiplatform) --not free
AeroFS, Dropbox
Syncovery (multiplatform) --previously known as Superflexible File Synchronizer, Linux version is free

Alexander

them. Overall, I don't think I am missing much, with some special
exceptions like MindView which I use as a hierarchical spreadsheet.

Mindview as a hierarchical spreadsheet? I used it a few years ago as a tool for presentations and mind maps. Would you mind elaborating on how you use it as a spreadsheet? And why Mindview and not LibreOffice Calc?

Thanks, Franz

Franz Grieser wrote:

Mindview as a hierarchical spreadsheet? I used it a few years ago as a
tool for presentations and mind maps. Would you mind elaborating on how
you use it as a spreadsheet? And why Mindview and not LibreOffice Calc?

Strictly speaking, MindView is a 'classic' mind mapping program. However, it allows one to add custom fields to nodes, and then perform calculations on those fields along the hierarchy.

So when I plan a project, I can simply make the work breakdown and add budget and resources on the actual tasks/deliverables. The advantage of this approach over any spreadsheet is that I can start with the info I have, and add detail along the way; i.e. if a task needs to be broken down into sub-tasks, all I need to do is add the subtask nodes and set the task resources as the sum of its subsidiaries.

I recently finished the financial reporting of a project. My starting point was the project mind map which I created two years ago. Along the way I have added detail, and now the finances are calculated directly from nodes that represent individual invoices--with the actual invoices as linked PDFs. If I am not interested in that detail, I just hide that level with one click.

I am sure it can all be done with a classic spreadsheet, but I find this far more convenient and less error-prone. In a spreadsheet, the formulas are hidden and you have to check them one by one. In a tree/mindmap structure, the formulas are visible --they are represented by the tree structure itself. Of course, the complexity of formulas you can create in a 'real' spreadsheet is far greater, but I don't need that.

The first time I encountered this feature was in B-liner and at the time I loved it. But B-liner couldn't export the calculation structure, which meant that I then had to re-do the budgets in Excel to share it with others. MindView exports to nicely formatted Excel. Note that I am still using MindView v.3 (it has recently reached version 5) which works fine in Windows 7 and I see no reason to upgrade.

I find it quite intriguing that the vast majority of outliners that we discuss here have no such customisable fields and, of those that do, very few can actually do calculations on them. In fact, I can only think of Natara Bonsai (but it only allows one custom numeric field); don't know about MyInfo. It really seems like a lost opportunity. I have included it in the features of my ideal outliner http://www.outlinersoftware.com/messages/viewm/17338

I remember that, years ago, Freemind was developing 'attributes', i.e. custom metadata per node, including numerical fields. At the time I lost interest in Freemind because betas where taking forever and I found the custom field functionality quite awkward. I don't know if the functionality ever made it to the stable release, nor whether it was ported to Freeplane, which I use for simple mind maps. I will check it out and report back.

Thanks, Alex.
That makes it clearer. If it weren't for the price of the Business edition ... ;-)

Franz

Apparently, the feature is available in Freeplane as well http://freeplane.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Formulas though it's not so user-friendly. It seems quite powerful though.

For me this is great news, because it means that I can take this activity to Linux too and for free. Worth learning the Freeplane formula markup. The only issue is that, like B-liner, it will probably not export to Excel. However, since the program is free, anyone I want to share with can install it.

MadaboutDana wrote:

So it was with great pleasure that I recently installed the latest
version of Xubuntu (12.10) on a rather nice Asus 1101 netbook I've had
for a couple of years. [...] And lo! I now have a nice, speedy
little netbook with an operating system that is actually pretty much
state-of-the-art. It boots in around 40 seconds, runs very quickly,
loads e.g. LibreOffice, Basket NotePads (despite the latter's KDE
libraries), Google Chrome, Thunderbird very fast, runs Dropbox, and
links very nicely to my local WebDAV servers. What a little gem!

Anyone interested in trying out a lightweight Linux might want to take a look at Voyager Linux http://voyager.legtux.org/ It is a customisation of Xubuntu with a great choice of software. It would take one ages to find all those programs.

There are some interesting shortcomings: there's no Google Drive or
SkyDrive clients (although there are workarounds for both).

Can you share a tip or two on the workarounds? I have found the following, which I've used in Windows in the past:
http://storagemadeeasy.com/?p=static&page=LinuxDrive

And just to keep this topic very vaguely relevant to the forum, you
might want to check out the very pleasant CherryTree, which is a
cross-platform dual-pane outliner.

There are some interesting outliners and information managers in Linux that don't exist in Windows, e.g. like Semantik which is a mind mapper of sorts developed for working on long texts. Unfortunately, for me, cross-platform compatibility is something I hereon more or less require from such software.

@Alexander,

I wonder how your Linux experiment is going.

Seeing Google's announcement today (in a nutshell, Chromebooks will be able to run Linux apps directly within Chrome OS, without the need for any special workarounds, as currently is the case), there is a chance I might develop an unhealthy interest in outliner tools on Linux in the foreseable future ;-)

https://www.blog.google/products/chromebooks/linux-on-chromebooks/

To my knowledge there aren't any "Linux Outliners". If you can install Vim or Emacs you could use their outline packages, though. Can the Chromebook run Java apps, like zkn3 (Daniel Luedecke's Zettelkasten app)?

Dr Andus wrote:

@Alexander,

I wonder how your Linux experiment is going.

Seeing Google's announcement today (in a nutshell, Chromebooks will be
able to run Linux apps directly within Chrome OS, without the need for
any special workarounds, as currently is the case), there is a chance I
might develop an unhealthy interest in outliner tools on Linux in the
foreseable future ;-)

https://www.blog.google/products/chromebooks/linux-on-chromebooks/

Jan S. wrote:

To my knowledge there aren't any "Linux Outliners".

What about Notecase Pro, TuxCards, Vimoutliner, Scrivener, Mindraider, Ultra_Outliner - just the first few a simple Google search brings up. And they all seem to be alive.

Ok, but since Dr. Andus uses Windows and wants to CRIMP with Linux software I only considered outliners that run on Linux but not on Windows, which -- to my knowledge -- are none.

- Notecase Pro is multi-platform
- TuxCards looks the opposite of alive to me (last updated in 2010)
- Vimoutliner is a Vim package which I suggested in my reply
- Scrivener on Linux is dead as far as I know. It was a community port from the beginning and doesn't have official support.
- MindRaider doesn't look to active either. The repo moved to GitHub but there are open issues about broken exports from 3 years ago (opened by the author himself)

Franz Grieser wrote:

Jan S. wrote:
>To my knowledge there aren't any "Linux Outliners".

What about Notecase Pro, TuxCards, Vimoutliner, Scrivener, Mindraider,
Ultra_Outliner - just the first few a simple Google search brings up.
And they all seem to be alive.

But the MindRaider author seems to work on a new project (http://www.mindforger.com/ which is supposed to be a "thinking book" and "markdown IDE". Hard to say what it does exactly, though.

Jan S. wrote:

Ok, but since Dr. Andus uses Windows and wants to CRIMP with Linux
software I only considered outliners that run on Linux but not on
Windows, which -- to my knowledge -- are none.

Ah, I see.
I assumed he wanted Linux software he can run on a Chromebook - no matter if it's available on Windows or not. But we're only guessing :-)

Franz Grieser wrote:

I assumed he wanted Linux software he can run on a Chromebook - no
matter if it's available on Windows or not. But we're only guessing :-)

Indeed, and thanks for the list. Those apps would already take care of a lot of needs.

Jan S. wrote:

Can the
Chromebook run Java apps, like zkn3 (Daniel Luedecke's Zettelkasten
app)?

No, I don't think Chromebooks can run Java.

I believe times (a fork of hnb) is Linux only. It's a console app, old school, but surprisingly powerful. It kind of reminds me of PC-Outline, the DOS version. Hours of fun!

It's been many years since I did a list of all outliners available on Linux. (There weren't many then.) Linux-only applications aren't my favorite; I'm partial to apps that will run on both Linux and Windows. But here's what I found in about 15 minutes of intercourse with Google:

Linux (only) outliners:

Hiero: https://productivepenguin.blogspot.com/2015/07/an-outliner-for-linux.html

Treeline: http://treeline.bellz.org/index.html

Zim: http://zim-wiki.org/

Outliner Lighto: http://freshmeat.sourceforge.net/projects/outline-lighto

hnb: http://hnb.sourceforge.net/

gjots: http://bhepple.freeshell.org/gjots/

kjots: https://userbase.kde.org/KJots

Dockboard: http://dockboard.sourceforge.net/

Basket Note Pads: https://basket-notepads.github.io/

Tomboy: https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Tomboy

vym: https://sourceforge.net/projects/vym/

Buzz: http://buzz.sourceforge.net/

gnote: https://wiki.gnome.org/action/show/Apps/Gnote

Plume-Creator: http://plume-creator.eu/

Kabikaboo: https://sourceforge.net/projects/kabikaboo/

MyNotex: https://sites.google.com/site/mynotex/

Dokuwiki: https://www.dokuwiki.org/dokuwiki

Dr. Andrus you probably already know but Ecco and Bonsai work perfectly under linux. I am in legal profession and I use Bonsai and Ecco in Crossover/Wine every day in my favorite distribution, MX-17.

Damn autocorrect! TINES

jaslar wrote:

I believe times (a fork of hnb) is Linux only. It's a console app, old
school, but surprisingly powerful. It kind of reminds me of PC-Outline,
the DOS version. Hours of fun!

Not all are really outliners (Vym is a mindmapper, the jots programs aren't hierarchical, tomboy and others are wikis, etc.) but there are some great ones here. I forgot about Basket. KnowIt is an improved Tuxcards; I wrote a book with it. I hadn't heard of Lighto, and there are others here I'll check out. Thanks!

Marbux wrote:

It's been many years since I did a list of all outliners available on
Linux. (There weren't many then.) Linux-only applications aren't my
favorite; I'm partial to apps that will run on both Linux and Windows.
But here's what I found in about 15 minutes of intercourse with Google:

Linux (only) outliners:

Hiero:
https://productivepenguin.blogspot.com/2015/07/an-outliner-for-linux.html

Treeline: http://treeline.bellz.org/index.html

Zim: http://zim-wiki.org/

Outliner Lighto:
http://freshmeat.sourceforge.net/projects/outline-lighto

hnb: http://hnb.sourceforge.net/

gjots: http://bhepple.freeshell.org/gjots/

kjots: https://userbase.kde.org/KJots

Dockboard: http://dockboard.sourceforge.net/

Basket Note Pads: https://basket-notepads.github.io/

Tomboy: https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Tomboy

vym: https://sourceforge.net/projects/vym/

Buzz: http://buzz.sourceforge.net/

gnote: https://wiki.gnome.org/action/show/Apps/Gnote

Plume-Creator: http://plume-creator.eu/

Kabikaboo: https://sourceforge.net/projects/kabikaboo/

MyNotex: https://sites.google.com/site/mynotex/

Dokuwiki: https://www.dokuwiki.org/dokuwiki

Correction. I remembered wrong. The gjots and kjots do allow hierachy and rearrangement.

Thanks for the mention of Tines. I hadn't heard of it, but it does seem interesting for someone looking for something a little more focused than org mode.

I recently surveyed Hyper Plan users to ask what future features they wanted. A Linux port scored rather poorly. But I suppose hardcore Linux users aren't likely to be using a product that is currently only available for Windows and Mac. So it is hard to know how much demand there really is.

--

Andy Brice
https://www.hyperplan.com