Update on the Move

14 August, 2026

As I mentioned in a previous post, Open Source Musings will be moving house. That move will happen on 18 August, 2026 (the 17^th if you live on the other side of the date line from me).

If you visit this blog via the (old) front door, then there’s nothing that you need to do. You’ll be redirected to the new home of Open Source Musings automatically after a few seconds. As of the 18^th of August, the new URL will be:

https://scottnesbitt.net/ossmusings

You might, however, want to update any bookmarks that you have to specific posts with the new URLs¹. Just change:

https://opensourcemusings.com/posts/[post-name].html

to

https://scottnesbitt.net/ossmusings/posts/[post-name].html

If you read the posts in this space via the RSS feed, point your feed reader to:

https://scottnesbitt.net/ossmusings/feed.xml

See you at the new home of Open Source Musings!

— Scott Nesbitt

Browsing the Web with Helium

4 August, 2026

I wasn’t looking for a new web browser¹. In fact, I’ve been perfectly happy using LibreWolf. Having said that, I’ve been hearing about browser called Helium for a little while now and recently decided to give it a peek.

Let’s look at my experiences with the Linux version of Helium.

A Little About Helium

Unlike most of the browsers for Linux desktop that I’ve used over the last few years, Helium is a derivative of Chromium (which is the basis of the web browser created by a certain search engine/ad company) rather than of Firefox.

Helium claims to have better security and overall experience than Chrome². On top that, it retains integration with the popular ad blocker extension called uBlock Origin. The extension which the other browser (and one of its derivatives) dropped. While I can’t speak about Helium’s claims of better security, I’ll give its developers the benefit of the doubt when it comes to that.

Overall, though, Helium is faster than most of the browsers that I’ve used in the last while — even on my relatively underpowered StarLite Mk IV.

As of time of writing this post, Helium’s developers noted that it wasn’t quite ready for use by everyone:

[U]nexpected issues may occur. Please report them if they haven’t already been reported.

While I haven’t run into any of those unexpected issues, you have been warned.

Getting Helium

There are a few ways you can install and use Helium. You download the AppImage version, which is the only option for Linux users when you click a Download link at the browser’s web site. You can also install it using a .deb file or an archive that you download from the browser’s releases page. You can also get and compile the source code if compiling source code is your thing.

If you use the AppImage version, you might want to consider using a utility like Gear Lever or AppImage Pool to manage Helium’s installation and updates. Trust me, taking advantage of utilities like them will save you a lot of time and effort.

Getting Going

When you start Helium for first time, it asks you to:

• Import bookmarks from Firefox (assuming you have Firefox installed). Firefox can’t be running when you to that.
• Make Helium your default browser.

You can skip both those steps in case you’re wondering.

Here’s a look at Helium’s window after you launch it for the first time.

The user interface is very sparse, but not much different from that of many other web browsers.

Here’s what Helium looked like after I imported my bookmarks, installed some extensions (more on this in a moment), and tweaked its settings:

Browsing with Helium

Do I really need to tell you about how to do that? If you’ve used a browser (especially one based on Chromium) before, you know how to get to a web site, bookmark a page, and all that sort of thing.

Here’s Helium browsing this site:

Here it is on the Helium browser site:

And here is a shot of the Soma FM player, which I listen to while browsing or working:

If you’re using another browser, you can export that browser’s bookmarks as an HTML file. You import them into Helium by clicking the three vertical dots in the top-right of the browser’s window and then selecting Bookmarks > Import bookmarks and settings. From there, point Helium to the HTML file. You’ll get your bookmarks and any shortcuts that you had on the bookmark bar in your other browser.

Making Helium Your Own

While you can use Helium quite comfortably out of the box, you can also adjust the settings (at least to a point) to make it better suited to your needs.

I’m not going into full explanation of what you can set up, which is a lot. You can:

• Change Helium’s appearance (aspects like its colour scheme, fonts, and size of those fonts).
• Tweak the security and performance settings.
• Switch the search engine Helium uses.
• Modify Helium’s accessibility options.
• Change what Helium does when it starts.
  
• Enable Helium services (more on this below).
• Manage your extensions.

To do any of that, click the three vertical dots in the top-right of the application’s window and then select Settings.

Quick Customizations

You can get quick access some options that change how Helium behaves by clicking the three vertical dots and then selecting Customize Helium. This sidebar pops open:

Most of the real estate of the sidebar focuses on how to theme the browser. Click Toolbar to change what to (or not to, as the case may be) display on Helium’s toolbar. Here’s a peek at those options:

I deactivated more than a couple of items I never use, but also added one or two that I found useful.

Installing Extensions

You can do that by going to the Chrome Web Store. At this point, you’re probably thinking about all of the Google creepiness that’s involved in installing extensions from the Chrome Web Store. That said, you can only install extensions in Helium if you’ve enabled the Helium services that I briefly mentioned a few paragraphs back.

Helium services is a way for the browser to make all requests (whether to install or while using extensions) anonymous. According to Helium’s developers:

Thanks to this, Google can’t track your extension downloads or target ads using this data. No other browser does this.

If you’re wondering what I installed, those included was a couple of additional privacy extensions, one to save web pages as Markdown, link to the read-it-later service that I use, and one to integrate the KeePassXC password manager into the browser.

Here’s what they look like pinned to Helium’s toolbar:

Drawbacks: Potential and Otherwise

For more than a couple of people, the main drawback of Helium is that it’s based on Chromium. I’m sure that there are thoughts and comments flying about that focus on Google’s control of the codebase and about Google’s creepiness around trackers and privacy. For me, that’s not a huge problem. Many developers base their browsers on Chromium remove any creepy Google bits from the code.

I’m also not entirely sure about Helium services³ — specifically how they work or how viable/sustainable⁴ they are. If you have the technical chops, you can host your own. Let’s face it, though: that’s not all of us. Still, here’s to the folks behind Helium being able to sustain those services.

More important to me is lack of ability to set up the automatic deletion browsing data (as can with Firefox-based browsers) when I shut down Helium. It’s not a difficult to delete that data, but I’m lazy and am used to a bit of automation when it comes to that.

Those drawbacks are pretty minor, to be honest. After reading the last three paragraphs I’m sure more than a few people are jumping to the conclusion that I’m a hater or that I don’t like Helium. I’m not and I do like Helium. A lot more than I thought I would.

Overall Impressions

Helium is quick and nimble. Quicker than the browsers I’ve used over last few years including LibreWolf, Waterfox, Firefox, Vivaldi, Falkon, and Brave. While using Helium, I didn’t run into anything that the browser couldn’t handle. That includes audio and video.

Every web page that I visited loaded as expected with few if any delays. That included pages loaded with JavaScript and trackers. Using it was smooth and without any glitches or weirdness. Not that I was expecting any, but you never know what will happen.

I didn’t use some of Helium’s more advanced features like !bangs (which are shortcuts for searching and browsing), tab groups, or casting the screen to another device. Why? My use of any web browser is fairly simple and straightforward. I never use those advanced features and didn’t intend to start just because I was test driving a new browser.

Helium is a solid, competent browser. I’ve yet to run into any of the bugs that users have been reporting. But will Helium become my daily web browsing driver? I’m not sure yet. It’s still installed on my computers and I still use it, so that’s a good sign!

— Scott Nesbitt

Manage Your Tasks with Planify

21 July, 2026

In May, 2026, I started planning a larger writing project. While I use todo.txt (via a custom graphical application), I wasn’t sure that it was up to helping me manage my project. So I decided to look for a more suitable piece of software.

I explored several tools including more complex todo list managers, desktop kanban boards, and the like. Then I remembered Planify, which I duly installed and gave another, more thorough, test drive than I did in 2025.

Here’s how I used Planify and what I discovered about it.

How Planify Works

At least, from my perspective:

While you can use it as a more traditional task manager, Planify is based around projects. Those are essentially a way to organize tasks based on what they’re related to. Instead of having a long list of tasks, you get compartmentalized sets of tasks.

Like what? Let’s say you’re writing a book. You can create a project for that, and break it down by the chapters that you need to write and by editing and production tasks. It sounds complex and like it requires a bit more maintenance. Actually, neither is quite accurate.

Thanks for indulging me in this little aside. Let’s get on to installing and using Planify.

Installing the Software

The easiest way to do that is via your Linux distribution’s software centre (or whatever it’s called). You can also install it as a flatpak.

If you’re into that sort of thing, you can grab the source code and compile it yourself.

Getting Started with Planify

Fire up the software. This is what you get the first time that you do:

To add a project¹, click the + in the sidebar beside On This Computer. Then, do the following:

• Give the project a name.
• Enter a description (this is optional).
• Choose a colour.
• Click Add Project.

You wind up with something that looks like this — what you’re seeing is for the writing project I mentioned at the top of this post:

Repeat that for each of your projects (assuming you have multiple ones).

The examples in this post are built around tasks and the project for this blog — specifically, tasks related to this post.

Working with Tasks

You’ve got a project. Now, it’s time to add tasks to it². To do that, select a project in the sidebar on the left. Then, click the + at the bottom right of the screen. A window like this one displays:

Enter a name for the task and optionally add a description. You can also click the Date button to add a due date for the task. You can also:

• Add a label to the task.
• Set a priority for the task.
• Add a reminder.

When you’re done, click Add Task. Rinse and repeat for all of the tasks that you need to tackle. Here’s what the project and tasks for posts for this blog looks like:

As you work through the tasks on the list, click the checkboxes beside them to mark them as complete. As you can see in the image above, completed tasks are marked with a strikethrough.

Adding Sections

Sections let you break a project up into more manageable bits. So, for the purposes of this posts those sections can be writing, editing, preparing and publishing.

To add a section to a project, select the project in the sidebar. Then, press S on your keyboard. The New Section window displays, as shown below:

Give the section a name. Optionally, choose a colour to mark it and add a short description. When you’re done, click Add Section.

To add tasks to a section, click + Add Tasks at the bottom of the new section. From there, follow the instructions above.

Here’s what a section, specifically for an upcoming post, looks like:

When you’re done with a section, you can either delete it or archive it. To to either, click the vertical three dots to the right of the section’s name and then select either Delete Section or Archive.

Tracking Your Progress and Setting Goals

This is something you don’t need to do, but if you’re into keeping tabs on your productivity, Planify can help you there.

To track your progress, click the stacker menu in the sidebar and then select Summary & Productivity. This screen displays³:

You get a quick overview of the number of your tasks, how many you’ve completed, how many are outstanding, and how many are overdue. It’s not a ton of information and it probably won’t be enough for those who like to quantify everything but it’s a start.

You can also add goals for yourself by clicking Set Up Goals. When you do that, this pops up:

Set the number of tasks that you want to complete per day and for a week, then click Save. This displays:

Connecting Planify to External Accounts

Planify saves everything in a database in a folder hidden in your /home directory. That’s great if you only work with one device. But what happens if you use multiple devices? You can hook Planify up to:

• Nextcloud.
• Todoist.
• A server or service that supports something called CalDAV.

To connect Planify to those services, you’ll need an account with them. From there, click the stacker menu in the sidebar, select Preferences, and then click Accounts. This window displays:

Click + and then choose either Nextcloud or Todoist⁴. You’ll be asked to provide your login information. Once you’ve done that an authorized the connection, it’ll take a few seconds for everything to synchronize.

Nextcloud or Todoist will display in as an item in the sidebar. You can add new tasks there, or move tasks from projects on your computer into them.

If you have Planify installed on other computers, connect those instances of Planify to your Nextcloud or Todoist account and your tasks will synchronize between those computers. You can also use mobile apps that support Nextcloud Tasks or Todoist to manage your tasks on your phone or tablet.

Customizing Planify

You can, to a point, make Planify your own. Do that by clicking the stacker menu in the sidebar and then selecting Preferences. This window displays:

There’s a lot in there, and I’m not going to into what’s there in detail. Here are some of the aspects of Planify that you modify:

• What displays when you fire up the application.
• What appears in the sidebar.
• The behaviour of tasks.
• Whether or not to create backups of your tasks.
• The application’s theme.

Play around with those settings to discover what works for you.

Wrapping Up

I spent a couple of weeks using Planify to manage the tasks for posts on this blog. It does a lot. Maybe a bit too much for my needs. On top of that, I’m not crazy about my tasks being stored in a database; I prefer them to be in one or more plain text files.

Planify is powerful yet easy to use. While I enjoyed using it, after a couple of weeks I felt that it just wasn’t for me. I’ve gone back to using plain text. That said, if your task management needs are more complex than mine then give this application a look. It might pleasantly surprise you.

— Scott Nesbitt

Using KeePassXC as Your Browser’s Password Manager

7 July, 2026

As part of an effort to consolidate and minimize the software and services (both desktop and online) that I use, I’ve been looking for a new password manager. It’s not that I’m dissatisfied with the one that I’m using, but I’ll be letting my subscription to the suite to which it’s a part expire early next year.

Since I’m not one to self host, I began searching for a desktop password manager that can work with a web browser. What I came across is something that that didn’t think of and which I’ve been using, on and off, for many a year: KeePassXC.

While KeePassXC has always been a solid desktop tool, for me it was untested when used with a web browser. What I found was a pleasant surprise.

Let’s take a quick look at how to use KeePassXC as the password manager in your web browser.

What is KeePassXC?

It’s a popular desktop password manager application, derived from the venerable KeePass. It’s available for Linux and those other two operating systems as well.

KeePassXC doesn’t have prettiest user interface (it never really has), but it is more than serviceable. Anyway, you won’t be looking at it much so don’t worry too much about the application’s looks.

Why Use It?

KeePassXC is free and open source and, as I pointed out a couple of paragraphs ago, and is available for multiple operating systems. It uses a well-supported file format making it compatible with other, similar tools.

One of main draws of KeePassXC is that it enables you to keep your passwords under your control, not in some cloud service that could be breached.

Before You Start

If you install your browser or KeePassXC as a flatpak, they won’t work together. Why? Flatpaks use a security model that restricts them from communicating with other applications. So, you’ll need to install a native version of your browser and of KeePassXC. You should be able to do that from your Linux distribution’s software manager.

I have heard that there is a workaround or two for the flatpak problem, but I haven’t tried them out. At first blush, they looked a bit too techie for my taste. Your experience may vary.

Getting Started

If you’re not already using KeePassXC, install it and create a database. A database, in KeePassXC parlance, is a secure file containing your passwords. The database file has the extension .kdbx.

Also, install the KeePassXC extension/add-on for your web browser(s). It’s available for:

• Firefox and its variants (like LibreWolf and Waterfox.
• Browsers based on Chrome like Helium, Chromium, Vivaldi, and Brave.

If you’re using another password manager, you can export passwords from that tool and import them into your KeePassXC database.

Then, follow these instructions¹ to set up the connection between KeePassXC and your web browser.

You can usually get away with using KeePassXC’s out-of-the-box settings. And although your experience might be different, I found that I needed to restart KeePassXC and unlock the password database after changing the integration settings.

Configuring the Browser Extension

To do that, click the extension’s icon in your toolbar. On the popup that displays, click the Settings icon, as shown below:

That opens a long page of options. I’m not going to go into all of them. Read through the descriptions and enable or disable the ones that seem to fit your needs.

If you use KeePassXC and its browser extension on more than one device, you can also export the extension’s options or import them on the Settings page.

Using It

Fire up KeePassXC and keep your password database unlocked. Then, in your web browser, go to a site with which you have an account that requires you to log in. That can be, for example, your email provider.

When you land on the login page, you’ll see the KeePassXC logo in the login field. Here’s an example:

Click the logo. Your user name and password are added to the fields.

If it’s the first time you’re using that login, you might see a dialog box like this when you click the KeePassXC logo:

Click the Remember checkbox and then click Allow Selected.

That’s great if you have an existing login, but what if you want to add a login to a new site? When you enter a user name and password in the the login fields for a website that KeePassXC doesn’t know, the browser extension displays this banner:

Click New to save the login to your database².

It’s that simple. That said, there is a potential problem or three which I look at below.

Problems

On rare occasions, the integration stops working even though it had previously worked with a site. When that happens, restarting your web browser fixes the problem.

I found that I need to ensure that that URL associated with a login in KeePassXC matches the URL of site. Again, its not always a problem, but if (say) a site’s login is at https://app.site.name and the URL in KeePassXC is https://site.name, the browser extension will tell you that it can’t find a match. This error message displays when you click the icon in a login field:

With some sites that use what I call a two-step login — where enter a user name on one page and your password on a subsequent page — the browser extension doesn’t automatically fill in password. This has only happened to me a with two or three sites, though.

After working through some initial hiccups, I found that KeePassXC is a solid replacement for the password manager that I’ve been using for the last few years. While I need to find a more efficient way of sharing my password database between my computers, what I’m doing works for me. On top of that, my passwords stay with me and aren’t on someone else’s computer.

— Scott Nesbitt

A Bit of Housekeeping

23 June, 2026

I plan to get back to blogging as usual soon, but for a moment a few notes about this site that I wanted to share with you.

Update on the Move

As I mentioned in a previous post, Open Source Musings will be shifting locations in the next month or so. Right now, I’m testing some automation to make redirecting you from here to the blog’s new home as seamless as possible.

I’ll keep you updated on the progress of that project and will warn you just before it’ll happen.

Getting In Touch

As more than a couple of people have noted, I’m kind of hard to contact. If you’re not in my circle, I mean.

To make that easier, I’ve added a contact form to my home page. It’s also linked on this blog’s About page You can use that to get in touch if you need to.

Before you contact me, please:

• Don’t email me with a collaboration request or something similar, and
• Remember that I’m not tech support.

Supporting Open Source Musings

I appreciate everyone who takes the time to cast their eyes upon the posts in this space, whether they come through the front door or use the RSS feed. But if you’re interested in helping to defray some of my costs¹ you can do that by:

• Making a micropayment, or getting a membership, at Ko-fi.
• Buying one of my books at Payhip or Gumroad.

— Scott Nesbitt

Editing Markdown on the Linux Desktop with Scratchmark

9 June, 2026

While I’m quite happy using Apostrophe as my main Markdown editor, that doesn’t mean I can’t look at other similar applications from time to time. Which is what I did recently with an editor called Scratchmark.

While simple, Scratchmark lets you focus on your words. Let’s take a look at it.

Getting Scratchmark

You can either install Scratchmark as a flatpak or get it from your Linux distribution’s software centre. I’m sure you can also grab the editor’s source code and compile it for yourself. Since that’s not my thing, I didn’t look into that option.

Once it’s installed, you can launch Scratchmark from your application menu.

How Scratchmark Deals with Files

Before wading into Scratchmark, I’d like to spend a couple of moments going over how it deals with files.

I’m used to opening a Markdown file either by:

• Starting an editor and using the File menu (or equivalent) to choose what I want to edit, or
• Going into my desktop’s file manager, right clicking on a file, selecting Open with and then choosing the application to use.

Scratchmark doesn’t work that way. Instead, it’s based around the idea of projects and folders. The project is an writing project made up of multiple files. The folders contain the individual files that are part of the project, which you plan to edit. With most of what I write, I don’t think in terms of projects (or even folders). Instead, my focus is on standalone, individual pieces of writing.

That said, I’m finding a new appreciation for the folder/project-based concept if only because it can help me quickly find what I’m working on.

If you’re wondering, here’s a peek at the folder structure for my blog post drafts in Scratchmark:

Editing with Scratchmark

To get started, fire up Scratchmark. You’ll see something like this:

You’ll need to add a project to Scratchmark. That can be, for example, the folder where you save your Markdown files. To do that, click the stacker menu in the left pane (called the Library) and then click Add Project. In the window that displays, find and click on a folder and then click Select.

If, like me, you have Markdown files in a couple of locations, you can repeat the above for those folders.

You might have noticed the Drafts folder at the top of the Library. You can create a file in there by clicking on the folder and then clicking the New Document icon in the editing pane. Give the document a name, then click Create.

From there, start typing. Here’s a look this post being written in Scratchmark:

You can add Markdown formatting by hand or by click the Formatting Toolbar icon (the capital A in the top-right corner of the header bar) to display icons that let you add basic formatting. Here’s what that looks like:

You can only apply this formatting using the toolbar:

• Bold, italics, and strikethrough.
• Highlighting.
• Two levels of headings.
• Blockquote.
• Code.

Click the Document Info icon in the top-right corner of the header bar to display a document’s character, word, and line counts. Here’s what that looks like:

Scratchmark also has a focus mode (which you can trigger by clicking the stacker menu and selecting Focus Mode) that shows only the text you’re working on but no application controls.

Something I found wonky about focus mode is that when I moved my mouse, the editor drops out of focus mode. But when I started typing again, Scratchmark snaps back into focus mode. It’s a bit jarring.

Customizing Scratchmark

You don’t have all that many options to do that. To access those options, click the stacker menu and then select Preferences. This window displays:

You can:

• Change the font that the editor uses (but not its size).
• Display a minimap (which I’ve never found useful in any editor).
• Change the settings for the editor’s width.
• Display (or not) hidden files in the Library pane.

Aside from changing the font that it uses, you can probably get away with using Scratchmark’s out-of-the-box settings.

What Scratchmark Doesn’t Have

I’ve pointed out a couple of areas in which the editor is lacking: the ability to change the size of the font and the minimal number of options on the formatting toolbar.

There’s also no preview or split view. On top of that, you can also save raw Markdown. You can’t export your files as HTML or PDF (as you can in most Markdown editors).

The deal killer for me, though, is the lack of a spelling checker.

Having said that, Scratchmark is still fairly young and those features might be added to the editor over time.

Final Thought

Scratchmark was an interesting Markdown editing diversion. While it has its good and not-so-good points, Scratchmark definitely won’t replace Apostrophe as my Markdown editor of choice. There’s no reason you can’t take it for a test drive. Who knows, Scratchmark might be an editor that grows on you.

— Scott Nesbitt

Moving House

26 May, 2026

As I mentioned in a post at my public notebook, I’ll be scaling back my online presence over the next 10 to 12 months. As part of that process, I’ll be retiring a few domains. That includes the domain for this blog.

That doesn’t mean Open Source Musings the blog will be disappearing. It won’t. I’ll be moving this blog into a slot under my home page.

That move will be start sometime in the next few months. There won’t be much that you’ll need to do. At least, I hope there isn’t. From when I’ve made the initial move until 2027 (when I let this blog’s domain expire), you’ll be automatically redirected to the new home of Open Source Musings¹.

If you read post via the blog’s RSS feed, you’ll need to change the pointer to it. You’ll also need to update any links/bookmarks you might have. I figure that nine or 10 months should be enough for you to do all of that.

I’ll keep you updated about the progress of this move as it’s happening.

— Scott Nesbitt

Quick Tip: Add Web Apps to Your Desktop with GNOME Web

5 May, 2026

Most of us use at least one web-based application or visit multiple online publications. Often several times a day. Using those applications means starting up a web browser, navigating to that application or publication, and then logging in.

What if you could start a web application in the same way that you can start up software installed on your computer? And do all of that without the distractions found in a browser window?

The GNOME Web browser makes doing that quick and easy. Let’s look at how.

Creating Your First Desktop Web App

Obviously, you’ll need to install Web on your computer. So let’s say you’ve done that. Fire up Web and go to a website. From there, click the stacker menu on the right side of the browser’s header bar and select Web Apps > Install as Web App.

A screen like the one below displays:

Type a descriptive name in the field — for example, Markdown Table Creator — and then click Create.

After a few seconds, a shortcut to launch the web app displays in your desktop’s application menu. Here’s what that looks like in Ubuntu:

And here’s what a web app looks like when you launch it:

Getting Rid of a Web App

To do that, click the stacker menu and select Web Apps > Manage Web Apps. A tab like the one below opens in Web:

Click Delete then, on the message that displays, click Delete again. After a moment or two, the shortcut to the app is removed from the application menu.

— Scott Nesbitt

Create a Daily Reading List with calibre

21 April, 2026

This article was originally published, in a slightly different form, at Opensource.com and appears here via a CC-BY-SA 4.0 licence.

Many people complain about being able to keep up with all the information that they need to — or think they need to. While for me information overload isn’t a thing, I understand that it can be difficult for others to wean themselves off of the mass of information that faces them.

The best way to do that is to reduce the amount and number of sources of information in your life. I won’t go into the theory and practice of how to disengage yourself from all of that information, but one technique you can use is to create a focused daily reading list. You can read the contents of that list using your tablet or smartphone or ereader during your daily commute or during some downtime during the day.

The calibre eBook management software is an excellent tool for creating that daily reading list. Let’s take a look at how to use calibre to do that:

Before You Begin

This is where the focus I mentioned earlier comes in. Choose two or three of your most important sources of information. Those can be daily news, technology blogs, or dispatches from your favourite magazine.

Focus on what you need to know, not what you want to know or think you should know. To do that, take a hard look at the information you ingest to whittle your list down to its most basic form.

Once you’ve done that, copy the URLs of the RSS feeds for those sources of information into a text editor. You’ll need them in a few moments, and there’s no reason you should have to type them out.

Now, it’s time to turn to calibre.

Setting up your list

Let’s assume that you have calibre installed on your computer. If not, grab a copy of it. After that, fire it up and click the downward-pointing arrow beside the Fetch News button on the toolbar. Then, click Add a Custom News Source, as shown below:

Here you can create a recipe, which is just calibre’s name for a collection of feeds. Click New recipe. In the Add custom news source window, type a name for the recipe in the Recipe title field. I use the amazingly original title Daily Reading List. You can probably come up with something better.

Set Oldest article to 1 day, and then set the Max. number of article per feed to a reasonable number. I generally set it to 10.

Type a name for the feed in the Feed title field. That name could be, for example, the name of the publication or blog from which the feed originates. Then, paste one of the URLs for the RSS feeds that you copied earlier into the Feed URL field. Click Add feed and repeat the process for each of your feeds.

Here’s what a feed in a recipe looks like:

When you’re done, click Save. Your recipe displays, as show below:

Click Close.

Building Your Reading List

Next, generate the reading list. You can either set calibre to automatically generate your list, or you can do it manually. I’m going to explain how to generate the list manually.

In the main window, click Fetch News. The Schedule news download window opens. Here’s what it looks like:

In the list on the left side of the window, click Custom and then click the name of your reading list. Make sure that the Schedule for download option isn’t selected.

Click Download now. When you do that, calibre grabs the latest items in your recipe’s feeds and saves it to your calibre library as a EPUB file. The process can take a few minutes, so be patient.

Moving your reading list to your mobile device

You can do that in two ways. If your mobile device is compatible with calibre, connect it to your computer. Then, right click on your reading list in the calibre library and select Send to device > Send to main memory. You can also send it to your device’s SD card (if it has one).

If you don’t have device the calibre supports, you’ll need to click on your reading list and select Save to disk > Save only EPUB format to disk in a single directory. Then, select the folder into which you want to save the file.

If you use Nextcloud, ownCloud, Syncthing, or another file sharing application, save it into a synchronized folder on your computer and then sync your device. Once that’s done, you can open your reading list in an EPUB reader.

Here’s an example of what that looks like:

Creating a daily reading list involves a few manual steps. In only a few minutes, though, you have the information you need for the day. You can use your mobile device for something more than just checking email and scrolling social media. On top of that, you might just be able to trim down the number of sources from which you get information and free up more time to do other things.

— Scott Nesbitt

Taking a Look at Feren OS

7 April, 2026

Not being a distro hopper, I wasn’t looking for a new Linux distribution. But, as sometimes happens, other factors intervene. For some reason, over the last couple of months (at the time of writing this post) my trusty StarLite Mk IV running Zorin OS was bogging down.

I still haven’t figured out why that was happening. That it was happening started me thinking about installing a lighter Linux distribution on the laptop. I looked at a few, including a couple of old favourites, but didn’t click the button to install any of them.

Then Feren OS came across my radar. It intrigued me for a number of reasons — its visual aesthetic, its purported speed and lightness, and that it ran a different desktop environment from the ones I’d been using for years. Obviously, I had to take a peek. Here’s what happened.

Taking Feren OS for a Test Drive

I started, as I always do, by downloading an ISO file — this time, from Sourceforge. When I followed the link from the Feren OS website, I thought Sourceforge? Does anyone still use it? Obviously, someone does …

From there, I create a live USB (using Popsicle in case were wondering). Using that live USB, I ran Feren OS in a few sessions which totaled several hours over the space of several days.

Here’s the desktop that greeted me each time I started a live session:

Those session weren’t me merely fiddling around. I was actually doing more than a bit of work while running those sessions. Regardless, after mostly good experiences, I decided to take plunge and install Feren OS on my StarLite Mk IV.

Installing Feren OS

Installation was quick and simple. I won’t go into details since the installation process pretty matches that of any other modern Linux distribution.

After I double clicked the install button on the desktop, I selected a few options, entered some information, and clicked a few other buttons. Yes, It was that easy (and has been for a long time).

While Feren OS was installing, I went off to make and eat a wrap. When I came back, the installation was done and my computer was ready to restart.

Using the Distro

Feren OS uses KDE as its desktop environment. More on this in a moment or two. The layout of the desktop, at least out of the box, is reminiscent of Windows and of the default layouts of many a Linux distribution like Zorin OS or Linux Mint.

Click the application menu and you can select software to fire up. Here’s the application menu out of the box:

And here’s what it looks like in the theme that I settled upon:

In the application menu, you can set applications as favourites to quickly access them. Some themes also display the last few applications that you launched. If you need to focus on certain types of application, select an application group (like Multimedia and Internet). And you can can search for a specific application in the search box at the top of the menu.

Software

As you might expect, Feren OS comes with a number of applications preinstalled, including:

• A web browser (more on this in a moment).
• LibreOffice.
• Krita (for editing images).
• KWrite (a serviceable text editor).
• Geary (a simple email client).
• Various other KDE desktop applications for viewing graphics and PDFs, working with archives, recording with the webcam, and the like.

Here’s a look at some software running on Feren OS:

There are more than a couple in that mix that I never use, but that’s not specific to KDE or Feren OS. That’s also true for other desktop environments and Linux distributions that I’ve used over the years.

You install software with Store, Feren’s app centre. Here’s what that looks like:

Store isn’t just packed with KDE-specific applications. Thanks to the magic of Flatpak, I installed the applications that I’ve come to know and like — the ones I used in Zorin OS and use on Ubuntu. It only took a few minutes to replicate my usual software setup.

If I have one complaint about the Store it’s that I’m used to being able to see what I have installed and any updates to those installed apps in Store’s counterpart in GNOME-based desktops. That, along with the license under which the software I’m installing is released. You don’t get that in Store, though some of that seems to be on the roadmap for a future release.

Interestingly enough, I ran into dependency problems with a couple or three KDE apps that I tried to install using Store. That was in spite of Store installing various dependencies with that software. I haven’t run into that sort of thing since I started using distros that use flatpak or snap to install software. It was unexpected and a little vexing.

Web browsers

The web browser that comes with Feren OS is Vivaldi. That’s not a huge problem. I don’t mind Vivaldi; it’s a solid (though feature-heavy) non-FOSS web browser¹ that I’ve used in the past.

That said, I prefer FOSS browsers. Installing and uninstaling another browser is easy using the Web Browser Manager app. Here’s what that looks like:

As you can see, there’s a mix of FOSS and proprietary browsers in there. In case you’re wondering, I installed LibreWolf. All it took was a click or two² to get it.

KDE

As I mentioned earlier, unlike the Linux distributions that I’ve been using since shortly after the dawn of this century, Feren OS uses KDE as its desktop environment. Even though I’m a GNOME person (more or less), I like to think that I have a fairly open mind when it comes to Linux desktop environments.

That said, it took a little time for me to adapt to my new desktop. It’s been over 20 years since I last used KDE; things have changed more than a bit since then. And in those 20+ years, I got used to a GNOME (or, at least, a GNOME-ish) way of doing things.

I had to fight against muscle memory when I started using Feren OS. As well, in some apps certain controls have a different look and feel than what I’m used to. Overall, though, the time I spent (as short as it was) adapting to KDE was well worth it.

I am starting to warm to KDE. That said, I still prefer GNOME (or GNOME-like) desktops. That’s probably down to lack of familiarity and that I haven’t yet gotten fully used to (from my perspective) the quirks of KDE.

Making Feren OS My Own

Well, at least to a point.

The first thing I did was to change the desktop theme. The default one is a bit too much like Windows, and I’m not a fan of Windows or its UI. To make that change, I selected Settings > System Settings > Appearance in the application menu then I clicked Global Theme. This window displayed:

After playing with a couple or three, I settled on one called Mac ‘n’ Cheese Dark. A silly name, but a nice theme reminiscent of macOS or elementary OS. Here’s what it looks like:

While Feren comes with 14 themes, ranging from ones that mimic the appearance of Windows and macOS to ones that are GNOME/Ubuntu inspired, you can download and install others. That said, when I tried to do that with a couple of themes, the app displayed various error messages and the installation never happened. I didn’t do a deep dive into why, though. The stock themes are more than OK for my purposes.

In the global theme settings you can also change the desktop fonts, and options like:

• Tab styles.
• Colours.
• Window decorations.
• Icons.
• Cursors.

If you’re wondering, I didn’t change any of that. The default options work well enough for me.

Setting Up the Dock

Some Feren OS themes come with a dock that displays at the bottom of the screen. I chose one of those because … well, I like having the key applications that I use a click away. Here’s what my dock looks like:

When you start up any application, it appears on the dock. You can keep the application’s icon there by right clicking on it and selecting Pin to Taskbar.

Dealing with the Panel

That’s the bar along the top of the screen. Here’s what the panel looked like after I installed Feren OS:

As you can see, the panel was a bit cluttered. It took a while for me to figure out how to thin out number of icons on the panel. There are ones, though, that I want to get rid of or hide but which seem to be there to stay.

Some Quirks, Good & Not So

Feren OS is the only Linux distribution I’ve used in a while that doesn’t install fonts for languages that I don’t read/write. Being more of a poly-not than a polyglot, that’s everything other than English. And I didn’t need to manually remove those fonts which made me rather happy.

Unlike in GNOME or GNOME-based desktops, the right-click options for Copy to and Move to in the file manager aren’t there. That’s a bit frustrating.

I was able to set up a link between my calendars in email provider and the Merkuro Calendar application. Events in the remote calendar appear in Merkuro but not in the calendar that I can pop out from the panel at the top of the screen. I’m accustomed to the latter working in the other Linux distros that I’ve used over last few years so I’ve been a tad frustrated with that.

Performance

Feren OS takes a little bit longer to start up than Zorin OS did on my StarLite MK IV. While the difference is noticeable, it’s not huge. Those extra few seconds don’t bother me too much

When I’m logged in, the desktop runs well. I haven’t run into any of the sluggishness that started plaguing my installation of Zorin OS a couple of months prior. While applications don’t start in the blink of an eye, I don’t have to wait longer than a couple of seconds (at the most) for them to load.

Overall Thoughts

Feren OS is a nice, compact, and quick Linux distribution. It runs well on my StarLite Mk. IV with its limited resources. I have no regrets about installing Feren OS and it’ll no doubt have a home on my StarLite for a while yet. If nothing else, Feren OS gives me the chance to work with and review some KDE software for a change!

— Scott Nesbitt

On (Not) Distro Hopping

17 March, 2026

When I choose a Linux distribution, I tend to stick with it. Usually for years. That’s been the case since I started using Linux back in 1999. While I have changed distros, and have gone back to some old favourites, more than a couple of times over the decades I don’t distro hop.

Why? If I’m comfortable with a Linux distribution and with what I get out of it, I don’t see any reason to change. And, to be honest, I don’t see the need to jump into every distro that bloggers and others online breathlessly tout in a particular week. I’m sure they’re good, but those distributions offer me little or no incentive to start over.

For me, jumping around distributions is counterproductive. It puts a gap in my work, with me having to spend time reinstalling all of the applications and scripts that I use, as well as transferring files around. That can take a couple of hours on top of the time I might spend test driving and installing a Linux distribution. That’s time I could (better) spend actually doing work.

That’s not saying I’m above taking a Linux distribution for a spin. I do get curious every so often. With a live USB it’s easy. I don’t need to change anything I’m doing now or worry about losing my setup and data. To be honest, though, most Linux distros that I run off a live USB … well, they don’t leave me cold but most of them don’t leave much of an impression on me. Definitely not enough to wipe away what I’m currently using.

If you feel the need to distro hop, more power to you. Enjoy yourself. It’s just something that really isn’t for me.

— Scott Nesbitt

Two More Useful FOSS Android Apps

3 March, 2026

It’s easy to forget that free and open source software (FOSS) doesn’t just live on the desktop or the server. It can also run on those little devices many of us carry in our pockets. The ones that are powered, for the most part, by Android (or some variant of it).

As I’ve noted in this space before, there are more than a few useful FOSS apps for Android. Let’s take a look at more two of them.

While you can probably install most, if not all, of these apps from a certain tech giant’s app store, I’ll be pointing you to F-Droid instead.

Quick Weather

For the longest time, I didn’t see the need to have a weather app on my phone. While seriously house hunting in another part of New Zealand a couple of years ago changed my mind. After trying a few FOSS weather apps, I settled on Quick Weather.

Quick Weather is easy to use. There are a few options that you can set, like units for temperature and wind speed as well as the app’s look and feel. You can also set a location. Once you’ve done that, you’re ready to go.

The seven-day forecast for any location that you choose comes from a service called Open-Meteo. Here’s an example of a forecast:

You can get more information about forecast by tapping a day, as shown below:

For additional information about the current conditions, tap the chevron beside day’s temperature. Here’s what that looks like:

You can also set up multiple locations, which is good when you’re travelling. You can easily switch between them by tapping the stacker menu and selecting a location. Here’s an example:

FairScan

Every so often, I need to scan a document or something like a receipt, a bill, or an invoice. Any number of mobile apps can do that, but FairScan got and held my attention because of its simplicity.

How simple is it? Here’s the app’s main screen:

Aside from the main screen, there are only three settings. You can change:

• The folder into which to save a scan.
• The image quality.
• The format (PDF or JPG).

When you’re ready to scan something, point your phone’s camera at it and tap the New Scan button. FairScan blocks out what you’re scanning with a thick green outline. Here’s what that looks like:

Then, tap the round, green button on the screen. FairScan takes a photo. Tap the photo’s thumbnail then, on the screen that displays, tap Save. Here’s what that looks like:

FairScan saves the scan (which it converts to grayscale) to the folder that you specified in the app’s options.

Before you do save a scan, you can also give it a more descriptive file name rather than the default of Scan YYYY-MM-DD HH-MM-SS — for example, Scan 2026-02-26 17.41.03.

FairScan is nothing fancy, but then again it doesn’t need to be to meet my needs.

— Scott Nesbitt

Writing with HedgeDoc

10 February, 2026

Once upon a time, I used more than a couple of online writing tools. Some of them open source, believe it or not. These days, I rarely use such tools mainly because I generally have no compelling reason to use them. If I do, it’s infrequently and usually when I’m collaborating on a project with someone.

In those cases, I usually turn to EtherPad. Recently, though, I was working on something with a collaborator in another time zone. Just for the heck of it, we decided to give HedgeDoc a try. Here’s what I learned about it.

HedgeDoc?

It’s an open source, web-based Markdown editor, which is described as:

an open-source, web-based, self-hosted, collaborative markdown editor

While Hedgeoc is meant to be a tool that enables you to work on a document (called a note in HedgeDoc parlance) with one or more others, you can go solo with it too. Not only that, but you can use HedgeDoc to go beyond documents. You can also use it to craft presentation slides (in conjunction with a framework called Reveal.js). More on this in a few moments.

Getting HedgeDoc

HedgeDoc is self-hosted software. You’ll need a server and some technical chops to get it up and running. I know that can be daunting to more than a few people, but if you have the skills …

Don’t let the self-hosting aspect of HedgeDoc put you off. If you don’t want to (or, like me, can’t) deal with setting up and maintaining the plumbing that HedgeDoc needs, you can turn to a host like PikaPods or Elest.io to do the job for you. For a price, of course.

For the project I mentioned above, and for this post, I used an instance of HedgeDoc hosted by PikaPods.

Working on a Document

When you log into HedgeDoc, you get an empty home screen that looks kind of like this:

Click + New Note in the top right of the screen. A new, empty document, and its preview, displays. Here’s an example:

Start typing. You can format your work either by adding Markdown code by hand¹ or by using the formatting toolbar at the top of the editor. If you have the preview pane open, it displays your changes as you type.

I don’t know about you, but I find that a preview pane in any editor (online or on the desktop) can be a bit distracting. You can hide HedgeDoc’s preview pane by clicking the Edit button above the toolbar, as highlighted below:

Creating a Slide Deck

As I mentioned several paragraphs ago, you can create and display presentation slides in HedgeDoc. To do that, create a new document. Then, to tell HedgeDoc that you’re working on slides, add something like this to the top of the document:

---
type: slide
slideOptions:
  transition: slide
---

Then, type the text for your first slide or add an image. Separate your slides using three horizontal dashes (---).

Here’s an example of the skeleton of a slide deck that I started while working on this blog post:

To present or preview your slides, click Menu in the top-right of the application window and then select Slide Mode. Here’s what that looks like:

You can, of course, add a bit more pizzazz to your slides. See this guide for more information about how to do that.

Sharing a Document with a Collaborator

You can share a document that you want to collaborate on by sending your collaborator the link to that document. When they follow that link and try to edit it, they’ll need to create an account². Once they’ve done they can edit the document.

If you’re both working on a document at the same time, you can see each others’ changes as you type. As well, you can add comments to a document by clicking the Comment button on the toolbar. This is useful whether you and your collaborator are working together in real time or not.

Downloading Your Work

Maybe you don’t want to keep a document in HedgeDoc. Maybe you need, for example, to combine it with other files to create a bigger document like a report or a book. Or maybe you need to convert a document to another file format using a tool like pandoc.

To download a document, open it and then click Menu in the top-right of the window. From there, select one of the following options:

• Markdown - I think you know what that does …
• HTML - Creates a full HTML file, with some extra bits like a stylesheet and navigation on the right.
• Raw HTML - HedgeDoc only saves what comes after the <body> tag of an HTML file.

Managing Your Documents

One feature that HedgeDoc doesn’t pack is the ability to add your documents to folders. Instead, they display on the page that displays when you log in. Here’s an example:

If you have a lot of documents, you can use the Search field on that page to find the one you’re looking for.

Final Thoughts

Using HedgeDoc was an interesting experiment. I came to prefer it to many of the other online writing (whether collaborative or not) tools I’ve used over the years. HedgeDoc is easy to use and offers an experience similar to the one I get with the Markdown editor that I use on my desktop.

That said, I can’t see myself using HedgeDoc as a daily driver for writing. That’s not a reflection on the application. It’s just that I have a perfectly serviceable Markdown editor on my computer with which I do the bulk of my work. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for me to shift that workflow online.

If I ever need to collaborate with someone on a project in the future, I’ll strongly suggest that we use HedgeDoc for that.

— Scott Nesbitt

Tracking Your Time with Valot

20 January, 2025

If you’re a freelancer or if you run a small business, chances are that you need to keep track of the time that you spend on client projects (and the tasks that make up the work for those projects). That’s never a fun prospect, and there are more than a few ways to do that. Some are cumbersome and some are easier than others.

More than a few apps track your time working are available for the Linux desktop. One that I’ve been using recently is Valot.

Let’s take a look at it.

Getting Valot

The easiest way to install Valot is to use your Linux distribution’s software centre. If it’s not available, you can install it as a flatpak using this command in a terminal window:

flatpak install flathub com.odnoyko.valot

Once it’s installed, start Valot. You see a window like this:

Using Valot

What I’m about to describe is the way in which I set up and used Valot while writing this post. What you do may differ. You have been warned.

To use Valot, you need to set up clients, projects, and tasks. Let’s start off with adding a client.

Click Clients in the navigation pane on the left of the application window. On the screen that displays, click Add client. In the window that pops up:

• Enter the client’s name.
• Set your hourly rate.
• Select their default currency.

Here’s what that looks like:

Then, click Create Client.

Next, add a project by clicking Projects in the navigation pane. From there, click Add project. In the window that pops up:

• Enter the name of the project.
• Select a colour to identify the project.

Here’s what that looks like:

Then, click Save Changes.

Finally, add tasks to a project by typing the name of the task in the field at the top of Valot’s window (that field displays no matter where you are in the application). Here’s an example:

Click the folder icon beside the field and select a project with which to associate the task. Then, click the Client icon and select a client for whom the work is being done.

When you press Enter, Valot creates the task and starts the timer to track the time you spend on it. If you don’t want to track time at the moment, click the Stop tracking button to pause the timer, as shown below.

To restart the timer, click the Start tracking button beside the task.

While you can have multiple tasks in the task list, Valot only lets you track time on one of those tasks. That helps you focus on that part of a job and not try to multitask.

As you’re working, the time you’re spending on a task displays in the application’s title bar and in the Quick Stats section below the navigation pane.

Viewing Reports

Valot offers a simple but effective report of the work you’ve done. Here’s an example:

You can display information for a particular period, project, or client. You also get a view of the total time spent, and money earned, on a project as well as a listing of the tasks you’ve worked on.

You can also export a report as a PDF file. If Valot can’t generate a PDF (and I don’t know why that was happening), it opens an HTML version in a web browser. From there, you can save the report as a PDF.

A Quirk or Two

Valot does one or two things that I found … well, interesting. First, as I mentioned above the application starts a task immediately after you add it. I’d prefer Valot to only add the task; I’ll start it when I’m ready.

When I edit the name of a project on the Projects screen, the dialogue that pops up is in German. Here’s an example:

I’m hoping that’s just a small bug.

Final Thoughts

It took a little while for me to get my head around Valot. That wasn’t because the application is complex, but because I didn’t have an accurate mental model of how I’d set up and use it. Once I had that model, Valot became easier to use.

If I ever go back to serious freelancing, Valot will be one of the tools I’ll consider using to track my time.

— Scott Nesbitt

Yet Another 3 Utilities for the Linux Desktop

6 January, 2026

Here we go again with a quick look at three small desktop applications which, while you might not always use, definitely can come in handy when you need them.

Let’s jump in!

Wordbook

If you don’t have a dictionary handy or can’t be bothered getting up to grab one off a bookshelf, Wordbook is a solid alternative. It’s a simple, quick, and effective way to look up the definition of a word or two.

To use it, type a word in the search field at the top of the application window. If Wordbook can find the definition, that definition displays as shown below:

Wordbook also keeps a history of the words you’ve looked up so you can go back to one if you need to. Here’s an example:

You can also click the hamburger menu in the top right of the application’s window and select Random Word. That, as you might have guessed, displays the definition of a word that Wordbook selects out of the blue (and which is also added to the search history).

Mini Text

Every so often, you need a place to quickly record something that suddenly pops into your head — a thought, an idea, a quote, or a bit of code. That often happens when you’re focusing on another task.

Sure, you could fire up a text editor or note taking application, but why not turn to a scratchpad¹? A simple, minimalist scratchpad comes in the form of Mini Text. It’s billed as ephemeral, meaning it doesn’t save what you type into it. Mini Text is just a way station for text, a place that text stays until you can move it elsewhere.

It’s a blank canvas to start, as you can see below:

Until you need it, Mini Text stays out of your way. When the time comes you can jot down what’s in your head and then go back to what you’re doing. Here’s an example:

Just remember to copy and paste what’s in Mini Text elsewhere before you close it. If you don’t, you’ll lose everything in it!

Converseen

Converseen is a bit more complex than most of the utilities that I look at in posts like this. You can see that below:

That doesn’t make Converseen any less useful. So what does it do?Converseen is a utility for converting multiple images to another format in one go. You can get it to rotate, resize, rename, scale, and change the resolution of those images. You can also strip the metadata from images, apply filters, and change the quality of images.

Here’s what Converseen looks like when you’re ready to do a conversion:

The number of image formats that Converseen supports is impressive. It handles many that I haven’t heard of, and others I haven’t thought about in years.

While I only tried it with batches of a dozen or two images, Converseen worked very quickly and the quality of the conversions was excellent.

— Scott Nesbitt

Some More Ideas that Didn’t Work Out

23 December, 2025

When you write, you hope that all of the ideas that pop into your head lead somewhere. Often, that’s the case. Just as often, you get ideas that don’t pan out, in which you lose interest, or which just aren’t right for you.

Let’s peel back the curtain at Open Source Musings once again and look at some ideas for posts that didn’t go anywhere¹.

AppFlowy

Remember when applications like Notion and Roam were all the rage among note taking and productivity enthusiasts? I tested out a few of them and, frankly, was left cold.

Then I heard about AppFlowy, an open source alternative to those applications which ran on the Linux desktop. I worked with it for a while and, to be honest, the same coldness that I felt with Notion, Roam, et. al. crept in. I didn’t connect enough with AppFlowy to muster the enthusiasm to review it.

AnyType

AnyType is yet another entrant in the note taking/personal knowledge management tool sweepstakes. It reminds me of applications like Obsidian and Logseq, which I’ve looked at in the past.

After taking a look at AnyType, I decided that 1) it was (like Obsidian and Logseq) just a bit too much for my needs, and 2) I wasn’t enthusiastic about or captivated enough by it to commit to a deep dive.

Books

Books is a simple application to access and organize your e-books on GNOME. Having more than a couple of ebooks on my hard drive, I dove in, thinking that a

Books just didn’t click with me. It didn’t offer anything, aside from being a bit lighter, than Calibre. And it didn’t offer much to write about, either.

Scriptorium

This one really excited me: a tool to plan, organize, and build a writing project. Kind of like a stripped-down version of Scrivener for Linux.

But my initial excitement cooled rather quickly after I installed Scriptorium and started using it. When I looked at Scriptorium, it quickly became apparent that the application was very work in progress. To my eyes, it wasn’t anywhere near ready for prime time. Or for me to write about it. Maybe sometime in the future …

Various Utilities

If you’ve been reading this space for any length of time, you know that I like a good, simple, focused little app. An app that does one, maybe two things and does that well.

And sometimes, I stumble across an application like that which excites me. And sometimes, that initial excitement quickly fades for any number of reasons. That’s happened recently with more than a couple of utilities.

— Scott Nesbitt

Creating Bootable USB Flash Drives with Popsicle and Impression

9 December, 2025

It’s been interesting to watch how the ways in which you could test drive a Linux distribution have evolved. It’s gone from needing to partition a hard drive (always fraught with some peril) to creating a live CD (not exactly sustainable), to using a virtual machine or a bootable USB flash drive.

For a long time, the latter has been my preferred way to give a distribution a try. Best of all, I can use the same drive over and over again.

But what to use to create a bootable flash drive? There are more than a couple of options out there. I turn to simple tools in that regard, two of which I look at in this post.

To use these applications, you’ll first need to download what’s called an ISO image. It’s a large file with the extension .iso, which you can get from the website of the Linux distribution that you want to try.

Popsicle

Developed by the folks at Linux-powered computer maker System 76, Popsicle is fast, simple, and effective.

Let’s say you’ve downloaded an ISO image. Insert a flash drive into a USB port on your computer and fire up Popsicle. You’ll see something like this:

Find the ISO image that you downloaded and then click Next. From there, choose one or more USB drives (Popsicle can write to several at once). Here’s what that looks like for one flash drive:

Click Next. Popsicle asks for the password that you use to log into your desktop. Enter that and then click Authenticate (or whatever label appears on the button in your Linux distribution).

Popsicle then writes the ISO image to the drive(s) that you chose.

Impression

Impression has a nifty feature that Popsicle lacks: it can download an ISO image for you. You’re not stuck with that; you can also grab an image off the web and use it.

To get going, pop a flash drive into your computer then fire up Impression. Here’s what that looks like:

From there, select a Linux distribution from the list or point Impression to an ISO you’ve downloaded. Impression can directly download ISO images for several popular Linux distributions including Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE, Manjaro, and Arch.

Once you’ve selected an ISO image, this screen displays:

Then, click Write. You’ll be asked if you want to erase the contents of the drive. Let’s assume that you are. So, click Erase.

If you opted to let Impression download an ISO image for you, that could take a while depending on the size of the distribution and on the speed of your internet connection.

Impression asks for the password you use to log into your desktop. Enter that, give Impression the go ahead, and before you know it you’ll have a bootable flash drive.

Summing Up

Popsicle and Impression aren’t the most feature-packed tools, but they don’t need to be. They get the job done quickly. And that’s what I look for in my software.

— Scott Nesbitt

Processing Words with Letters

25 November, 2025

It’s easy to get caught up in our own heads, in our own needs. That holds especially true, as I’ve discovered, for text editors and word processors.

We think that because we need and use many of the features, many of the functions, many of the bells and whistles of top-heavy applications that others are in the same boat as us. Yes, I’ve fallen into the trap of thinking like that more than once!

But that way of looking at things is not even remotely close to the truth. I was reminded of that in early 2025 when a friend asked for a recommendation for a lightweight word processor. Most of the word processors that they tried were too much for their needs; they just wanted something simple. I pointed them to one of two for the (proprietary) operating system they’re using, but the reasons behind the request stuck in my memory.

Recently, I stumbled across a minimalist word processor for GNOME called Letters. It falls into the category of what I call software for the masses and not the classes. And, as it turns out, it’s not a bad lightweight word processor.

Let’s take a look at it.

Getting Letters

You can do that by either using your distribution’s software centre or by installing Letters as a flatpak.

Letters installs quickly. You’ll be able to use it before you know it.

Using Letters

When you first fire up Letters, you get a blank canvas, like this:

You can either start typing or click the hamburger menu in the top right and select Open to open a file on your computer. Letters can open files in these formats:

• ODT (used by word processors like LibreOffice Writer).
• Microsoft Word DOCX.
• Markdown.
• HTML.
• Text.
• RTF.

Here’s a view of Letters in action:

Formatting

You can only add bullet lists to a document. Letters doesn’t recognize numbered lists.

Something I found interesting was that when I opened a document that contains, say, superscripts those rendered properly in Letters. You just can’t apply that formatting when working on a document.

What I Didn’t Like About the Formatting Options

The problem I have with the formatting options isn’t the limited number of them, but the familiarity¹ (or lack thereof) of the formatting toolbar. Here’s what it looks like:

It’s easy to spot the basic character formatting options available on the toolbar. The other icons on the toolbar, though, take some getting used to. What they’re for isn’t immediately obvious.

Saving and Exporting Your Work

You can save your documents in any of the supported formats that I mentioned above. To do that, select Save or Save As from the hamburger menu and, in the case of the latter, select the file format and then click Save.

Saving as Markdown does a decent job, while saving as HTML only gives you the body of the document — it doesn’t include the HTML code the comes before or after the body. The results of saving as ODT and Word look fine, though a bit bland.

You can also export a document as a PDF file by selecting Export to PDF from the hamburger menu. The resulting PDF doesn’t look too bad, as you can see in this example:

What Letters is Missing

Letters is still a fairly young piece of software. At the moment, it lacks spelling and grammar checkers. Those are on the developer’s roadmap, as is word count. On top of that:

• You can’t change the font. Letters uses the default document font specified in your window manager’s settings.
• There’s no way to control pagination or change the page size or layout.
• Insert tables into a document. Again, this is something on the developer’s roadmap.

Final Thoughts

Admittedly, I don’t use a word processor all that often. I do all of my writing in a text editor, formatting it with Markdown. When I need to, I convert a document to a word processor format using a utility called pandoc (which is also what Letters uses when you use the Save As function).

If I did need a lightweight word processor, I’d most likely turn to Letters. I found Letters to be easy to use and its output perfectly serviceable. Letters is what I called simple software: software that does just what it needs to do, not software that tries to be everything to everyone. Once it gets a spelling checker and a word count feature, there’s a good chance Letters will be a regular on my desktop.

— Scott Nesbitt

On Flatpaks and Snaps

11 November, 2025

Having used Linux since just before the turn of this century, I’ve seen and taken advantage of several different ways in which to install software. All of them had their good and not-so-good points. All of them have their adherents and their critics.

Two methods that have come to a level of prominence and notoriety in the last few years are flatpaks and snaps. And to say that flatpaks and snaps have been the subject of controversy, debate, and argument in the FLOSS world over the last several years is a bit of an understatement. I’m not going to go into any of that. Consult your favourite search engine if you want to learn more.

Those arguments, for the most part, have been highly technical. More than a few points made, however, do have merit.

But for the average Linux user, flatpaks and snaps are a quick, convenient way to get applications for the Linux desktop. Software installed using them runs well on decent hardware. Most importantly, at least to me, is that using flatpaks and snaps helps users escape so-called dependency hell.

Since I switched to Linux distributions that use flatpaks and snaps, I haven’t run into the dependency problems that I’d encountered in years past. On top of that, I have access to a lot of tools that would have been just out of my reach.

As tech blogger Niels Leenheer wrote back in 2021:

I’ve never gotten the feedback during the last ten years: “It’s a nice app, but it would be better if it were a native app”. Not once. 

Users don’t care. If you made a great app that is valuable to your users, they wouldn’t care about the underlying technologies. The only requirements are: “Does it do what I want? Does it solve my problem?”. 

Users only care that it works, not how it works.

And that sums up my thoughts and feelings about flatpaks and snaps.

— Scott Nesbitt

3 More RSS Feed Readers for the Linux Desktop

21 October, 2025

When I tell some people that I don’t use social media, they’re surprised. Sometimes even shocked. One question I keep hearing is How do you communicate with people and how do you get your information? (or something along those lines).

As for the latter, I do that via RSS. Specifically, using a desktop RSS feed reader called Newsflash. I also know that Newsflash isn’t to everyone’s liking. So, with that in mind, let’s take a look at three other RSS feed readers for the Linux desktop.

FeedFlow

When I first fired up FeedFlow, it surprised me. It’s easy to use, with a very simple dual-pane interface. Here’s what it looks like:

On the left is a list of the RSS feeds you’ve subscribed to (broken up by category, if you’ve set up categories). On the right is a list of items in a feed. When you click on an item, it opens in its own view. Here’s an example:

As for the feeds, you can add them one by one, or import an OPML file the you’ve exported from another reader — in my case, that file came from Newsflash. You can also sync FeedFlow with online, open source reader called FreshRSS.

When reading an article, you can:

• Bookmark it to read later.
• Copy a link to share the original with someone.
• Open the article in a web browser.
• Change the size of the font.

You can also set up a list of blocked words, which hides articles containing words that you may find offensive.

Raven Reader

Raven Reader is reminiscent of most of the feed readers, whether desktop or online, that I’ve used over the years. It has a slightly more modern take on the three-pane layout, shown here:

You get a list of your feeds, a list of the items in the feed that you’ve selected, and the body of an article in the reading pane.

What I find somewhat annoying about Raven Reader is that when you select an article, it displays only the article’s first few lines (or, at least, it did when I was testing it). I needed to click the Full Content button in the header of the reading pane to see everything. Here’s what the result of that looks like:

That said, Raven Reader is fairly configurable. Its settings include:

• The ability to sync with online RSS feed reader services like Inoreader and Feedbin.
• Share an article to Instapaper¹ to read later.
• Control how articles display — for example, how they’re sorted and whether or not to display images.

As you might have guessed, you can import RSS feeds from another application or export your feed collection if you decide to move to another app.

RSS Guard

RSS Guard has a rather old school look and feel to it. That said, it has the most functions of the applications I look at in this post, and it has the widest range of settings as well.

The application’s three panes are reminiscent of a desktop email client like Thunderbird. On the left, you have a vertical column containing your list of feeds, broken down by category. The right is broken into stacked panes: the list of items in the feed you’ve selected on top with the content of the article below it.

Here’s what that looks like:

Click an item in the top-right pane to read it, as shown below:

I found RSS Guard to be the most cluttered feed reader I’ve used in a long time. Not just when it comes to the layout of the panes, but also with the multiple toolbars containing multiple buttons that do … well, various things like:

• Reloading articles.
• Marking them as read or unread.
• Moving between articles.
• Opening an article in a web browser.

And more. You can go into the application’s setting and remove buttons. Or you can add buttons (for example, a button for an ad blocker) if you need to.

RSS Guard also enables you to play audio and video embedded in a feed item, something that hasn’t worked for me with other feed readers. The application also has Reading Mode, which just seems to remove the title and front matter from the top of an article.

Again, you can add feeds by importing an OPML file or by connecting RSS Guard to other services like FreshRSS, Tiny, Tiny RSS, Feedly, The Old Reader, and Nextcloud News.

Final Thoughts

While all of the applications that I just looked at do a perfectly yeoman job of fetching and reading RSS feeds, none of them particularly appeal to me. There’s nothing in them that would drag me away from NewsFlash.

But that’s me. Anyone one of them might be a good fit for your needs when it comes to dealing with RSS feeds. Give them a try. One of them might be the desktop RSS feed reader you’re looking for.

— Scott Nesbitt

Sharing Files Between Your Devices with LocalSend

23 September, 2025

If you’re someone who uses multiple devices, you know how much fun it can be to move files between those devices. Sure, you can go old school and use USB flash drives or cables. Or you can turn to like Nextcloud or OwnCloud (or one of their proprietary counterparts) to do the deed. But what if you don’t want to create yet another account with another service? Or if you don’t want to self host those services?

That’s where Localsend comes in. So what’s Localsend, you’re probably asking? It’s software that enables you to move files directly between devices, without plugging something in or using someone else’s computer.

Let’s take a look at it.

Getting LocalSend

LocalSend is available for:

• Linux.
• Android.
• iOS.
• Windows.
• macOS.

Because, let’s face it, you might not only be a multi-device person, but also a multiple operating system one.

I installed LocalSend on my computers as flatpaks using the software centres that came with the Linux distributions running on those computers. I also installed it on my phone via F-Droid.

Using LocalSend

To use LocalSend, the devices between which you’re transferring files need to be on the same wifi network. When you start LocalSend (at least on the Linux desktop), you see something like this:

To send to another device, click Send. You see something like this:

See the funny name highlighted in the image above? Localsend assigns one to each device so you know that you’re moving files between the right ones. In this case, that was between my StarLite Mark V and my phone.

In the Selection section of the screen, click either:

• File (enables you to choose one or more files to transfer).
• Folder (copies a folder).
• Text (send text that you type as a text file).
• Paste (paste text to send as a text file).

Here’s what it looks like when you select something to send:

To include other files, click + Add and select one of the options above. Rinse and repeat. Then, when you’re ready to go, click the name of the target device in Localsend. On that device, you’re asked to accept or decline what’s being sent. This is what you see on the desktop:

Click Accept. The files you transfer are saved to the Downloads folder in your /home directory. A confirmation screen displays — like this one on the Linux desktop:

Click Done to return to the main screen.

Fiddling with Settings

Everything I did above was using Localsend’s out-of-the-box settings. There are several settings that you can tweak, including:

• The application’s appearance and language.
• The funny name that Localsend assigns to your device.
• A PIN that you can use to make a transfer a little more secure.
• Enabling a feature called Quick Save, which does away with the accept/decline window.
• Not showing a confirmation when a transfer is done.
• Changing the folder in which to save files.

And more.

Here’s a peek at some of Localsend’s settings:

Final Thoughts

Localsend is a quick, easy, and effective way to move files between your devices. Especially if you don’t want to worry about needing a server or additional hardware or a USB cable.

It’s especially useful if, like many people, you don’t need to constantly sync files but instead share the occasional one or two (like some of the photos you’ve taken on your phone or music track you bought).

— Scott Nesbitt

Controversies and Me

9 September, 2025

Over the last year or so, I’ve received a few emails from readers asking why I haven’t chimed in on the various controversies that have washed over the free/libre/open source (FLOSS) world in recent months and years.

I try to stay away from those controversies — both in what I write and what I read. Why? I don’t need to be caught up in any dramas, no matter how distant I am from them. Especially dramas in which I have no stake. And that’s most of the conflict in the FLOSS world, both past and present.

I know that some people are surprised or even shocked that controversies and conflict bubble up in the FLOSS sphere. That politics can rear its ugly head in various FLOSS projects. For some reason, there are people who believe, or have been led to believe, that those in FLOSS communities are shiny happy people singing from the same song sheet. Anyone who believes that is being incredibly idealistic or incredibly naive. Or perhaps equal parts of both.

FLOSS communities are a microcosm of the wider world. Those communities are made up of different people from different places. They’re people with different backgrounds and different views. They’re people with different personalities and ways of working and doing things. There are a lot of great people in FLOSS communities — I’ve been fortunate (and privileged) to meet more than a few of them. But there are more than a few jerks.

Because of that, those communities are bound to experience some level of tension and friction at some point. Often, those tensions get ironed out, those frictions cooled. At least until the next one rears its head … It’s only when things really start to boil over that we hear about them in the wider FLOSS world and in tech publications.

It’s up to FLOSS communities to sort out their problems. My chiming in with my $0.02 isn’t helpful. It isn’t constructive. It’s not meaningful. So, that’s why I don’t get involved in controversies.

— Scott Nesbitt

Managing Your Work with Progress

26 August, 2025

We all have our own ways of managing our work, whether that’s a large project or a small one. Some of us use a task list. Others rely on more fully-featured project management applications. And then there’s the kanban board.

That’s what I turn to when a project I’m working on has more than a few moving parts. A kanban board — like Nextcloud Deck, FocalBoard — helps me keep on top of what I need to do and how that project is moving along. Or not.

As part of an ebook project I’m currently working on, I’ve given a desktop kanban board called Progress a try to help manage my tasks. Let’s take a look at it.

Installing Progress

You can try getting it from your Linux distribution’s software centre (or whatever it may be called), or you can install Progress as a flatpak. You can also install it on Arch Linux or Debian-based distributions using their package managers.

No matter what route you take, the installation is fairly quick and you have working software in almost no time at all.

Getting Going with Progress

Fire the application up. You see this screen:

Click the + in the top left corner of the window to add a kanban board. This screen displays:

Enter the name of the board and choose whether to give the board a coloured background (by clicking As a color) or using an image as the board’s background (by clicking As a file and choosing an image).

When you’re done, click Create. Repeat that for each board you need to add. Here’s an example of the boards I created when I took Progress for a test drive:

Working with a Board

A kanban board is a blank canvas. To make it useful, you’ll need to add one or more lists, which are the columns on the board.

Open a board and then click Add List. Progress adds a column to the board, to which you give a name and then click the green checkmark to save it. Continue doing that for each list that you need to create. You wind up with something like this:

Once you’ve done that, click Add card in a list to add a task for that stage of the project. This pop up displays:

Enter a name for a card and then click the green checkmark. Again, keep adding tasks. You’ll wind up with something that looks like this:

Drag and drop the cards from column to column until you complete a task. Then, rinse and repeat.

That Sounds Simple …

Progress doesn’t seem to do much, does it? In fact, what progress lacks is as notable as what it does. As a kanban board application, Progress is very basic. You can add cards and that’s about it.

While I like my software simple, with a kanban board I do find myself needing a bit more — for example, adding subtasks, due dates, and notes to a card. I can’t do anything like that with Progress.

I didn’t find Progress to be any more effective or useful than using a plain text task list. Sure, Progress has a graphical kanban form factor but I can get the same results with a task list.

I won’t say I found Progress disappointing; I went into it with no expectations. However, it just didn’t click with me. I used it for a few days then uninstalled it. That’s pretty much all I have to say about it.

— Scott Nesbitt

Another 3 Utilities for the Linux Desktop

5 August, 2025

Here we go again with a quick look at three small desktop applications which, while you might not always use, definitely can come in handy when you need them.

Let’s jump in!

Tabëla

Creating tables in HTML or Markdown isn’t fun. In fact, it’s ugly and tedious. Many Markdown and HTML editors have a function that generates a table, and there are more than a couple of table generation tools on the web. But what if you have information in a spreadsheet that you need to turn into a table in those markup languages?

That’s where Tabëla comes in. It takes information from a spreadsheet — exported as a file with entries separated by commas, tabs, or semicolons — and converts it into a well-formatted table.

Fire up the app, and you see this:

Choose a Separator and a Format, then paste the information from your spreadsheet into the text area at the top. Tabëla automatically does the conversion. Here’s an example:

From there, copy what’s in the lower text area and paste it into your Markdown or HTML document.

Save Desktop

It’s always better to be prepared. For anything. That could be a your computer’s hardware unexpectedly dying on your, having to re-install Linux from scratch, or just jumping to a new Linux distribution. When any of that happens, you need to spend a lot of time rebuilding the configuration that you had before.

Save Desktop helps make all of that easier. It creates a backup of your desktop — items like themes, wallpapers, icons, settings, fonts, and the like. And it does it quickly and easily.

When you start Save Desktop, you get a window that looks like this:

From there, you give your back a file name. Then, click Items to include in the configuration archive. This window pops up:

Select or deselect options and then click Apply. From there, click Save to create the backup. From there, you can click Sync to tell Save Desktop to transfer the backup file to another computer or a web-based storage service (like Nextcloud) that you use.

But what about when you need to restore the backup? Reinstall Save Desktop, click Import, find your backup file, and then click Import from file. You should be all set after that!

Text Compare

Say you have two very similar text files, or just two similar snippets of text. Figuring out how they differ isn’t always easy, unless you want to do the deed line by line, word by word. Sure, you could use a command line tool like diff or a text editor with a comparison function, but when it comes to doing that task I’ve developed a soft spot for a small graphical tool called Text Compare.

Text Compare consists of three panes: two for the text that you want to compare, and the third which highlights the differences in colour. Just paste your text in each column and then click the Compare button. Here’s what that looks like:

Nothing overengineered, just a simple tool that does its job quickly and efficiently.

— Scott Nesbitt

Using tree to List Directories and Files

15 July, 2025

It’s been a while since I shared a command line tip, so I thought it was time for another. In this tip, let’s look at the tree command.

If you’re at the command line and want to get a listing of files and folders, you’d usually run the ls command. However, you can get a more detailed view of files and folders with tree.

tree gives you a visual representation of the directory structure, making it easier to understand how your files and folders are organized. You can use it, for example, to visualize the structure of directories and subdirectories.

Basic Usage

To run the command, open a terminal window, navigate to a directory, and then type tree. You get something that looks like this:

If the output is too long, use | more to break it up, like this:

tree | more

Here’s what that looks like:

Press a key on your keyboard (the spacebar is my preferred key in this case) to move forward.

Other Options

Let’s look at a few tree’s other options. These are the ones that I find most useful. Your mileage may vary.

Add the -d option, as shown below, to list only directories.

tree -d

Do this when you only need to see a directory and its subfolders, and not individual files. Here’s an example:

To include full paths in the output, use the -p option, like this:

tree -p

That results in:

The -P [pattern] option list only certain files that match a specific pattern. Use this option to filter the output based on file types or naming conventions.

For example, if you type this:

tree -P "\*.md"

tree lists only files with the extension .md. In the example above, *.md is the pattern.

Here’s what that looks like:

You can sort what tree spits out by the time it was last modified using the -t option, as shown below.

tree -t

When I use the -t option, the most-recently modified files appear at the bottom of listing. I’m not sure if that’s the option’s default behaviour or if there’s a way of changing that.

That’s not everything that tree can do. To learn more about tree’s capabilities, see the documentation.

— Scott Nesbitt

Open Source and the Average Computer User

1 July, 2025

At the end of September, 2024 I finally did the deed and bought an electric vehicle — an MG4, in case you’re wondering. When I mentioned that to a acquaintance, who’s something of a petrol head, he half mockingly told me that by choosing an EV I’d sacrificed the ability to work on my own car.

As I told my acquaintance, that might be true but since I have 10 thumbs when comes to anything involving car maintenance (or anything mechanical) and I’ve never been one to crank on an engine, I haven’t sacrificed a single thing. I added that’s probably the case for a majority of car owners, too — whether they own an EV or one that burns hydrocarbons.

After that conversation, I realized what I said applies to free and open source software (FOSS) and to technology in general. Not everyone who uses FOSS has finely-honed technical skills. Not everyone who uses FOSS likes to get their hands dirty, likes to work in a terminal window, enjoys fiddling with configuration files, compiles their own software or kernels, or strings together complex toolchains to perform simple tasks.

Yes, there actually are people who use FOSS to do their work. To get things done. And to have some fun. Nothing more, nothing less.

That’s why more than a few average computer users who switch to Linux turn to distributions like Ubuntu, elementary OS, and Zorin OS. Those distributions come with a sensible set of defaults. Many, if not most, of those defaults suit most average computer users. The built-in software centres make installing new applications a breeze. None of those distributions is dumbing down Linux or making it too easy. They’re making Linux and FOSS accessible to a wider range of people. And I believe that’s a good thing.

I know that goes against the ethos/accepted wisdom/almost fanatical belief/whatever you want to call it of certain online technical communities. I’ll go out on a (short) limb and say that in the wider world of computer users, the denizens of those communities are the minority. Most people use computers, as I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, to get things done. They don’t view computers as playgrounds in which to indulge their inner geek. They don’t view computers as sources of endless technical fascination. They don’t view computers as an integral part of their lifestyles.

There’s no shame in being on either side of that divide, or even just somewhere in the middle. The FOSS world has more than enough space for all of us. At least, it does if we let it.

— Scott Nesbitt

Using wallabag on Your Desktop with Frigoligo

17 June, 2025

As part of my general reading and to gather fuel for my email letter¹, I collect and read more than a few articles from around the web. To do that, I use a read-it-later tool called wallabag. But I don’t always want to log into wallabag to read.

On my phone, I read articles using frigoligo. I discovered recently that there’s a desktop version Frigoligo, which I decided to try.

Here’s what I learned about it.

Installing Frigoligo

To do that, check your Linux distribution’s software centre. If you can’t find it there try installing it as a flatpak.

If you’re adventurous, you can also grab and compile the source code.

Getting Set Up

Before you can start using Frigoligo, you’ll need access to an instance of wallabag. That might be one you run yourself or one of the hosted versions of wallabag.

You’ll also need to set up an API client in wallabag so it and Frigoligo can communicate. That’s not as difficult as it sounds. You can find instructions for doing that here.

Reading with Frigoligo

Once you’ve set up Frigoligo, and if you have some articles already saved in wallabag, they display like this:

From there, scroll through the article to read it. Click the << icon to hide the articles list to make your reading feel a bit less claustrophobic.

Once you’ve finished reading an article, you can click either the Archive or Delete buttons in the article’s header bar to either back them up on wallabag or move them to wallabag’s trash bin.

The other buttons in the header bar enable you to view information about the article you’re reading (including the publication it’s from and the URL), add the articles to your favourites, share the article via email, and change the font and its size. More on this in a moment.

You can also save articles by clicking the three vertical dots at the top of the sidebar and then selecting Save link. In the dialog box that displays, copy the URL of the article and then click OK. Here’s an example:

Customizing Frigoligo

There are a few ways in which you can do that. The first and, to me, most important is changing the font. Click the Text (double T) icon in the header bar to display this fly-out at the bottom of the screen:

You can choose from these fonts:

• Lato.
• Montserrat.
• Literata.
• Newsreader.
• Atkinson Hyperlegible.

You can also increase or decrease the size of the fonts and set the alignment of text to left justified or fully justified.

To fiddle with Frigoligo’s other preferences, click the three vertical dots at the top of the sidebar and then select Settings. This screen displays:

You can change the application’s theme and have Frigoligo up to add a tag to an article when you save it.

What Frigoligo Can’t Do

You can’t highlight text or take notes. The latter appears to be part of the application’s roadmap, but it’s not clear when that will become a reality.

Also, you can’t export articles or groups of articles to another format like PDF or EPUB. You can’t print articles from Frigoligo, either.

Closing Thoughts

Of the two desktop wallabag clients I’ve used, I like Frigoligo better than Read It Later. Frigoligo gives me some continuity between my desktop and my phone when reading.

Frigoligo isn’t perfect, but for me (at least, so far) it’s the best wallabag client that I’ve used.

— Scott Nesbitt

Yet Another 3 Utilities for the Linux Desktop

3 June, 2025

Here’s another quick look at three useful little tools for the Linux desktop. Tools that can help you quickly and efficiently tackle some simple tasks, especially tasks that you don’t tackle regularly.

Let’s jump in, shall we?

Solanum

If you need to focus in short bursts to get things done, the Pomodoro technique can help you do that. Follow the link in the last sentence to learn more about.

At the core of the technique lies a timer. That’s where Solanum comes in: it’s a simple but effective Pomodoro timer.

Fire it up, and you see this:

Click the start button. The timer runs for 25 minutes. Yes, you can change that (more in a moment). When the timer runs down, you see this:

Click Start Break to take a five-minute rest, or click Skip.

To change how long a session runs, click the hamburger menu and then click Preferences. This screen displays:

You can change the length of a session (called a lap) and the length of your breaks.

As I mentioned a few paragraphs back, Solanum is simple but effective. As any good utility should be.

Simple Diary

If there’s something I’ve never been much good at, it’s keeping a journal. I’m still trying, using a command line tool called jrnl. If you prefer working on the desktop, Simple Diary makes journaling a breeze on the desktop.

Fire it up and then click the + icon on the toolbar. From there, select a date and enter a title for your journal entry. Here’s an example:

Click OK and start typing. Here’s what that looks like:

The interface is very minimal. You can (manually) add some basic Markdown like headings, bold, and italics. Click the Add Image button and either insert an image from a file or one that’s been copied to your clipboard.

When you’re done, click the arrow on the toolbar to view the journal entry, and then click that arrow again to go to a list of your journal entries:

Simple Diary isn’t for everyone. If you’re looking for a minimalist and distraction-free journaling app this could be it. That said, I’m not really a fan of the app’s icon …

Web Apps

Many of us use at least one web app. The traditional way of getting to those apps is via a web browser. But what if you could do that from your desktop with a click?

That’s not a new idea, and Web Apps is the latest in a line of utilities that works with your default web browser to help make that happen.

It’s easy to use. Start Web Apps and then click the + icon on the toolbar. From there, enter or paste the URL of the app that you want to turn into a shortcut. Here’s what that looks like:

After you click Add, there’s a short delay (while it connects to the app) and then a screen like this displays:

You can change the icon or the app’s name, show navigation buttons, and browse in incognito mode.

Once it’s installed, the app’s icon appears on your desktop or in your app menu. Click an icon to open the app, as shown below.

What you see is a browser window, but without the usual browser window adornments.

As you can see in the example above. Web Apps doesn’t just work with online tools; you can also use it with web-based publications as well.

A list of your installed web apps displays in the Web Apps window, as shown below.

From there, you can edit or delete your apps.

— Scott Nesbitt

My Early History with Linux

20 May, 2025

Linux has an undeserved reputation for being difficult to use. Especially for the average computer user. It’s a reputation that I believe is undeserved. That might have once been the case, but it hasn’t been true for the past 15 years or so.

I like to think I’m a good example of that. Why? I’m an arts graduate — specifically, someone with a degree in journalism. Despite working in the software sector for most of my professional life, my technical skills range from rudimentary to non existent. Yet I use Linux extensively in my daily life.

But how did I start using Linux, and free/open source software in general? Join me for a little trip down memory lane.

Starting with Windows

In the early 1990s, I bought my second ever computer¹: a 486 running Windows 3.1. While it was nice to have a graphical user interface, there were things I just didn’t like about Windows. And, at that time, Microsoft’s well-documented predatory and monopolistic behaviour was starting to become widely known outside of technology circles.

I didn’t feel comfortable or happy supporting a company like that, but there weren’t many alternatives. The Amiga and the Atari ST were in their waning days. Macs, which I’d used a bit in university, were way out of my price range². But in or around 1994, a techie friend told me in breathless terms about something called Linux.

I was intrigued. And after doing a bit of investigation, I was even more intrigued. At that time Linux wasn’t exactly easy to install and set up. There was more than a little fiddling and editing of configuration files required, and some compiling needed to be done — fiddling which I wasn’t (and am still not) up to tackling. On top of that, there were very few graphical applications for the Linux desktop in those early days.

Over the next few years, I regularly checked up on how Linux was moving forward, with the vague thought that maybe one day it would be in a state in which I could use it.

That one day came in 1999.

Making the Switch

In 1999, my Day Job^TM was technical writer at a medium-sized software company. Off the clock, I was writing for various small publications and doing a bit of other freelance writing. All of that I did on a desktop computer running Windows 98.

One evening, while finishing up a document for a client, Windows 98 crashed. Hard. Taking a good chunk of the document that I’d sweated over with it. I was, as you can guess, less than happy. Luckily, I had good notes and remembered the thrust of most of what I’d written. Still, it took several hours to recover what had been lost.

A week and a half later, still chafing from that incident, I found myself whiling away some time at a Business Depot location in downtown Toronto. There, in a bin by the software section, I found a box containing a CD for Caldera OpenLinux. The price tag on the box was marked down to $20. Not a huge amount, so I decided to take a chance. That was one of the best $20 I’ve ever spent.

A few days later, I popped the CD into a Pentium 300 PC that my wife handed down to me after she bought a newer, faster computer. I followed the installation instructions and was surprised at how smoothly and quickly (at least, for the time) the process went. Within 40 minutes I had a brand new operating system on which I could work and with which I could learn.

Using Linux, The Early Days

I can’t say that I immediately felt at home on the Linux desktop, but then again I wasn’t lost or flailing. The desktop environment in Caldera OpenLinux wasn’t so different from Windows that I couldn’t gradually adapt to it. Sure, there were a few quirks here and there but nothing too challenging to overcome. It just took a little time and a bit of patience.

My initial worries about crashes and blue screens quickly faded, and I got more and more productive with Linux to the point where I was doing all of my freelance and consulting work using it. Admittedly, at the time I was using a mix of proprietary software (like Corel WordPerfect) and free software (like OpenOffice), though I eventually moved to an all FOSS setup. I got work done just as quickly and efficiently as I did on Windows. Maybe ever faster and more efficiently.

My first Linux system also enabled me to grow professionally. At the time, I’d started working the first of a few jobs at which my employers used UNIX or UNIX-like systems. Learning the basics of the command line and its tools gave me a skill which, among others I might have had, those employers found useful.

As a freelance writer, I started penning paid articles and (later) posts on my personal blog about Linux, its software, and my experiences with all of that. Writing those articles and posts was a good way to learn and to share what I’d learned. It also earned me a few bucks. But, of course, that work drew more than a bit of ire and criticism from certain corners of the online world. Mainly from nitpicking, pedantic, and seemingly thin-skinned individuals who took offense at a non techie invading their secret digital garden. Whatever …

That computer sat on my desktop for about three years, after which I switched to a series of laptops. The first of those, with Linux preinstalled (a novelty at the time!), I bought from a now gone and forgotten Canadian vendor called Sub 500 Computers³. When an acquaintance gave me a CD with Ubuntu 5.10 on it a year or two later, my Linux world changed for the better. Ubuntu made Linux easier and more enjoyable to use, and I’ve used with (with a detour or two) since them.

Aside from a couple of dalliances with chromeOS over the years, I haven’t run a proprietary operating system on my own computers since the turn of the century. Happily and productively, in case you’re wondering.

No Regrets

After adopting Linux, my computing world changed for the better. While I still had to use one of those other operating systems, and the proprietary software that went with them, at many a Day Job^TM I at least had Linux to fall back on for doing what mattered most.

As I told a friend, I’m actually more comfortable using Linux than using Windows or macOS. People argue that the latter are better because of … whatever reasons. But I always feel less productive, less comfortable, and just diminished as someone who works with technology when I have to work on those platforms. I don’t feel that I’m missing out on anything with my embrace of Linux and free/open source software.

For years, people have talked about each year being the year of Linux on the desktop. The year of Linux on my desktop was 1999. Linux has stayed on my various desktops over the last 26 years. And it’s only gotten better and easier to use as the decades have passed.

— Scott Nesbitt

Planning Your Week with WeekToDo

6 May, 2025

Over the last little while, I’ve been looking at several planner/todo list management programs for the desktop. It’s not that I’m searching for a replacement for todo.txt. My wanderings, as many of them are, stem from curiosity.

I’m not overly impressed by most such applications I’ve seen. They’re a bit too complex for my tastes and needs — I’m one of those people who believes that planning and task management should be quick and simple.

In December, 2024 I stumbled across WeekToDo. Its developer calls WeekToDo a planner, and it deviates from my idea of a minimalist or daily task list. Still, it intrigued me.

Let’s take a look at WeekToDo.

Getting the Software

You know what I’m going to say … You can install WeekToDo:

• Using your Linux distribution’s software centre,
• As a snap,
• As an AppImage, or
• As a .deb, .rpm, or .pacman installer — see the download page for links.

Oh, yeah, there are also installers for those other two operating systems.

Using WeekToDo

When you start WeekToDo, you get placeholders for this week’s tasks, broken down by day. Here’s what that looks like:

There are also additional lists at the bottom: a custom list, a grocery list, and an ideas list. You can delete them and/or add others. More on the latter in a few moments.

Add tasks to a day by clicking on a blank line, typing a description of the task, and pressing Enter. There doesn’t seem to be a limit to the number of tasks you can add to a day’s list. That said, if you have more than four or five tasks, you should perhaps consider rethinking how you do things.

Adding Detail to Tasks

You can add more information to a task by holding your mouse pointer over the task and then clicking the three vertical dots that display. This pop up window displays:

You can:

• Add a time at which the task must be done:
  
• Set an alarm:
  
• Make the task recurring:
  
• Add a coloured dot to the task to make it stand out:
  
• Add one or more sub tasks
  

To complete a task, click on it. The task gets struck out and you can move on to the next one.

Adding Lists

Remember the lists I mentioned a few paragraphs back? With them, you can add other information that you need to keep track of or handle. Like, say, a shopping list or items you’d jot in a scratchpad.

To add one, click the New Custom List icon in the sidebar on the left of the application. This displays:

Type a name for the list, press Enter, and away you go. Repeat that for each custom list that you want to add.

Your custom lists persist across weeks until you delete them.

Some Things to Note

You can’t add tags to a task, nor can you zoom in on a particular day’s tasks.

If you don’t have the application’s window maximized, the descriptions of your tasks might be truncated, especially if you have a smaller screen. You can get a full view of your tasks by either:

• Maximizing the window, or
• Hovering over a task in a list to see the full description.

Here’s WeekToDo with its window maximized:

There’s also a slightly annoying sponsor blurb that displays when you start WeekToDo. It’s not huge and only appears for a few seconds. Still …

Changing Settings

To do that, click the cog icon in the sidebar on the left side of the application’s window. This screen displays:

You can change options like:

• Whether or not to display calendars and custom lists.
• Whether or not your week starts on Monday.
• What happens to tasks once you’ve completed them.
• Display settings (like dark mode and whether or not to display the details of a task in full screen mode).
• The language of the user interface.

For most people, how WeekToDo behaves out of the box is probably enough.

Final Thoughts

WeekToDo reminds me of an application called Planner (which I looked at in a previous post). WeekToDo, though, is a bit more stripped down — there’s no inbox, no concept of projects, or anything like that.

WeekToDo’s strength is that it gives you a view of what you need to do over the space of a week. And it does that in a clean, simple way.

WeekToDo isn’t for me. But give it a try. It might be the todo list or planning application that you’re looking for.

— Scott Nesbitt

Some Ideas That Just Didn’t Work Out

15 April, 2025

When you write, you hope that all of the ideas that pop into your head lead somewhere. Often, that’s the case. Just as often, you get ideas that don’t pan out, in which you lose interest, or which collapse under their own weight.

Let’s peel back the curtain at Open Source Musings and look at some ideas for posts (one or two of which were suggested by readers) that didn’t go anywhere.

Logseq

When I first heard of Logseq, I thought it was an application for viewing and analyzing system log files. Nope! As it turns out, Logseq is one of the raft of so-called personal knowledge management tools that have become all the rage in certain circles.

In 2024, I spent some time with Logseq. It reminded me of a similar application called Obsidian, which I looked at elsewhere. Everything I said about Obsidian applies to Logseq. While I took about three pages of notes about Logseq, I just didn’t feel like repeating myself in this space so the post went into the digital dustbin.

Zen Browser

The consensus, at least in some corners of the online world, is that the development of web browsers has become moribund. That web browsers have become boring. I’m not sure if there’s anything wrong with the latter, but OK …

One new browser I’ve been hearing quite a bit about is Zen Browser. There are people who go ga-ga for it. There are others who decry it as a knock off of another browser called Arc.

After taking Zen Browser for a lengthy test drive, I didn’t see why either camp feels the way they do. To my eye, Zen Browser is just Firefox (on which it’s based) with a slightly different face. To be honest, after a few days I got bored with Zen Browser and uninstalled it.

Various Utilities

I love a good, simple application — whether running graphically on the desktop or at the command line — that does one or two things and does those one or two things well.

If you’ve been reading this space for any length of time, you know that I’ve written about more than a few pieces of software like that. But what you don’t know is that for every utility that I write about, there are two or three that fall to the wayside.

Why’s that, you ask? Often, those utilities don’t work in the ways in which I hoped they would. Sometimes, they’re just too complex. And some just don’t click with me. In any of those cases, it’s not worth the time and effort to write about them.

Gnumeric

When it comes to spreadsheets, my needs are simple. Very simple. In fact, for most of what I do spreadsheet editors like LibreOffice Calc and Calligra Sheets are overkill. Still, I use the former because it’s there.

But I’ve always liked Gnumeric, though I haven’t used it in many a year. I started planning a post about Gnumeric, but abandoned the idea. It would have been a short post and would literally, because of how I use a spreadsheet editor, only scratch Gnumeric’s surface. I just wouldn’t have been able to do that piece of software the justice it deserves.

— Scott Nesbitt

Viewing Files on the Linux Desktop with Papers

1 April, 2025

Whenever possible, I try to use the desktop applications that come bundled with the Linux distributions that I run rather than installing an alternative. That doesn’t always work out, but that doesn’t stop me from giving it a go.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been using the Document Viewer (also known as Evince) app to read PDFs on whatever desktop on which I’ve been working. It’s a solid piece of software that, while relatively simple, does a good job. I’ve never really thought about replacing it.

I’ve known about an alternative to Document Viewer, called Papers, for a while now but until recently I resisted using it. Curiosity got the better of me some time ago and I installed Papers on my laptop.

Let’s wade into what I learned about Papers.

Installing Papers

I think you know what I’m going to say here, so I’ll make it short. Install Papers using:

• Your Linux distribution’s software centre, or
• As a flatpak.

Getting Started

When you start Papers, this screen displays:

Click Open and you can search for these types of files: PDF, TIFF, DjVu, XPS, and Comic Books (meaning comic book archives. Of those formats, I work mostly with PDF files, so I can only talk about how Papers handles them.

Moving around a file is easy. Of course, you can scroll through one. You can also use the sidebar to jump to a page — this is especially useful if the file has been created with a set of bookmarks (which acts like a navigation pane).

The search function in Papers isn’t too bad. To use it, press Ctrl+F and the search sidebar displays. Type a word or phrase to find and, after a few seconds, Papers displays the results. Here’s what that looks like:

I tried Papers with PDFs of varying sizes — from a few dozen kilobytes to tens of megabytes — and they all opened quickly and navigation was smooth, even on my somewhat underpowered StarLite Mk. IV.

One habit of Papers that I find kind of annoying is that it opens files in new windows. I’m more of a tabbed interface person — mainly because tabs keep down the number of windows and keeps my desktop neater. That said, I rarely have multiple PDFs open at one time so this isn’t a huge problem for me.

Other Features

Papers doesn’t have many of those. You can:

• Zoom in and out.
• Show or hide the sidebar.
• Go full screen or into presentation mode. The latter treats pages like individual slides in a slide deck. This is useful when you use PDF slides during a talk.
• View a document’s properties (like its author and publisher information, date of creation, and what was used to create it).
• Print the file.
• View annotations in a file (if any).

Pages also has a dark mode, called Night Mode. Here’s what that looks like:

Document Viewer packs several of the features that I listed above as well, but Papers does all of the above (and a bit more) wrapped in a slightly more modern-looking package.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I find Papers to be a slightly better file viewer than Document Viewer for my needs. It’s more compact and has a more contemporary interface. What I like about Papers, though, is that it doesn’t try be a one-for-one copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader. Papers does what I need it to do and very little else which is OK by me.

— Scott Nesbitt

4 More FOSS Android Apps

25 March, 2025

Here’s another look at some FOSS apps for Android-powered smartphones, specifically four such apps I’ve installed which I find (or have found) useful.

While you can probably install most, if not all, of these apps from a certain tech giant’s app store, I’ll be pointing you to F-Droid instead.

Frigoligo

I don’t read on my phone all that much, at least compared to the amount I did read on that phone before 2020. There are a few reasons for that, ranging from the size of a phone’s screen to not always having my glasses handy.

When I do read on my phone, it’s mainly long-form articles. As you might recall from a previous post, I’ve returned to using wallabag as my read-it-later tool of choice. wallabag’s mobile app is OK, but I prefer using an app called Frigoligo for several reasons. Frigoligo has a more modern design, gives me more control over the fonts that I use, and it works a bit more smoothly than the wallabag app.

To use Frigoligo, you need an account with an instance of wallabag. That could be self hosted or one of the hosted versions. You’ll also need to do a bit of setup, which I describe in this post. Once you’ve done that, refresh Frigoligo and you’ll see something like this:

Tap an article to read it. Here’s what that looks like:

When you’re done, you can archive or delete the article, which does the same at wallabag’s end. Simple, but effective.

EVMap

While I drive an electric vehicle, I don’t suffer from range anxiety. I don’t (yet) have a home charger, but I know where the public chargers in my area are. When I’m driving long distances, though, that’s not always the case. Planning my route, and any charging stop I need to make, is easier with an app called EVMap.

As its name implies, EVMap points out where charging stations are in an area that you choose. You can zoom in from, say, city or country level to specific locations on a map, like in the example below.

Tap a location and you get some information about the charger there — for example, the address, the number and types of chargers, and even one or more photos. Here’s an example:

You can apply and save filters that let you customize what you see on a map, like:

• The types of chargers.
• Chargers that are part of specific charging networks.
• Chargers of at least a minimum capacity that you set.
• Whether to show locations that have chargers with faults.

And more. You can also bookmark the chargers that you use most often. Best of all, the app can display on my car’s infotainment screen so I (or, at least, my human copilot) can check it. Here’s what that looks like:

The only real drawback of EVMap (if you want to call it a drawback) is that it uses a service called Open Charge Map, which isn’t always up to date. You can, however, sign up for a free Open Charge Map account and add or edit charging locations.

Phocid

When I’m out and about, I listen to music to both keep myself from getting bored and to block out the noise around me. Auxio is my Android music player of choice, but that doesn’t stop me from occasionally trying out others. Of the music players I’ve test driven recently, one that has the potential to replace Auxio on my phone is Phocid.

One of the reasons for that is Phocid has a very clean interface, as you can see:

And here it is playing a song:

Phocid works smoothly and quickly, which is surprising considering how many features it packs. Those features include:

• Creating an editing playlists.
• Sorting by album, artist, track, genre, and playlist.
• Displaying album artwork and lyrics (or not).
• Changing various playback settings.
• Modifying the app’s theme.

And a bit more. All in all, Phocid’s a nice little music player.

PDF Wallet

Back when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, I (like most people) needed a vaccine certificate for certain purposes. The government’s website, from which I downloaded said pass, suggested using Google’s or Apple’s mobile wallet app to store the document. I wasn’t comfortable with those options. Instead, I turned to PDF Wallet (known, at the time, as Green Pass PDF Wallet).

The app isn’t just for vaccine certificates. You can use it to securely store and display (when needed) documents like certificates, tickets, bills, contracts, cards, or anything with a barcode or QR code that you can scan.

To use PDF Wallet, tap Add in the app, select a PDF file on your phone, and you’re done. The PDFs display either as a set of scrolling images or, as shown below, in a list.

PDF Wallet has a few options, which you can see here:

The most useful of these (besides the one to display your PDFs as a list) are:

• Use your phone’s passcode to unlock the app.
• Use the app from your phone’s lock screen.
• Display your PDFs at maximum brightness always. This helps barcode scanners better detect them.

PDF Wallet doesn’t have all that many features, but it is quick and simple which is perfect for my needs.

— Scott Nesbitt

Filling in a PDF Form with Firefox

11 March, 2025

It all started when my wife needed to fill in a PDF form. A file that, frustratingly, wasn’t created as a fillable PDF. The other problem was that she couldn’t find an adequate tool in the Zorin OS software centre to do the deed. Yes, I know a few such applications exist but neither of us liked the ones we tried.

That’s when my wife turned to Firefox which, as you might know, has a built-in PDF viewer. The viewer also enables you to do some basic PDF editing, including adding text and images to a file.

Let’s take a quick look at how to fill in a non-fillable PDF form using Firefox (or a browser derived from Firefox like Librewolf).

I know some people don’t like Firefox or Mozilla. I get that. But that’s their axe to grind and I don’t want to hear about.

To edit a PDF in Firefox, first open the file in the browser. You can do that (at least in Zorin OS and Ubuntu) by finding the PDF in your distribution’s file manager, right clicking on it, and then choosing Open with another application. In the window that displays, select Firefox and then click Select.

When you do that, not only does the PDF open but a toolbar displays in the top-right corner of the PDF viewer window. Here’s what the looks like:

On the toolbar, click the Text icon (it looks like a capital T) and then click in a field or box in the PDF. From there, start typing. Here’s an example:

Keep doing that until you’ve filled in the entire form.

You can also add image to the PDF — for example, a scanned signature. To do that click the Add or edit images icon on the PDF toolbar and then select + Add image. Find the image in the file selector that displays and then click Select.

The image hovers over the PDF. You can resize it and drag it into place. Here’s an example of a signature being added to a form:

Remember to save the PDF file to your computer once you’re done or if need to get back to the PDF later — for example, you have to get more information, which might take a bit of time to gather. If you don’t, you’ll lose your edits.

But what about PDF files that are fillable? You can work with those using the PDF viewer in Firefox. Again, don’t forget to save the file after you’ve finished with it. If you don’t, you’ll lose your changes.

— Scott Nesbitt

Bringing a Thesaurus to Your Desktop with Artha

25 February, 2025

One set of tools that many a writer relies upon is a pile of reference books. That pile might be high or it might only contain a couple or three volumes. One such reference book that I’ve found useful over the years is a thesaurus.

Sadly, my rather large set of dead-trees references (including a pair of thesauruses) had to be passed to new homes when I moved overseas. While I can access a thesaurus or two in my web browser, I’ve found another way to do that: with a desktop application called Artha.

Artha works by communicating with WordNet, a a large lexical database of English. It’s surprisingly effective and flexible, too.

Let’s take a quick look at the basics of using Artha.

Getting Artha

There are several ways you can try to install it on your desktop:

• Using your Linux distribution’s software centre.
• From your distribution’s package manager.
• As a flatpak.
• By downloading it from Sourceforge.

Using Artha

When you start Artha, it looks like this:

Artha doesn’t pack the most modern user interface, I admit, but what it lacks in aesthetic appeal Artha makes up for in flexibility.

Let’s say you need to find an alternative to a word. Type the word in Query field and press Enter. Artha displays a list of synonyms. In the example below, I was looking synonym for the word funicular.

Notice the tabs in the lower half of Artha’s screen? Depending on the word, those tabs give you additional information about the word you’re searching for, including:

• Synonyms (which is probably what you’re looking for).
• Words that are derived from your search term.
• Words that your search term relates to.
• Similar words.
• The kind of or part of — for example, a kind of plant or part of a species.

And more.

Here’s an example:

You can double click a word on any of those tabs to get more information about it.

in Artha’s documentation.

Using Regular Expressions

You can also search using various regular expressions. My regular expression kung fu is incredibly weak, and I haven’t found a need to do much more than an wildcard search.

You’d do that if you’re not sure about the spelling of a word. Just add and asterisk (*) somewhere in word you’re looking for to broaden the search.

In the example below, I’m looking for words that contain ante. The wildcard helps

Final Thoughts

Artha is a very flexible desktop thesaurus. It comes in handy when I’m at a loss for a word’s synonym. While I don’t turn to Artha all that often, I’m glad that it’s just a click away when I need it.

— Scott Nesbitt

Working with Todo.txt on the Desktop with Sleek

4 February, 2025

As someone who lives as much of their life in plain text as I can, a script called todo.txt has for years been a near-perfect tool to help me keep track of my tasks. Not that I’ve been completely faithful to todo.txt, though. I use it for long periods, drift away from it, then come back.

In late 2024, I went back to using todo.txt after an extended period of tracking what I needed to do using pen and paper. While I’m not averse to cracking open a terminal window from time to time, I prefer to work graphically on my desktop. While there are a number of graphical front ends to todo.txt, not all of them are as stripped down as I prefer. And the minimalist app Yishu (which I glanced at in a previous post) is no longer available.

Enter Sleek. It’s a simple, yet effective, way to use todo.txt on the desktop. Let’s take a quick look at it.

Getting Sleek

Tell me if you’ve heard any of this before …

First, check your Linux distribution’s software/app centre. Sleek will probably be available there. If not, you can install it either as a flatpak or a snap.

You can also download some Linux installers, the application’s source code, or installers for those other two operating systems.

Using Sleek

When you first start Sleek, it’s a blank canvas. You need to point it to an existing todo.txt file or create one. Do that by going to the File menu and then choosing either Open a File or Create a File. If you choose the former, all of your existing tasks display.

To add a task, click the + button. This pops up:

Enter a description of the task and then, optionally, add:

• A priority.
• A due date.
• A date on which to display tasks that you need to start in the future (called the threshold date for some reason).
• How often the task repeats.

When you’re finished, click Add. Then, rRepeat that for every task that you need to add.

Here’s what a list of tasks looks like:

But don’t just accumulate tasks, actually do them. Unless you complete those tasks, Sleek is nothing but a repository of todos that will haunt and taunt you. To knock a task off the list, click the circle beside it.

Other Functions

There aren’t that many of them, to be honest. Here are the main ones:

• Use multiple todo.txt files (which display as tabs at the top of Sleek’s window, enabling you to easily jump between them).
• Filter and sort tasks (this is especially useful if you have a lot of tasks with different due dates or priorities).
• Set notifications (though I never could get that to work).

Some Settings

You can, to a point, configure Sleek to fit your needs. Here’s the Setting window (which you can open by selecting Sleek > Settings from the menu bar.

I’ve turned most of those off.

Any Drawbacks?

I don’t think there are all that many, and none of them are showstoppers for me. Mainly, I find the menu bar and the Sleek logo in the sidebar distracting. You can hide the sidebar; the menu bar still displays after I turn it off in the settings.

Here’s what the application looks like with the sidebar hidden:

Other than that, there’s not a lot that bothers me about Sleek. In fact, it’s a good choice if you want to use todo.txt to track your tasks without needing to jump to the command line. Sleek lets you take advantage of a simple and effective task management tool in a familiar environment.

— Scott Nesbitt

A(nother) Restatement of Aims

14 January, 2025

Every so often, I find myself writing a post like this. Since it’s been almost two years since I last did that, I figured that it’s time do another ones of these posts.

I’ve been writing — in paying publications and on my own blogs — about Linux and free and open source software (FOSS) since the early years of this century. In that time, I’ve copped a lot of criticism and negativity from people in certain circles.

Some of that criticism has been constructive and helpful. Much of it, though, has been snarky or downright hostile. Then general thrust is that since I’m:

• Not using what my critics are using,
• Not using Linux and FOSS in way they do or the way they think I should,
• Not using the prescribed Linux distribution of the moment,
• Catering to a non-technical audience, and
• Am putting forward an opinion that differs from theirs

That I’m doing things in the wrong way and demonstrating to the world that I don’t know what I’m talking about. And that since I’m not focusing on more technical topics, what I write isn’t valid and doesn’t have value.

It might not sound like it, but I’m OK with that sort of criticism. I’ve been on the receiving end of criticism like that since I began writing professionally. I can let the bad stuff roll off me.

My critics, though, don’t seem to understand what I’m all about and who I write for. I natter on a lot about people who I call average computer users. Folks who use computers daily, but aren’t technically inclined or want to be. People who aren’t writing code or hacking on hardware. People for whom Python is a constricting snake and who never open a terminal window. No, not all computer users are techies or are interested in becoming techies.

The average computer user — not the developer or DevOps person or system administrator — is my audience. It’s an audience that definitely doesn’t include most of the denizens of Hacker News, Reddit, OSNews, and wherever else.

I write for people like myself: people who are looking for ways in which to get things done and to make their computing lives a bit easier. And who want to do that with open software and open formats.

There’s a place for everyone in the Linux and FOSS world, regardless of their technical chops (or lack thereof). Because you don’t script or program or spend most of your time at the command line doesn’t make you less of a user of FOSS than anyone else. Because you use, say, Ubuntu or elementary OS doesn’t make you less of a Linux user than anyone else.

My goal is to write for that average computer user. My goal is to write in way they can easily understand, to focus on topics that interest them. My goal is to share my love of Linux and FOSS with people who might only know the closed, proprietary universes of Windows or macOS.

If that’s not you, that’s OK. You know where the Back button is.

— Scott Nesbitt

4 FOSS Android Apps

31 December, 2024

It’s easy to forget that free and open source (FOSS) doesn’t only live on the desktop or on a server. You can also find (or, at least, install) it on a smartphone. Well, if you know where to look and what to look for.

In a bit of a departure from what I’ve posted over the last few months, here’s a look at a quartet of FOSS apps for Android that I regularly use.

While you can probably install most, if not all, of these apps from a certain tech giant’s app store, I’ll be pointing you to F-Droid instead.

Auxio

I’ve used a lot of music players on the various phones I’ve owned over the years. Some were good, others just didn’t work out. Of that bunch, my favourite is one that I stumbled upon a few years ago: Auxio.

Auxio supports several audio formats, including MP3, ogg, and WAV. You can view your music in lists of individual tracks, albums, and artists. You can also create playlists and add songs to them.

Here’s Auxio in action:

My only complaints about Auxio are 1) it doesn’t always retain the shuffle settings (especially after an update), and 2) I can’t edit playlists. Other than that, Auxio is the perfect music player for me.

Catima

Most of us have at least one loyalty or discount card. Probably more than one. It’s easy to forget or lose a card or, if you’re like me and use a minimal wallet, don’t have space for it.

Catima helps with that. It’s a simple digital wallet for your cards. Just tap a tile (like one of the ones below) and your card displays.

If your screen locks, the card’s barcode is visible on your home screen when you power the screen back on.

There are several ways to add a card: scan its barcode, type the barcode manually, or point Catima to an image or PDF. Here’s a look:

You can also back up your collection of cards and move it to another phone (or just to have a copy that you can restore should anything bad happen).

Unlauncher

Until recently, I thought that the minimalist launchers that so many people tout were a bit of a silly indulgence. But then I started using Unlauncher and my tune quickly changed.

Unlauncher replaces the icons on your phone with the names of those apps. Here’s what that looks like:

You can choose what appears on the home screen and change the name that displays. In the image above, for example, Podcasts is Escapepod (which I look at below). Swipe up from the bottom of the screen to see an alphabetical list of all of the apps on your phone. Here’s an example:

Escapepod

Like much of the software I use, my needs when it comes to a podcast player are quite simple. That’s why I use Escapepod.

There are a couple of ways to get going with it. You can import your podcast subscriptions from another device or app in a file format called OPML. Or you can tap Add podcast and type the name of the podcast to which you want to subscribe. Then, select the podcast from the list that displays and tap Add. Rinse and repeat for each podcast on you must-listen list.

In case you’re wondering, here’s a look at the ones to which I subscribe:

From there, pull down from the top of the app to download the latest episodes. Or, you can tap All Episodes beside the name of a podcast and download older episodes one by one. From there, you tap the play icon. Here’s Escapepod playing an edition of my favourite podcasts:

Since I’ve been using it, Escapepod has only choked on two podcasts — while I could subscribe to those podcasts, for some reason it wouldn’t download the episodes.

— Scott Nesbitt

Managing Your Tasks with Errands

10 December, 2024

For the last year or so, I’ve been using a paper notebook and a pencil to manage my tasks. Recently, though, I decided to try going digital again. While I settled on using Todo.txt, mainly because it’s simple and uses plain text, I did test drive a few desktop todo list applications as well.

They all had their good points, but none were quite right for me. One that I liked more than a bit with was Errands. It’s a relatively simple, but effective, task management app for the GNOME desktop. Let’s jump in to it.

Getting Errands

You’ve probably heard me say this before: check your Linux distribution’s software centre — you should be able to install Errands from there. If not, or if you just want to do the deed another way, install it from Flathub.

Installation doesn’t take very long. Before you know it, Errands will be ready to run.

Getting Started

When you first fire up Errands, you see this window:

To get going, click Create List (which lets you group tasks by type — for example, Blogging or Side Gig). This is something I find a bit annoying, not just with Errands but with a few other task management tools as well. To be honest, I don’t group my tasks. Creating a list should be optional. But when using Errands and all that …

In the dialog box that displays, enter a name for your task list and then click Add. Rinse and repeat for each list that you need. Just so you can see what it looks like, here are some task lists in Errands:

In case you’re wondering, Errands assigns each task list a colour. I couldn’t find a way to change those colours.

From there, you can add a task by clicking on a list, typing something meaningful in the Add new Task field, and then pressing Enter. Here are some tasks in Errands:

See that little icon to the right of each task? Click that to add any or all of these to the task:

• A due date.
• A note about the task.
• A priority.
• A tag.
• An attachment.

Here’s what that looks like:

You’ll need to click the icons to get details of each item after you add them.

When you’ve completed a task, click the circle beside the task’s name.

It’s easy to add a task to the wrong list. To get around that in Errands, you can drag and drop tasks to move them between lists.

Syncing Tasks

If you want to share your tasks across more than one device, Errands can help. At least, to a point. You can sync your tasks with the Tasks app in Nextcloud (an open source file syncing/sharing/collaboration tool) or to a server using something called CalDAV.

To set up syncing, click the stacker menu, click Preferences, and then click the Sync tab. You’ll see this window:

Select either CalDAV or Nextcloud from the dropdown list. Then enter this information:

• Server URL
• Username
• Password

After that, click Test. If all goes well, you’ll connect to the server.

From there, close the window, click the stacker menu, and choose Sync / Fetch Tasks.

I didn’t try hooking Errands into a server using CalDAV, but I did try it with Nextcloud. The results were .. well, a bit surprising. When I synced the two, Errands didn’t pull my existing tasks down from Nextcloud. Errands pulled down task lists from Nextcloud (even though they had the same names as the ones in Errands) and showed the number of tasks in each list. When I clicked a list, it was empty. But my task lists and the tasks from Errands were uploaded to Nextcloud. So, if you’re planning on using the two together, create your lists in Errands first. Then, sync to an empty Tasks app in Nextcloud.

Preferences in Errands

There’s not a lot you can do to customize Errands. If you want to try fiddling with the settings, click the stacker menu and then click Preferences. You’ll see this window:

You can change:

• The application’s theme.
• The way in which Errands sorts tasks in a list.
• Whether or not:
  • It sends notifications to your desktop when a task is due.
  • The application window is hidden instead of closing it.
  • To start Errands when you log into your desktop.

For the most part, you can stick with the defaults.

Final Thoughts

To be honest, I like Errands. It has most of what I want in a desktop task management application. However, there are two drawbacks for me. The first is having to create at least one task list. Sure, I can create a catch-all one, but why should I do even that? My preference is for a more free-form list.

The second drawback is that it stores tasks in a single JSON file. I’d prefer my tasks to be in a plain text file with a format that’s more easily readable. Which is one of the reasons I went back to using Todo.txt.

If you need a simple task management application, give Errands a look. It might not pack all of the features that similar applications do, but it’s light and quick. For most of us, Errands is all we really need.

— Scott Nesbitt

Bringing wallabag to the Desktop with Read It Later

26 November, 2024

I read quite a few articles — both shorter and long form — for my own edification and enjoyment and as fuel for my weekly email letter¹.

When I don’t have time to read an article when I find it, I chuck it into a real-it-later application. Until early November, 2024 that application was Omnivore. However, Omnivore went away so I returned to an old favourite: wallabag. But I don’t always want to read the articles that I save in wallabag’s web interface or using the mobile app.

That’s where Read It Later comes in. It’s a desktop application that hooks into wallabag, letting you read what you’ve saved without firing up a web browser and logging in. When I first tried Read It Later a couple or so years back, it crashed even before I could connect to wallabag. I decided to give it another go after switching back to wallabag, and here’s what I found.

Before You Install Read It Later

To use Read It Later, you’ll need access to an instance of wallabag. That might be one you run yourself or one of the hosted versions of wallabag. It’s up to you how you do it; I use a hosted version.

In wallabag, you’ll also need to set up something called an API client. Doing that sounds techie; it’s anything but. The client is just some settings that enable another application connect to wallabag. To set up the API client, click the My account menu at the top right of the wallabag screen, then click Create a New Client. From there, give the client a name and then click Create a New Client. Here’s an example:

You wind up with something like this:

Keep the Client ID and Client secret, along with wallabag’s URL and your login information, handy. You’ll need them in a moment.

Installing and Setting Up Read It Later

You can install it via Flathub or as a snap. Check your Linux distribution’s software centre; it might be available from there, too.

When you first fire up Read It Later, this window appears:

Enter the information required to connect to your instance of wallabag, then click Log In. Once you do that, and Read It Later successfully connects to wallabag, the application pulls in the articles that you’ve saved. How long the process takes depends on the number of articles that you have.

Here’s what Read It Later looks like when it’s done the job:

Using Read It Later

That’s pretty simple. Find an article in the list, select it, and the article opens in reading view. Here’s an example:

When you’ve finished reading, either select:

• Archive to keep a copy of the article on Read It Later’s Archive tab.
• The three vertical dots in the top-right corner of the screen and then select Delete to get rid of the article.

Then read, rinse, and repeat.

You can also:

• Press Ctrl+O on your keyboard while reading an article to open it in a web browser.
• Click the Favorite icon to add the article to Read It Later’s Favorites tab to have it handy if you want to quickly find it again later.
• While on Read It Later’s main screen, press Ctrl+N to pop up the window below, which you can use to add an article to wallabag.
  

What It Doesn’t Do

Read It Later, as it stands now, is pretty basic. It’s a reader and little else. You can’t:

• Highlight portions of the article that you’re reading.
• Add notes to an article.
• Change the font or the size of the font.
• Adjust the alignment or width of the text.

For some people, any or all of those are probably deal breakers. I have to admit I find the inability to set fonts to be a bit frustrating. That said, if you’re looking for quick and easy way of getting through your reading backlog without firing up a web browser and logging into wallabag, Read It Later isn’t a bad alternative².

— Scott Nesbitt

Another 3 Utilities for the Linux Desktop

12 November, 2024

Here’s another quick look at three useful little tools for the Linux desktop. Tools that can help you quickly and efficiently tackle some simple tasks, especially tasks that you don’t tackle regularly.

Let’s jump in, shall we?

Blanket

I’m a fan of ambient music, and have quite a collection of it. I often listen to various elements of that collection to relax or help me focus while I’m working. That said, sometimes I’m not in the mood for music.

What do I do instead? I fire up a little app called Blanket and relax or stay focused with real-world sounds. Those sounds include various types of weather, sounds from the outdoors, and sounds from urban environments. You can also add sounds you’ve recorded or have downloaded from wherever on the web.

Here’s a look at Blanket in action:

Time Cop

One of the necessary evils of working for a living — whether you’re an employee or a contractor — is having to log the time you spend doing various tasks. There are so many ways in which you can track the time you work. And you can make that task simple or complex.

On the simple side, there’s an easy-to-use utility called Time Cop. To use it, you enter a short description of the task you’re tackling, and then click the Start Timer button. Here’s an example:

You can pause and resume tasks, as well as have multiple tasks in your queue. You can also group tasks by project and export your tasks as a .CSV file to share with your employer or a client.

Morphosis

I make no secret of the fact that I use pandoc quite regularly to convert files formatted with Markdown (or other markup languages) to various other formats. But I also know that not everyone is comfortable working at the command line (even in the relatively basic ways in which I do). That doesn’t mean, though, that the power of pandoc is out of their reach.

Morphosis makes doing those conversions as easy as pointing and clicking. It can convert from and to formats like HTML, LibreOffice Writer, PDF, HTML, Markdown, LaTeX, and a few others.

To use Morphosis, choose a file and select a format into which to transform the file. With some formats, you can also opt for a serif or sans-serif font. From there, click Convert, point Morphosis to where you want to save the file, and away you go. Here’s an example:

And here’s the result:

Morphosis isn’t as flexible as running pandoc in a terminal window, but for quick conversions it does a very good job.

— Scott Nesbitt

Syncing Files with Celeste

29 October, 2024

For the longest time, I was an enthusiastic user of Nextcloud (and OwnCloud before that). But in late 2022 and into 2023, I embarked down a path towards streamlining my digital life. One tool I gave up using was Nextcloud, mainly because I was only using one laptop at the time and didn’t need to sync files between it and anywhere or anything else.

Jump forward to July, 2024. Specifically, the day a courier delivered my StarLite Mark V convertible. I now had two computers between which I knew I’d need to occasionally share files. But I didn’t want to go full Nextcloud again just to shuffle a handful of files between my devices every so often. So I started looking for another, simpler option.

One that popped up was Celeste. Let’s take a look at it.

What is Celeste?

Celeste is, more or less, a graphical front end to a command line utility called rclone. rclone, if you haven’t heard of it, backs up, restores, and mirrors (and a whole lot more) files between your computer and a cloud storage provider. I like to think of Celeste as quick, dirty, minimalist syncing. Celeste doesn’t do everything that rclone can doe, but what little does, it well fairly well.

Celeste supports a small number of services, but they’re ones that more than a few people use. More on this in a moment.

Installing

As always, there are multiple ways in which you can install Celeste, including:

• Using your Linux distribution’s software centre.
• As a flatpak.
• As a snap.

Installation is pretty quick. You’ll be ready to get going in no time.

Getting Going

When you first start Celeste, you’re asked to log into a sync provider:

Select one of these options from the Server Type list:

• Dropbox.
• Google Drive.
• Nextcloud.
• OwnCloud.
• pCloud.
• Proton Drive.
• WebDAV.

You’ll need an account with one (or more) of those services; with some of them, you can also self host. From there, enter the login information for the service. Here’s what you see when you chose Nextcloud:

After you’ve added a server, click the Add Folder button in the right pane to add a folder to sync.

From there, choose a folder on your computer and one on the server to which you’re syncing.

Once you click Ok, it takes a minute or two for Celeste to do the initial sync. Here’s Celeste doing its thing:

You can either have one folder that contains all of the files that you want to sync, or you can point to multiple folders in your /home directory.

You’re not limited to one remote server, either. You can sync your files with two or more — I tried Celeste with Proton Drive, Nextcloud, and a WebDAV server. I only had a problem with Nextcloud, but was able to get around that. More about this in a moment.

Celeste doesn’t have any options to note. All you can really do with it is add and delete servers and folders. Celeste does the rest.

What to Watch Out For

Celeste can be … well, a bit quirky.

As I noted a couple of paragraphs back, Celeste wouldn’t play nicely with the Nextcloud instance I tried. When I attempted a connection, it displayed an error message stating that the remote folder didn’t exist. It did. But when I hooked Celeste into Nextcloud using WebDAV, everything worked as it should have.

You can’t set the sync interval as you can with, say, a Nextcloud or OwnCloud desktop client. Celeste seems to check for changes every few minutes.

As well, you don’t have any control over what to include or exclude from syncing in the way that you can with, say, Nextcloud’s or Dropbox’s desktop client. Whatever’s in the folder that you’re syncing gets synced. You can bodge some control over this by syncing multiple folders.

Celeste seems to view the remote server as its source of truth. If, say, you delete something locally or on the remote server, an error message displays. Files that you delete in one location aren’t deleted in another. That can be a bit frustrating at times.

Final Thoughts

For syncing files between computers, Celeste does an OK job. It’s not a perfect nor is it as robust a solution as, say, using Nextcloud and its desktop client. That said, Celeste is lighter and you can do on-demand syncing — only firing it up when you need to move files between computers.

That said, I do find some of Celeste’s quirks to be a tad annoying. While it’s serviceable for my needs at the moment, I’m not sure that I’ll stick with it over the longer term. But until I find something that works better for me, Celeste will remain in my toolbox.

— Scott Nesbitt

Getting to Know the StarLite Mark V

8 October, 2024

I didn’t need a new device. But in the latter part of 2023 I heard that StarLabs, the makers of my current laptop, was about to manufacture a Linux-powered convertible computer. When that news reached my ears, I immediately knew I wanted one. I mean, a Linux-powered device that I can use as a tablet! How could I resist?

But resist I did, even though it was mere token resistance. After a couple of days of vacillating, I put in my order. The StarLite Mark V took a while to get to me thanks to manufacturing delays, supply chain and global shipping problems, and an overwhelming number of units the folks at StarLabs had to prep once all that was sorted. But in early July, 2024 the device finally landed in my hands.

I’ve been using the StarLite Mark V extensively over the last 10 weeks or so (as of the time of writing this post). Let’s take a look at it.

Before We Get Started

A quick note of thanks to the team at StarLabs. Not just for taking the chance with building the StarLite Mark V but for persevering through all the ups and down in the process to make it a reality.

And additional kudos to them for putting up with my giddy impatience to get my hands on the device. Yes, I was that excited …

Before anyone asks, you’re not getting an unboxing video or photos. I don’t go in for that silliness. I have to say, though, that StarLabs’ packaging is first rate.

Specs and Such

You can find all of the details that you want or need at the StarLabs website. Here are the basic specs of the device that I ordered:

• 12.5 inch screen.
• 16 GB of memory.
• 512 GB hard drive.
• 1 GHz Alder Lake processor.
• Two USB-C ports, a microSD card slot, a micro HDMI port, and a headphone jack.
• Front- and rear-facing webcams.

Overall, the specs on the Mark V are higher than those of the Mark IV laptop. The device has noticeably more grunt than its predecessor.

I also added the optional detachable keyboard (which doubles as a stand) to my order. More on this in a moment.

StarLabs offers a small number of Linux distributions pre-installed. I decided to go with Ubuntu. Before you crap on my choice of distros remember that it was my choice, not yours. But why Ubuntu? It’s been several years since I’ve used it. I wanted both to get reacquainted with Ubuntu and I thought that it might be a good choice for a touch-based device like the Mark V.

As for the StarLite Mark V itself, it’s very well built. The device looks and feels solid. While a bit heavier than my last tablet, it’s doesn’t feel bulky despite its size. It, and the detachable keyboard, fit comfortably in an old laptop sleeve that I had lying around.

Using the Device

When I ordered the StarLite, I didn’t have a concrete use case for it. I did have some vague ideas about how I’d use it, based on how I used the various tablets I’ve owned over the years. As the delivery date approached, I started thinking a bit more about what I’d do with the StarLite Mark V.

How I Use the StarLite

Let’s divide that into how I physically use the Mark V and what I use it for.

I’ve been using it:

• As standalone tablet.
• With a small tablet stand, a portable keyboard, and a mouse.
• With the tablet’s magnetic keyboard.

Here’s a photo of the setup I use most often when working:

As for what I use the device for, that’s a mix of consumption and creation. The consumption side includes listening to music, watching videos, reading books and articles, and doing an online course or two. The creation side involves writing (including this post), preparing slides using Reveal.js for short talks I’ve been giving, and a few other tasks.

Here’s a typical view of the the desktop when I’m working on the Mark V:

I’m definitely not pushing the StarLite Mark V to its limits, but that’s not how I use any hardware. I have a specific set of tasks that I need to carry out. The Mark V handles those tasks smoothly and easily.

Software

Aside from the stock software that comes with Ubuntu, I installed a handful of applications including:

• Librewolf.
• Celeste for syncing files.
• MusicPod for listening to music and podcasts.
• Foliate for reading ebooks.
• NewsFlash for reading RSS feeds.
• Pandoc.

The software — both stock and what I installed — works well. For the most part, anyway. When I’m not using a mouse, some software isn’t as responsive as I’d hoped. That’s probably because said software isn’t optimized for touch. That’s something I hope will change in the future.

The Screen

It’s bright and clear. According to the specs, the screen measures 12.5 inches across with a resolution of 2160 x 1440 pixels. When I first took the device out of its box, the screen looked and felt a bit bigger than 12.5 inches. I’m going to assume that’s because I’m used to tablets with (much) smaller screens.

In addition to writing, I’ve been reading and watching videos with the StarLite. Doing all of that, I can see everything on screen very clearly. The device’s screen is quite easy on my eyes.

Because I’m getting on in years and have been working with various screens (many of them small) since the 1980s, my eyesight has gradually been getting weaker. I wear glasses when working or reading on any screen, so I’ve bumped up the size of the fonts that I use which also helps with readability.

Looking at the Mark V’s screen for extended periods doesn’t tire my eyes. To help with that, I’ve set the Ubuntu to automatically switch to night mode in evenings.

The Keyboard

To be honest, there were moments before the device arrived in which I regretted ordering the (optional) magnetic keyboard/stand combo. I have a solid aluminium tablet stand, a good portable keyboard, and a compact mouse that I had planned to use with the StarLite. The detachable keyboard seemed at times to be an extravagance. After using it, I’m glad I added the keyboard to my order.

The keyboard is the same size the one on the 13-inch laptop issued by my employer, but the keys are bigger. Those keys are a bit springy and they’re backlit. The trackpad on the keyboard isn’t bad, but it’s not great. That said, I’ve never been fully comfortable with any trackpad on any device.

This is keyboard on its own:

Here’s what the StarLite Mark V and keyboard look like as a couple:

To be honest, I sometimes find it more convenient to use the magnetic keyboard than to set up my tablet stand/keyboard/mouse combo.

Battery Life

This is the one that everyone is curious about, isn’t it?

StarLabs claims that the battery can last up to 12 hours before needing a charge. I’m going to say that battery life depends on a number of factors.

If you have Bluetooth turned on and/or are using resource-intensive application, either or both will take large bites from a charge. Then, of course, there’s the magnetic keyboard. It seems to use up more than a little battery power, especially if you’re using the backlight. You can turn the backlight off if needed.

Admittedly, I don’t use the Mark V constantly — at most, for two- to four-hour stretches. I usually need to charge it after between six and seven or so hours of accumulated use, depending on what I’ve been doing. Keep in mind, though, that I’m not timing my every session with the device so those figures are more estimates than precise timings.

Final Thoughts

The StarLite Mark V is the first Linux-powered device I’ve owned that I can use as a laptop and as a tablet — something for which I’ve been waiting a long time. I’m not disappointed that I bought it. In fact, I’ve quite enjoyed my time with the Mark V and will continue to do so.

Whether it replaces the StarLite Mark IV as my daily driver remains to be seen. However, there are tasks to which exclusively I devote the Mark V; there might be more of those tasks in the future. Keep an eye on this space for updates about that.

— Scott Nesbitt

3 Text Editors for the Linux Command Line

17 September, 2024

I don’t know exactly, or even roughly, how many editors there are for the Linux command line. But I have tried more than a few of them over the years, and found that most weren’t for me. A variety reasons for that, which probably had as much to do with me as with the editors.

But, regardless of what you might think, editing text at the command line doesn’t need to be the domain of the techie. With the right editor, anyone can easily and fluidly work with plain text files in a terminal window.

Let’s take a quick look at three command line text editors that enable anyone to do just that.

nano

nano has been around for quite a while and is included with many a Linux distribution. And while it’s not the prettiest text editor out there, nano does its job very well.

nano has all of the main features that you expect in a text editor: syntax highlighting, easy-to-remember keyboard shortcuts, line wrapping, search and replace, undo and redo, and mouse support. And more. It’s a complete package, but a small one.

Here’s a look at nano doing its thing:

ne

Before I started writing this post, I’d heard of ne but I’d never tried it. As far as command line editors go, ne is good. Very good.

ne was created as an alternative to the venerable vi editor, with ease of use in mind. That ease of use comes, in part, from the editor adopting standard desktop keyboard shortcuts and having a menu bar at the top of its screen.

ne also does syntax highlighting and lets you record, save, and play macros to automate tasks without any knowledge of programming. If you’re a productivity hacker, doing that can help you save a bit of time. The only problem I had with ne was that it didn’t apply line wrapping to files that I’d created in other editors. I’m sure there’s a way around that, but I couldn’t find it.

This is what ne looks like in action:

micro

As I pointed out at the top of this post, I’ve worked with a number of command line editors over the decades. The only one I’ve ever felt completely comfortable using from the start has been micro.

From the first time I fired it up, micro just felt right (in a small way, like the feeling I got when I first took an MG4 electric hatchback on the road). That’s probably because micro behaves a lot like a desktop application — it uses the same keyboard shortcuts that I’m used to, and it supports a mouse.

You can also customize micro by changing its colour scheme and by installing plugins. Most of those plugins are too specialized for my needs but the spelling checker and word counter plugins are ones that I use all of the time.

Here’s micro editing this post:

If you’re looking for a deeper dive into micro, check out this article.

Final Thoughts

Editing at the Linux command line doesn’t need to involve an obscure set of keyboard shortcuts or a string of confusing parameters. The three editors I look at in this post make editing text — whether a small configuration file or a piece of longer-form writing — easy and painless. No matter what your level of comfort at the command line is.

— Scott Nesbitt

Why Not Just Use …?

3 September, 2024

When you write about software (especially software of the free/open source variety), you tend to get the odd comment or three. Occasionally, that’s praise. Every so often, it’s some constructive and helpful criticism. More often than occasionally, it’s someone telling you that you know nothing or are an idiot.

Invariably, there’s always someone who pops their head in and asks Why not just use …?, followed by the name of their FOSS application of choice. As if there is (figuratively) no other choice. As if there should be no alternatives to their favourite.

Why not just use …? is a question asked from a particular frame of reference. It spawns, in no small part, from a conceit that can come from viewing things through that frame of reference.

The frame of reference I’m talking about is what works for the person posing the question. The conceit I’m talking about is that since some piece of software or another works for them, it’ll work for someone else. For everyone else.

Rarely is that the truth (universal or otherwise). Each of us is different. Each of us has different needs and different use cases. Some of use want or need more from their software. Some of us want or need less. Much less.

For many, the commenter’s preferred application might be too big or pack too many features which will go unused. Or the commenter’s preferred tool might require more setup or configuration or maintenance than others might be capable of providing. Or even want to provide.

Let’s look at class of software close to my heart: the text editor. When I write about simpler ones, I regularly hear the refrain of Why not just use Emacs/vim/VSCodium?. Those editors pack way too much for many folks. And, at least a couple of them, have idiosyncrasies — both small and not so small — that make them a tad more challenging to use. In my case (and I’m sure for others, too), the GNOME Text Editor works best because it does what I need it to do. Nothing more, nothing less.

There’s nothing wrong with having a bit of choice. It makes for a stronger software ecosystem. And if a piece of software fits the limited needs of a group of people, there’s nothing wrong with that either. On the other hand, that piece of software might not be enough for others. The twains of the two uses cases might never meet, so why should one group shoehorn their needs into something that’s not suited to them or their needs?

And, as I keep pointing out, it’s not my place to prescribe what others should use for any task. It’s not your place, either.

So, the next time you’re tempted to say Why not just use …?, take a moment to reconsider. Better yet, please keep the question to yourself.

— Scott Nesbitt

Two More Scratchpads for the Linux Desktop

20 August, 2024

A while back, I wrote about a pair of applications that let you quickly scribble something down for later use. I put those applications to the back of my mind, mainly because I didn’t have a lot of use for them at the time.

Recently, though, I stumbled across a pair of new (well, new to me) little scratchpad tools for the Linux desktop. I decided to give them a test drive as a receptacle for notes for an online course I was doing at the time. The idea was to have a little note taking window sitting on top of my web browser. That would be, I thought, less obtrusive and less disruptive to my flow than having to flip between a browser window and either a text editor or QOwnNotes.

With that in mind, let’s take a quick peek at those two apps: Mini Text and Buffer.

Mini Text

Mini Text is described as being ephemeral (more on this in a moment). It might be ephemeral, but it’s also minimalist. Mini Text has a very simple interface, as you can see here:

It’s little more than a text area in which you can write, paste and copy text, or delete what’s in that text area. You can also increase or decrease the size of the font. That said, you can’t change the font — Mini Text uses the font for interface text configured in your desktop’s settings.

So what does all that look like? Here’s Mini Text holding some URLs that I collected:

Remember when I said that Mini Text is ephemeral? I meant just that. When you close Mini Text, whatever you put into it is no more. Make sure that you copy and paste your text somewhere else before closing application. Assuming that you want to save the text, of course.

Buffer

Buffer is slightly, but noticeably, different from Mini Text. The main area of difference is the screen. You get a blank editing area, nothing more:

To use Buffer, you copy and paste or type into the editing area. Yes, that’s pretty much all it does, as you can see below.

As you might have guessed from the images above, Buffer’s window is a bit large compared to Mini Text. It also sits at the centre of your screen. You can’t resize or move it.

However, you can click the hamburger menu in the application’s header to change a few settings, including:

• Whether or not to use a monospace font.
• Limit the length of lines and show line numbers.
• Check spelling.
• Save what are called emergency recovery files. If you enable this option, Buffer saves the text from your last 10 sessions in a hidden folder in /home directory. You can pull them up when you need to.

Like Mini Text, Buffer is ephemeral. So unless you have the emergency recovery files option enabled, remember to move what you put into Buffer somewhere else before you close the application’s window.

Final Thoughts

I found Mini Text to be a bit more effective than Buffer for use as a scratchpad. That said, using Mini Text and Buffer forced me to be a bit more mindful about my transient note taking. While using them, I had to make sure that I shifted what I’d jotted down elsewhere before closing each application.

But what about the use case I mentioned at the top of this post? I didn’t stick with Mini Text or Buffer. I decided to use Nanonote as my scratchpad for my online course. There were a few reasons for that, which aren’t important.

However, if you’re looking for a scratchpad application, give Mini Text and Buffer a close peek. One of them might be what you need if you’re in the market for a temporary dumping ground for some of the bits of information that come your way.

— Scott Nesbitt

Podcasting Apps for the Linux Desktop

6 August, 2024

Like many people, I usually listen to podcasts on my phone — using a rather minimalist app called Escapepod to do that. An app which, as you might have guessed, is open source.

Recently, while listening to a podcast about open source, I got wondering about what FOSS podcast players are available for the Linux desktop. After going through the Zorin OS software centre, I found two that grabbed my interest and duly took those applications for a test drive.

Let’s take a quick look at them.

Kasts

Kasts is a KDE application. But if you use another desktop environment, don’t let that put you off. You can also install it as a Flatpak or a snap. Even on a GNOME-based desktop, Kasts runs quickly and smoothly.

Launch Kasts for the first time and you see this screen:

You can add one or more podcasts by:

• Searching for one via the site podcastindex.org,
• Pasting a URL to the podcast’s feed,
• Importing an OPML file containing a set of podcast feeds that you exported from elsewhere, or
• If you have an account with gPodder, synchronizing with that account.

Here’s Kasts after I imported an OPML file that I exported from another application:

You’ll need to download the episodes that you want to listen to; you can’t stream them using Kasts. To download an episode, click a podcast in the list. Then, right click on an episode and select Download.

Once the download’s done (and it usually doesn’t take long), click the Play button beside the episode. Here’s Kasts playing an episode of a sports car racing podcast that I regularly listen to:

Podcasts

Podcasts is, at least for me, the desktop opposite number to EscapePod. It’s small, light, minimal, but it’s also easy to use and does what I it need to do. All without various frills which don’t matter to me.

It’s a GNOME app but, as you might have guessed, is also available as a flatpak and as a snap.

Podcasts, when you first start it up, looks like this:

You can pull in podcast subscriptions using an OPML file. Do that by clicking the stacker menu, selecting Import Shows, and then selecting the OPML file with the podcast feeds to import.

Or, you can add an individual podcast by clicking the + button in the header, typing the name of the podcast in the search field, and clicking the magnifying glass icon, like this:

A list of podcasts matching (more or less) your search term displays. Select a podcast in the list and then click Subscribe.

No matter what route you take, your subscriptions look like this:

From there, you can either stream an episode or download one or more to listen to later. Here’s a look at Podcasts in action:

Final Thoughts

Kasts and Podcasts don’t pack every feature that you can imagine a podcast player can or should pack. Instead, they opt for a more stripped-down aesthetic: enabling you to quickly find, add, and play podcasts. And not much else. It’s definitely an aesthetic that I appreciate.

If your needs around a desktop podcast player are simple, then Kasts and Podcasts are both great choices. Give them a try. One of them might be what you’re looking for.

Taking a Look at Feeds, a Minimalist RSS Reader

23 July, 2024

While email is my social media, I get a lot of my information via RSS. That includes news, opinion, blog posts, and more.

Lately, I’ve been using NewsFlash as my main desktop feed reader. But when I was testing NewsFlash, I also tested a couple of others in parallel. One of those was Feeds, a minimalist RSS feed reader for the GNOME desktop.

Here’s what I discovered about it.

Getting Feeds

The easiest way to do that is through your distribution’s software centre. If your distro of choice uses GNOME as its desktop environment, it’ll be there.

You can also install it as a flatpak or install feeds on Arch Linux, Fedora, or Debian. If you want or need to embrace your inner geek a bit, you can grab the source code for Feeds and compile it yourself.

Using Feeds

Here’s what Feeds looks like when you start it up:

For obvious reasons, the cupboard of RSS feeds is bare. You can add a feed using its URL by clicking the + button in the header bar and then pasting the link to a feed. Or, if you have a set of feeds that you exported from another feed reader, you can click the stacker menu, select Import OPML, and then find the OPML file (which contains information about feeds that a reader can use) to pull in.

I did the latter, using an OPML file that I saved from NewsFlash. Depending on the number of feeds in the file, it can take anywhere upwards of 30 seconds to import all items. When the import finishes, Feeds looks something like this:

And here’s what an article in Feeds looks like when you read it:

Reading Modes

Feeds is very compact. It has two panes — a list of feeds (with newest displaying at the top) on the left and the rendered article on the right.

What you’re seeing in the image above is one of Feeds’ View Mode. That one is called Reader Mode, which renders the web page associated with the feed without all of the cruft like banners, additional images, comment blocks, and the like. It’s reminiscent using a read-it-later application such as Omnivore.

You can change how Feeds displays articles by clicking the View Mode icon at the top of the article pane, like so:

Then, from the list that displays selecting either Web View (which displays the web page associated with the feed, also with all the cruft):

Or Feed Content, which displays the content of the feed:

Feed Content mode doesn’t always work; sometimes the feed is truncated, displaying only the first few lines or the first couple of paragraphs.

Viewing Categories

When you import a file of RSS feeds, that brings over categories (assuming you have some), which group types of feeds together. When I use an RSS reader for example, I group all of the science publications I follow are in the category Science.

That said, the articles list isn’t broken down by categories. It’s more of a big list of articles, with newest ones at top. To view your categories (or just the entries in individual feeds), you need to click the Filter button in the header bar and then select a category. Here’s an example:

While Feeds does this, I assume, to keep the application window compact, I’m kind of partial to having my feeds grouped by subject matter and in front of me. I just don’t like having to click through to see my categories.

Changing Your Preferences

To do that, click the stacker menu and select Preferences. This window displays:

There are four tabs:

• General, which controls how Feeds behaves — for example, whether to open links in an article in an external browser, how to handle video in a feed, and how and how often to refresh your RSS feeds.
• Privacy, which does what it says on the label. I found that you can stick with the out-of-the-box settings.
• Appearance, where you can change (to a point) the look and feel of Feeds — for example, use light or dark mode, whether image thumbnails appear in the article list, and which font to use.
• Advanced, which I ignored, mainly because I wasn’t sure what anything on that tab does.

Final Thoughts

While I prefer NewsFlash, I do have a soft spot for feeds. It’s compact. It’s easy to use. It’s a solid choice if your needs around an RSS reader are simple.

— Scott Nesbitt

Reading ebooks with Arianna

8 July, 2024

I don’t read many ebooks on my laptop. There are a number of reasons for that, none of them important or shocking.

When I do read a ebook on my laptop, I use an application called Foliate. It’s been a favourite of mine for years, and I’ve been using it regularly since my StarLite Mark V tablet landed in my hands.

Of course, there are times when app wanderlust sets in. I’m not immune to it. So, I decided to check out a few other ebook readers for the Linux desktop. One that caught my eye was Arianna, a reader for KDE that’s focused solely on books in the EPUB format.

Let’s take a look at it.

Getting Arianna

As I mentioned above, Arianna is an application for the KDE desktop. You can install it on KDE from an AppStream application store.

But what if you’re not using KDE? You can install it as a Flatpak or as a snap. It might also be available from your Linux distribution’s software centre. It can’t hurt to check …

Using Arianna

When you first fire up Arianna, it scans your /home directory for books with the extension .epub. In fact, it does this each time you start it.

Here’s what the application looks like after its starts and does a scan:

As an aside, I found that Arianna scanning for books can be a good way to find multiple copies of ebooks on my computer.

Click on an ebook’s title and it opens (no surprise there!). Out of the box, Arianna displays a book in a two-column view (as shown below):

You can change that in the applications’s settings (more on this in a moment), or you can manually resize the screen to get a one-column effect.

To move through the pages of a book, press the right and left arrow keys on your keyboard or click the controls at bottom of window, as shown below:

You can also navigate through a book by clicking the Table of Contents icon in top-right corner of the screen to pop out a list of the book’s chapters and sections. Here’s an example:

Fiddling with Settings

Arianna’s settings are fairly basic, as you can see below:

You can change the default width of the reading window from 1,400 pixels to something smaller (or larger). Setting it to 600 pixels, for example, changes the view to a single column. Here’s an example:

You can also change the font used in ebooks, the height of lines, and enable or disable justification and the hyphenation of text. Nothing fancy, but it works.

Some Quibbles

All of that is well and good, but I ran into a few quirks when using Arianna.

Right clicking on a page pops up a menu with a few options that didn’t work for me. Well, selecting the Reload option does work, but that takes you back to the cover of book that you’re reading.

On top of that, Arianna doesn’t remember where you were in a book. When you close the application and open the book again, you start at the cover.

I’ve been wondering if that (and the right click menu not working) is because Arianna is a KDE application that I’m running as a Flatpak on a GNOME-based desktop. Perhaps the Flatpak version is missing a sprinkling of KDE magic dust that makes those features work?

Also, Arianna only supports EPUBs (including DRM-free Kobo EPUBs and advanced EPUBs). I prefer to read EPUBs, but a reader which only supports that format might be limiting for some.

Final Thoughts

There were aspects of Arianna that I liked, but those aspects were overshadowed by some of the problems that I mentioned above. Compared to other ebook readers I’ve used, like Foliate or Bookworm, Arianna falls a bit flat. It just isn’t the desktop ebook reader for me.

— Scott Nesbitt

A Trio of Useful Desktop Utilities

25 June, 2024

Here’s another quick look at three useful little tools for the Linux desktop. Tools that can help you quickly and efficiently tackle some simple tasks, especially tasks that you don’t tackle regularly.

Let’s jump in, shall we?

Teleprompter

As part of my Day Job^TM, I run semi-regular online sessions explaining … well, various things to my colleagues. Having a script or outline nearby is helpful.

But the problem is that since I don’t like printing anything, I have to scroll through me script either on a second screen or on a tablet. That disrupts my flow and focus. My work computer runs one of those Other Operating Systems, but if I could use a Linux-powered laptop, then Teleprompter would be a boon when conducting those sessions.

As its name suggests, Teleprompter is the software equivalent of an auto cue used by news broadcasters, politicians, and others. To use it, you open a text file or or paste the text of your script or speech into Teleprompter. You can change the font and its size, as well as the speed a which Teleprompter scrolls the text.

When you’re ready to go, click the Start button. Here’s a look at Teleprompter in action:

Punchclock

You never know when you’ll need to track the time spent on tasks. Perhaps you’re working on contract and need to submit a detailed timesheet. Or maybe you’re a productivity nerd who wants to gather data so you can better optimize your time.

No matter why you’re tracking time, a simple and fairly unobtrusive way to do that on the Linux desktop is with Punchclock.

To use it, type a description of the task — for example, Editing for Project A — in the Search field. Then, press Enter. The clock starts running, as shown below:

You can make Punchclock more compact and less obtrusive by clicking the arrow in the header bar. When you do that, it looks like this:

Click the pause button in the header bar to put the task on hold.

You can add multiple tasks by typing their names in the Search box and pressing Enter. Here’s an example:

Shortwave

Radio isn’t dead, no matter what some people say. These days, you’re not stuck with old school over-the-air or digital transmissions requiring an account and a specialized receiver. With an internet radio app installed on your computer, a whole world of radio is open to your ears.

One of those apps for the Linux desktop is Shortwave. It’s a compact and flexible way to listen to radio from around the world. Or closer to home.

When you start Shortwave, a screen with a list of suggested stations displays.

You can select one or more of those suggestions or click the Search icon at the top-right of the header bar to find a station. Here’s me searching for stations on Soma FM:

Click a station in the list. Then, in the window that pops up, click Add to Library.

To view your library, click the Go Back button in the header.

Quick Tip: Using du

11 June, 2024

Need to find out how much disk space that the files and directories on your computer use? While you can turn to graphical tools like GNOME Disk Usage Analyzer to do that, there’s also a lighter weight option: running the du command in a terminal window.

Short for disk usage, du shows you how much space your files and directories take up. It’s a useful tool for managing storage and identifying space-consuming files.

Here’s a quick look at the basics of using du.

Let’s start by getting the disk usage of a specific file or directory. To do that, run this command:

du [file/directory]

For example, to check the disk usage of the Documents folder, type this at the command line:

du Documents

The command displays the disk usage in kilobytes (KB) for each file and subdirectory within the Documents folder.

du also has several options. For example, to display the sizes in a format that you can easily read — like KB, MB, GB — use the -h option like this:

du -h Documents

You can also sort the output of the command to see the largest files or directories first by combining the -h and -s options like this:

du -sh *

Browsing the Web with Waterfox

21 May, 2024

When I write about something, invariably fans of Something Else come out of the woodwork. And, invariably, those fans chant a chorus that starts with What about …?

That happened in early 2024 after I published a post looking at the Librewolf web browser. I received a handful of messages asking why I haven’t written about various other browsers — including one or two proprietary ones. Browsers that those folks use and think everyone else should, too.

To be honest, I can’t look at everything — I just don’t have time. Often, I’m just not interested in what some people suggest. And while I’ve tried many of browsers mentioned in the missives I received, I wasn’t motivated enough to write about most of them.

One that I did have in my queue to write about was Waterfox, a browser (like Librewolf) that’s derived from Firefox but which offers a bit more security and privacy out of the box.

Let’s take a quick look at Waterfox, shall we?

Where Waterfox and Firefox Diverge

As I mentioned a couple of paragraphs back, Waterfox is based on the same digital building blocks as Mozilla Firefox. While similar, they do diverge a bit. Here, for me, are the key differences:

• Waterfox is noticeably snappier than Firefox. At least on my StarLite laptop. It started up faster and ran a bit more smoothly than it progenitor. I’m sure that’s also true for computers with more powerful hardware.
• A greater emphasis on privacy. Like Librewolf, Waterfox has several security settings enabled out of the box — that includes protection against tracking and offering secure DNS using something called Oblivious HTTP.
• Waterfox has a more streamlined user interface — it’s a bit more minimalist than Firefox (or Librewolf), which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

If you want to learn more, check out Waterfox’s documentation.

Getting Waterfox

You can download installers for Waterfox — there are ones for Linux and those other two operating systems, too. Waterfox might be available in your Linux distribution’s software centre (it is for Zorin OS). You can also install it as a flatpak.

Installation shouldn’t take too long; you’ll be ready to go in no time.

Getting Started with Waterfox

Using Waterfox is just like using Firefox. You get a similar interface, similar controls, and all of the key features. Here’s what Waterfox looks like when you first start it:

You can either click Skip this step to start browsing or click Set up in seconds to tweak Waterfox’s configuration.

Let’s click Set up in seconds. This screen displays:

You can click Import from previous browser to pull in the history, bookmarks, and passwords from (I’m going to assume) Firefox. I’ve never been able to get that to work with Waterfox — it displays the message below, even though I had Firefox, Librewolf, and Web installed on my laptop while working on this post:

Moving from Firefox

If the function to import settings doesn’t work for you either, then you can use Firefox Sync to easily migrate from Mozilla’s browser to Waterfox. Firefox Sync backs your up bookmarks, information about which add-ons you use, website passwords (if you let Firefox save them), your settings, and the like. To use it, you’ll need a Mozilla account and have synced your data from Firefox.

Let’s assume you have a Mozilla account and have synced your data. To use Firefox Sync, click the stacker menu in the top-right of the Waterfox window and then click Sign in. You’re taken to a page where you can log into your Mozilla account. Once you’ve done that, it can take anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute to sync your data with Waterfox.

If you use add-ons that require a user name and password, you’ll need to enter those credentials to use the add-ons with Waterfox.

Browsing the Web

Here’s a look at Waterfox’s home screen:

The squares link to the last few websites you visited, while the Recent activity section of the screen lists the sites you’ve bookmarked over the last little while. If you want to, you can get rid of most of that, which I’ll explain how to do in a moment.

Here’s Waterfox browsing one of my favourite motor racing news sites:

And here’s what Waterfox looks like browsing this site:

It’s not much different from Firefox or Librewolf, is it?

Making Waterfox Your Own

Waterfox is easy to customize. Let’s start with decluttering the home screen. Click the gear icon in the upper-right corner. This panel displays:

Click the toggles beside the Shortcuts and Recent activity options and then click Close. After that, you only see the search box on the home screen, as shown below:

You can also change or tweak quite a few settings. To do that, click the stacker menu in the top-right corner of Waterfox’s window and then select Preferences. Let’s look at a few of the options that you can fiddle with.

You can install the same themes and extensions that you can with Firefox. You can also set your preferred search engine, configure colours and fonts, change the position of tabs and the bookmarks toolbar, tell Waterfox where to download files, and more.

Here, for example, is the screen where you can change the look and feel of the browser:

Waterfox’s Security Settings

As I mentioned earlier in this post, one of Waterfox’s differences from Firefox is its emphasis on protecting your privacy and security. Like Librewolf, it doesn’t include many features — like telemetry, data collection, integration with Pocket — that you need to disable in Firefox.

To access Waterfox’s security settings, click the stacker menu and then, on the page that displays, select Privacy & Security. You’ll see this screen:

Out of the box, Waterfox uses the lowest level of tracking protection and has automatic deletion of cookies and website data disabled. That said, many other of Waterfox’s security settings are dialed up, like:

• Blocking dangerous and deceptive content.
• Using secure DNS.
• Putting the kibosh on popup windows.
• Disabling JavaScript.
• Sending websites a do not track signal.

You’ll need to enable or disable the various security options, depending on your needs. And you might have noticed ads displaying on a web page in screen capture earlier in this post. Unlike Librewolf, Waterfox doesn’t have an ad blocker built in — you’ll need to install an add-on for that.

Final Thoughts

Waterfox is a fine web browser — a solid alternative to Firefox. But I never felt fully comfortable with it. Unlike Librewolf, Waterfox didn’t slot into my online life quickly. Or at all. I’m not sure why that was. Waterfox is close enough to Firefox and Librewolf that I shouldn’t have had any problems adapting to it.

And, no, I didn’t try really, really hard to like Waterfox. Mainly because if you’re trying hard to like something, you’re just trying too hard. You can’t force yourself to like anything.

Regardless, Waterfox isn’t the right Firefox alternative for me. And that’s OK. But it could be for you. I suggest you take Waterfox for a spin. You might wind up not only liking Waterfox but using it as your main web browser.

— Scott Nesbitt

Browsing Wikipedia on Your Desktop with Wike

7 May, 2024

You can’t deny that Wikipedia has become one of the main go-to places online for information about … well, just about everything. I’m sure that you use it at least once a week and, chances are, that when you drop by Wikipedia, you do so either using a web browser or an app on your mobile device.

On the Linux desktop, you can cut out the web browser and use Wike instead. What’s Wike? It’s billed as a Wikipedia reader for the GNOME desktop. It does one thing, and does that one thing quite well.

Let’s take a look at it.

Getting Wike

As with many pieces of software, Wike might be available from your Linux distribution’s software centre. That’s especially true if you’re running a distribution that uses GNOME or a variant of it as its desktop.

You can also install Wike as a Flatpak or as a snap.

Regardless, it’s easy to get Wike on your computer. But what matters is what you do with Wike once you install it.

Using Wike

Wike looks like this when you start it up:

Kind of familiar, isn’t it? It’s just like visiting the Wikipedia website in your favourite web browser.

As you would in a web browser or the Wikipedia mobile app, you can follow any of the links on the front page. Or, you can click the magnifying glass icon in the sidebar on the left to search for an article. Here’s an example:

Click one of the results to open its entry. Here’s an entry from a different search than the one pictured above:

As in your browser, you can follow a link in an article. Right click on the link open it in a new tab in Wike or to open it in your default web browser. You can also add the link to your bookmarks in Wike (more about this in a moment) or copy the link to paste elsewhere.

Wike’s Sidebar

The sidebar on the left of Wike’s window contains several useful functions. Here’s a close up of it:

Let’s look at the sidebar, starting from the top.

The first of those functions, Search, we’ve already encountered.

Next is Contents, which is a table of contents that lets you jump to sections in an article. Here’s what one looks like:

Below that is Languages, which displays links to the article you’re browsing in other languages, as shown here:

If, like me, you’re more of a poly-not than a polyglot, you can ignore Languages without missing anything.

After that is Bookmarks, which are links to Wikipedia articles you’ve saved for later reading (I mentioned this a few paragraphs ago). Here’s an example of a list of bookmarks:

Finally, there’s History, which is a list of all the articles that you’ve browsed. Like this:

Using the dropdown menu at the top of the screen, you can display your browsing history for today, the last 7 or 30 days, or your entire history.

Making Wike Your Own

Well, kind of … Wike has a small number of customization options. The first of which you access by clicking the stacker menu in the top-left of the window and then selecting Preferences. When you do that, this screen displays:

You can:

• Set the page that displays when you start Wike. Out of the box, that’s the main page of Wikipedia. You can change that to be a random article or the last article that you viewed.
• Show or hide tabs at the top of the screen.
• Decide whether or not to keep a list of the articles that you’ve read in the History tab on the sidebar.
• Clear any data and cookies when you close the application.

There are a few other customizations that you can make. Click the View icon in the top-right of Wike’s window to:

• Enable dark or sepia mode (light mode is enabled out of the box).
• Change the font.
• Enable link previews, which pop up a small card displaying the lead image and the first paragraph of the article at the other end of the link.

Final Thoughts

I know that there are probably more than a few people who question the need for a dedicated Wikipedia browser. It’s not my thing, but I’m not one to say how anyone should use their devices or how they should access their information.

In my time testing it, I found Wike to be a quick, smooth, and easy way to check information on Wikipedia. It’s basic, but it does the job. And it does that job very well.

— Scott Nesbitt

Hosting Your Web Apps with PikaPods

23 April, 2024

To self host or not … that is the question. And it’s a question that I think I answered for my self in previous post.

Despite what some folks with technical chops say, self hosting isn’t a piece of cake. Especially for the average computer user. That said, a couple or three people I know who fall into the average computer user category are curious about hosting their own web apps. But, as I mentioned, getting started isn’t easy — even with detailed instructions like these ones crafted and kindly provided by Derek Sivers.

That’s where PikaPods comes in. It makes running open source web apps if not easy then a bit easier. For just about anyone.

I took a dive into PikaPods between late January and early March, 2024. Let’s look at what I discovered.

What is PikaPods?

PikaPods is a hosting service that enables you to set up and run open source web apps with literally a few clicks. You can run your own apps and do it privately, securely, and without (for the most part, anyway) any kind of technical knowledge.

If you’re wondering about the privacy of the service, check out PikaPods’ privacy policy and GDPR statement.

You install and deploy web apps in what are called pods. Think of a pod as a box containing all of the digital plumbing that you need to run the software you’re using, along with the software itself. All of which gets set up automatically.

When I wrote this post in early March, 2024 PikaPods had 73 apps available to install. Those apps run the gamut of ones that many people would use every day to some fairly technical apps. Like what? Here are a few examples:

• Note taking tools like Joplin and Flatnotes.
• Blogging platforms like Ghost and WordPress.
• Several RSS readers and read-it-later applications.
• Music servers.
• Photo posting and sharing apps.

And even Nextcloud.

To be honest, I don’t have much use for most of those app — that’s more to do with me and my limited needs rather than the apps on offer, in case you’re wondering. But there’s a little bit of everything for everyone.

Getting Started

To do that, sign up for an account. When you do that, you get a $5 credit that you can use to play with some pods.

PikaPods, as you’ve probably guessed, is a paid service. Each pod you install costs anywhere from $1 to $3 or so a month to run. That $5.00 credit gives you a taste and if you keep using PikaPods after that credit runs out, you’ll need to top up your account; the minimum amount is $10, in case you’re wondering.

Once you’ve signed up and confirmed your email address, you’re ready to go. Which means adding pods.

Adding Pods

While logged in, click Available Apps on the toolbar and find the one that you want to install. Then, click Run Your Own, as shown below.

This window displays:

Give the pod a name to identify it — for example, that could be the name of the app or a name that’s more meaningful to you (or just fun). After you’ve done that, click the Env Vars tab. The view changes to this:

Depending on the app, you’ll need to fill in some information — for example, a user name and a password to log into it. Some apps have a default user name and password that you’ll need to change once you log in, and others require a bit more information that can get somewhat technical.

After entering the required information, click the Resources tab to see this:

This tab enables you to set the number of CPUs as well as the amount of memory and storage that your pod uses. You can generally get away the default settings. Or, if you need to, you can increase the amounts. Remember, though, that pushing up any of these amounts will add a bit to the monthly cost to run the pod.

Once you’ve done all of that, click Add Pod. It takes a few seconds for PikaPods to create a pod. Every pod is given unique, somewhat nonsensical, URL — for example, juggling-gnat.pikapod.net (no, that’s not a real URL, at least as far as I know).

When the pod is ready, click Open Pod, log in, and start using it. Like I did with WeKan, an open source alternative to Trello:

The process is generally that easy. At least with most apps. As I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, there are more than a few apps with options that I couldn’t fathom or for which I didn’t have an email server (which those apps seemed to need for … something). And, to be honest, the information around all of that from the developers of those apps were a bit too complicated for me to follow.

When you sign up, you’re limited to two pods. You can install more pods if you top up your account.

Managing Your Pods

What happens if you need to fiddle with some of the settings of a pod? Click My Pods on the toolbar. You’re taken to a dashboard listing your pods.

Click the gear icon in the bottom left of a pod’s listing, as shown below:

You see this:

Click any of the tabs to change the pod’s name, increase or decrease resources, and (with some applications) enable SFTP access to the pod so you can transfer files. And if have a domain name lying around, can hook a pod up to a subdomain of the domain. See the documentation for more information.

You can also click the More button to:

• Stop or restart a pod.
• View server logs.
• Delete a pod.

Final Thoughts

PikaPods isn’t self hosting in the truest sense of the term — the apps and your data reside on someone else’s computer. That said, PikaPods makes it easier to run various open source web apps without needing to know much, if anything, about managing those apps and the digital plumbing they rely on. And while you have to pay a small monthly fee for each app that you use, being able to run those apps for yourself can be more than worth the price.

An Introduction to GitUI

26 March, 2024

When I say that I don’t have many, if any, technical skills I’m not kidding. That said, I do have a (very) cursory knowledge of some things that are considered technical. That knowledge is very shallow and focused on what I need to do. I very rarely go beyond that.

One area in which that applies is software called Git. Git, in case you’re wondering, is an application (routinely run from the command line) that software developers and others use to keep track the changes to files, especially when several people are working on those files. I’ve used it at various Day Job^{TMs in the past, but only in a superficial way — using maybe a half dozen options. The rest I don’t know about or want to know about.}

Which brings us to the present time. I publish this blog, as well as my public notebook and home page, with GitLab Pages. Which means I need to use Git. While my use of Git is simple, I’m lazy and want to minimize the amount I type in a terminal window.

There are more than a few graphical applications for working with git, but I’ve never been comfortable with the ones that I’ve tried. Towards the end of 2023, a friend suggested that I give GitUI a go. I did just that. Let’s take a look at what I learned.

This post isn’t a comprehensive examination GitUI. I only look at the functions that I use. So this isn’t the deep dive you might be looking for.

A Little Background

GitUI is a TUI (text-based user interface). It’s reminiscent of many an application that I ran back in the old DOS days. Here’s what it looks like:

It’s nothing fancy, but it doesn’t need to be.

To get GitUI, download it and put it in a folder from which you can run it no matter where you are on your computer. For example, I put it in a folder called bin in my /home directory.

Using GitUI

When you run GitUI in a directory that’s not set up as a Git repository (a location where you store your files, which is also called a repo for short), this error message displays:

The easiest way to get around that is to go to folder set up as a Git repo in your file manager. Then, right click and choose Open in Terminal. A terminal window displays. From there, type gitui and press Enter.

When GitUI starts, you see a list of the files that have been changed (if any) in the upper-left pane of the application’s window. In the example below, you see a bunch of my draft blog posts:

Press a* on your keyboard to add the files to the instance of Git that you’re using. In my case, that’s GitLab. The list of files moves to the lower pane of the GitUI screen, as you can see below:

Shifting those files to your instance of Git is a two-step process. Press c on your keyboard to commit the files — that signals your intention to shift them. A small dialog box displays. Here, you type a short explanation of why you’re committing the files, as shown in this example:

Your message should probably be a bit more descriptive than the one above …

Next, press Ctrl-D on your keyboard and then press p to push the files to your instance of Git. After a few seconds, the deed is done.

Viewing Changes and Editing Files

Before you press a, you can view changes to files in your Git repo. Do that by pressing the down arrow key to highlight a file. The contents of the file display in the right pane of the GitUI window, as shown below:

You can edit the file by highlighting it in GitUI and then pressing e on your keyboard. This opens the file in the editor specified in your .bashrc file (or equivalent). On my laptop, for example, that’s the micro text editor.

Final Thoughts

What I covered in the last few hundred words is only a portion of GitUI’s functions and capabilities. There are other commands that I use, but I don’t use all of them all of the time.

As I mentioned at top of this post, I have tried more than few graphical Git clients. I’ve never liked any of them all that much. GitUI is the first Git client that I’ve taken a shine to.

Using GitUI saves me 50 or more keystrokes when publishing my blogs and website, or when backing up my notes. That might not seem like a lot, but I only need to remember a few (individual) keystrokes instead of a command and multiple options for doing what I need to do.

For someone as lazy as I am, and whose use of Git is rather basic, GitUI is a boon.

— Scott Nesbitt

For something that’s supposed to be dead, I get a good chunk of my information from various RSS feeds — including professional online publications and personal blogs. For the longest time, I’ve done that with a command line RSS reader called Newsboat.

That said, I have tried various web-based, desktop, and mobile feed readers over the years. I’ve only really liked one. Another, named Communique, showed promise but a few annoyances I couldn’t get past turned me away from it.

In late 2023, came across a desktop feed reader named NewsFlash that piqued my interest. While it’s designed to work with web-based RSS aggregators, you can also use NewsFlash as standalone desktop reader. Let’s take a look at it.

This post looks at using NewsFlash as without interacting with an online RSS feed aggregators, mainly because I don’t use one.

Getting NewsFlash

The easiest way to install it is to use your Linux distribution’s software centre. You can also install it using Flatpak and as a snap.

The choice is yours. Make it the one that’s best for you.

Running NewsFlash

When you first start NewsFlash, this window displays:

You can select an online account with which to sync. I clicked Local RSS and this screen displayed:

The interface is quite compact. NewsFlash has three panes — the left one list your feeds, the middle lists the articles or posts in a feed, and the right pane displays the article or post that you select in middle pane. Here’s an example:

But I’m getting ahead of myself. How do you get RSS feeds into NewsFlash? Let’s say you have an OPML file (the file format used to describe RSS feeds) that you’ve saved from another feed reader. You can import it into NewsFlash. To do that, click the stacker menu and then select Import OPML. Find the file and then click Open. Depending on how many feed the OPML file contains, the import process can take 30 seconds or more.

I did that with one exported from Newsboat and NewFlash didn’t always recognize the categories that I use to group my feeds. I needed to create the categories (by clicking the + icon and then selecting Category). From there, I had to edit the feed’s description to move it into the correct category. That was done individually — there’s no bulk edit.

If you’re new to RSS, you can can click + in header bar of the left pane and select Feed. In the dialog box that opens, paste the URL of the feed and click Parse, as shown below:

After few seconds, if all goes well, second dialog box opens. You can edit name of feed and put it into a category to better organize feeds, as shown below:

As I mentioned earlier in this post, you can also connect NewsFlash to one of these third-party readers: Miniflux, fever, FreshRSS, and Newsblur.

Discovering Feeds

If you’re looking for something new, then select the Discover Feeds option under the hamburger menu. When you do that, NewsFlash searches Feedly’s RSS library for feeds that might interest you based on a keyword or hashtag that you enter. Here’s an example:

I don’t use this option at the moment — I have more than enough to wade through with feeds to which I currently subscribe.

Reading Feeds

Once you have feeds and their articles loaded, reading them is just a matter of selecting an article in the middle frame. It can take a second or two for the article to load. If you’re impatient and don’t want to wait for NewsFlash to check for new feeds, you can click the Refresh Content button in the header bar of the middle pane to force a check, as shown below:

Some feeds only show first few lines or first couple of paragraphs of article, like this one:

That has nothing to do with NewsFlash and everything to do with the feed itself. But there is a way to try to get around that: click Try to Show Full Content button (highlighted in the image above). NewsFlash tries to scrape the web page on the other end of the feed and pull in all of the text on that page. That works most of the time. Here’s the article above after clicking the Try to Show Full Content button:

Making NewsFlash Your Own

As you might expect, NewsFlash has several configuration options. Maybe not enough for those who like very fine control over their software, but those options are more than good enough for most of us.

What’s below isn’t a complete list, mainly because there are many options that I don’t use.

To change the options, click the stacker menu and then select Preferences. This screen displays:

You can change:

• The order in which to display your list of feeds and the articles in those feeds — for example, alphabetically or newest first.
• Whether or not to include a thumbnail with the article.
• The theme and font.
• The width of articles and the line height in articles.
• How often NewsFlash looks for updates to feeds.

One Bit of Strangeness

That comes when starting up NewsFlash, which I’ve got set up to refresh my feeds when it starts up. Sometimes, the application displays a message stating it can’t sync:

When I click the details button on the message, I’m told the sync failed because I’m not online. Here’s an example:

The problem is that I am online. I’m not sure why that error occurs. But I find that when it does, I need to restart NewsFlash once or twice for it to do its thing. This doesn't happen when I turn off the function to sync at startup and manually refresh my feeds.

Final Thoughts

NewsFlash is still being developed, so it’s (obviously) not as mature as some other desktop RSS readers or their web-based counterparts. It still has a few wrinkles that need to be ironed out. But NewsFlash shows more than a little promise. It’s fast, easy to use, and doesn’t look all that bad either.

NewsFlash probably isn’t going to appeal to crowd who believe they need every feature — including syncing with whatever their favourite tools are — that a developer can pack into a RSS feed reader. But if your needs are simple, or you’re just getting started using RSS, then NewsFlash is a good choice.

While I like NewsFlash, I’m not entirely sure that I’m going to ditch Newsboat for it. That said, I will be using both in parallel for the foreseeable future.

— Scott Nesbitt

One command that’s flexible and deceptively powerful is cat. Let’s take a look at how to use it.

Viewing the Contents of a File

One common use of the cat command is to view the contents of a file without opening it in a text editor. Let’s say you’re poking around the command line and want to check out the contents of your .profile file. To do that, enter this command:

cat .profile

This display the entire contents of the file on your screen. You can then scroll through the output to find whatever you need to find. If the file is long, break the view into pages like this:

cat .profile | more

Combining Multiple Files

cat isn’t just useful for viewing files. You can also use it to combine multiple files into a single file.

Let’s say you have three text files: file1.txt, file2.txt, and file3.txt. To merge them into one file, type:

cat file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt > combined.txt

This create a new file called combined.txt that contains the contents of all three files.

Creating a File

You can also use cat to create a file. Let’s say you want to create a new text file called myTaskList.txt. Using cat, you can create the file and add some text to it, like this:

cat > myTaskList.txt
    - [ ] Do something useful

When you’re done, press Enter on your keyboard to save the file.

— Scott Nesbitt

Chromebooks run an operating system called chromeOS which, no matter what some people say, is more than just the Chrome web browser. You can even argue that chromeOS is Linux, at least under the hood. That said, you can tap into more of the power of Linux on a device running chromeOS. At least one manufactured in the last few years. How? By setting up a Linux environment that runs on top of chromeOS.

In a post that I’m sure will trigger more than a couple of people (and probably lose me some readers), I’ll walk you through the basics of enabling and using Linux on a Chromebook.

Why Not Just Use …

It’s not up to me to determine anyone’s use case. For anything. And that includes whether or not they decide to run Linux on a Chromebook. And I’m sure there is more than one such use case.

It could be that, as a Chromebook user, you want to explore Linux a bit before jumping in. Or you might want to use both Linux and chromeOS on the same device, and not install something like GalliumOS (a small Linux distribution rolled especially for Chromebook), which might not be available for their particular Chromebook. Or it could be any other reason you might have.

With that out of the way, let’s continue.

Enabling Linux

While the terminology used is a bit techie (as you’ll see in a moment), setting up and using Linux on a Chromebook isn’t all that onerous. It’s actually quite point and click.

To get going, fire up and log into a Chromebook. While writing this post, I was using one loaned to me by a friend — a Lenovo IdeaPad Duet, in case you’re wondering.

Next, go to the Chromebook’s settings and search for linux, as shown below:

In the Linux development environment section of the screen, click Turn on to start a wizard that walks you through the setup process.

Click Next to display the setup screen. On that screen, you can enter a user name and change the amount of disk space available on the Chromebook for Linux (out of the box, that’s 10 GB). Here are the settings that I used:

Once you’ve done that, click Install. Installation takes a couple of minutes. Once the process is finished, a terminal window like the one below displays.

Getting Started Using Linux

In that terminal window, you can fiddle with various common Linux commands. Among the applications that are standard kit is the vim text editor. Here’s me embracing my inner geek and editing a draft of this post in vim:

And, before you ask, you can install Emacs too …

But, as we all know, Linux is more than just the command line. You can also install desktop applications in your new Linux environment. Let’s look at how to do that.

Installing Applications

The version of Linux that runs on Chromebooks is based on a distribution called Debian, which uses a package manager called apt. To install an application, whether desktop or command line, type this in the terminal window:

sudo apt install [app-name]

Where [app-name] is the name of what you want to install. Let’s say that LibreOffice Writer is what you want to install. To do that, type this command:

sudo apt install libreoffice-writer

Here’s what it looks like running on a Chromebook:

And here’s me browsing the web on a Chromebook using GNOME Web:

If you can’t install something using apt, you can load Flatpak or snap in your Linux environment to widen your choices — learn more about them in this post.

Launching Linux Applications

You can fire up the applications that you’ve installed (including the terminal window) from the Linux Apps group in your Chromebook’s launcher. Here’s an example:

You can also launch desktop applications from a terminal window. Say, for example, you’re working at the command line and need to use LibreOffice Writer. Just type lowriter, press Enter, and away you go.

Working with Files

After you’ve set up Linux and installed your applications, you’re generally good to go. But what about files?

In your Linux environment, you have a /home directory — for example, /home/scott. Any files that you create are saved in this directory. You can, of course, create folders under the directory in a terminal window using the mkdir command.

You can also access your Linux /home directory from your Chromebook’s Files app. You’ll find that directory in the navigation pane of the Files app under Linux files. From within the Files app, you can create folders in your /home directory and copy files into it, as I did:

You can also right click on a folder in the Files app and select Share with Linux. Any chromeOS folder that you share is available in your Linux environment under /mnt/chromeos/MyFiles.

Getting Rid of the Linux Environment

I know more than a couple of people who use Linux beside chromeOS on their Chromebooks almost daily. But Linux isn’t for everyone. Maybe after giving it a go, you’ve found that Linux isn’t for you. Maybe your experiment was successful and you want to install Linux on a computer that you have lying around. Or perhaps you want to free up some disk space on your Chromebook after test driving Linux.

To get rid of the Linux environment on your Chromebook, go to Settings and search for linux. Click Linux development environment. Then, click Remove as shown below:

On the dialog box that displays, click Delete.

Final Thoughts

Chromebooks aren’t for everyone. I get that. But, as I mentioned earlier in this post, I’m not arrogant enough to view myself as the final arbiter of how anyone gives Linux a test drive or what computer and operating system they use. For those with few technical chops, but who want to give Linux a try, enabling Linux on a Chromebook is a quick and easy way to do that.

— Scott Nesbitt

Let’s jump in, shall we?

Add Times

Every Linux distribution comes with a desktop calculator. Which is great when you need to work through various figures. But that calculator isn’t all that great when it comes to computing time. Which is where Add Times comes in.

Add Times is aimed at people who need to log time spent of long tasks — for example, drivers and pilots. But anyone who needs to track time for timesheeting or invoicing might find it useful, too. Including full-time employees, freelancers, and contractors.

The application has a spare interface, one that’s easy to use. You enter time as hours and minutes — for example, punch in 247 for 2 hours and 47 minutes. Click + to add another block of time. Keep doing that until you’ve tracked all of the time and then press Enter to get a total, as shown below:

Flatsweep

When you remove software that you installed using Flatpak, there are often some residual files left over in a hidden directory in your /home folder. As you install and uninstall software over time, those straggling files can accumulate over time. To be honest, it’s a pain to go into that folder and zap all of those files.

Flatsweep helps you clean up that problem. It scans the hidden directory that I mentioned a paragraph ago, the one containing the lingering files. Flatsweep then lists the folders, as shown below:

If you need to, deselect any folders that you don’t want to get rid of, and then click Clean. In second or two, those errant files and folders are gone.

Switcheroo

Sometimes, you need to quickly convert one or more image files from one format to another. Sure, you can open it in an application like The GIMP or Pinta and save that image with a new extension. Or you can jump to the command line and use something like imageMagick to do the deed. But do you really need anything that heavy? Give Switcheroo a try instead.

Switcheroo converts images between these formats: PNG, JPG, WebP, HEIF, GIF, PDF, and ICO. You can also change some characteristics of the images (as you’ll see in a moment).

To use Switcheroo, fire it up and then click Open Images …. Select the images to convert and then click Select Images. The images that you selected, along with Switcheroo’s options, display as shown below:

You can select a new format for the images, whether you want to compress them into a .zip file, change the quality of the images, change the background colour, and resize them.

When you’re ready to go, click Convert. You’ll be asked to choose a location, and once you do it takes only a few seconds (depending on the number of images you have) for the Switcheroo to do its work.

On the open source side of the fence, the most widely-known and widely-used browser is Firefox. Firefox has its fans but it also has its detractors. So much so that some folks have taken that browser’s source code and have spun up their own variations on the theme of Firefox.

One of those, which I started test driving in September, 2023, is LibreWolf. Let’s take a look at it.

How LibreWolf is Different from Firefox

The two browsers share much of same DNA. However, Librewolf branches off from Firefox in a few ways.

First, there’s LibreWolf’s strong emphasis on user privacy and security. It includes several privacy settings and features enabled out of the box. Those settings and features aim to minimize the collection of your data and websites tracking you. LibreWolf also disables certain Firefox features that can compromise your privacy.

LibreWolf incorporates other security measures to protect you while you’re browsing. It includes built-in ad-blocking and disables potentially vulnerable third-party plugins, and removes any proprietary components.

There’s more to that, which you can learn about at the LibreWolf website.

Getting LibreWolf

As with most Linux software these days, there are a few ways to get LibreWolf on to your computer. Some of those are detailed on this page. That page also includes information about how to install LibreWolf on those other two operating systems, in case you’re wondering.

You can also install the browser via:

• Flatpak,
• As an AppImage, or
• Using your Linux distribution’s software centre.

Using the Browser

For the most part, using LibreWolf is just like using Firefox. You get the same interface, the same controls, and all of the key features. Here’s what it looks like when you first start it:

And here’s what LibreWolf looks browsing this site:

And a slightly more graphically intensive site:

If you’re switching from Firefox (and I discuss some of the mechanics of this in a moment) you should have no problem using LibreWolf. I can’t categorically say that it’s faster than Firefox (I don’t know how to measure that), but LibreWolf does appear to start up and load web pages slightly quicker on my StarLite laptop. But, to be honest, the ordinary user doesn’t care about incremental increases in speed and performance as long as their browser doesn’t run glacially slow or crash when they use it. LibreWolf did neither while I used it.

If, like me, you use a few (or more than a few) Firefox add-ons, you can install them in LibreWolf. I had no problem installing the add-ons that I regularly use, but your mileage may vary.

Security

LibreWolf’s main selling point, as far as people who embrace it are concerned, is its focus on security. As I mentioned several paragraphs back, LibreWolf has a number of privacy and security settings enabled by default — for example, strict Enhanced Tracking Protection and sending websites a do not track signal. It also disables the browser’s built-in password manager, doesn’t include Firefox’s data collection and telemetry options, and has removed integration with the Pocket read-it-later tool.

On top of that, LibreWolf disables search and form history, as well as autofilling forms. It also packs the uBlock Origin add-on by default and deletes cookies and data when you exit, without having to tweak the settings. If you’re interested, you can get a full list of the privacy and security features at the browser’s website.

That said, sometimes LibreWolf’s safeguards are a bit too strict. For example, when I enter or follow a URL with www in it, and am redirected to the URL without it (which is not unknown on the web), I get a warning that the secure version of the site isn’t available when that secure version actually is.

That said, I’d rather be safer than sorrier. It’s easy enough to go into the browser’s settings to change your level of security — not just decreasing that level but also increasing it.

Moving from Firefox

What if you want to replace Firefox with LibreWolf, and still get the Firefox experience that you’re used to? If you use Firefox Sync, then that’s easy. Firefox Sync backs your up bookmarks, information about which add-ons you use, website passwords (if you let Firefox save them), your settings, and the like.

In LibreWolf, click the stacker menu and select Settings > Sync. From there, search for sync. In the results, click Enable Firefox Sync, as shown below.

On the message that displays, click Restart LibreWolf Now. When the browser restarts, click the stacker menu and beside the new menu item Sync and save data, click Sign In as shown below:

Enter your email and password, and after about 30 seconds or so all of your data from Firefox syncs with LibreWolf. If you use add-ons that require a user name and password, you’ll need to enter those credentials to use the add-ons.

If you’re not using Firefox Sync, you can try:

• Backing up and restoring your Firefox profile (I’m not sure how well that works, though), or
• Exporting your bookmarks and making a note of the add-ons that you’re using, then import your bookmarks into LibreWolf. Once you’ve done that, go to the Firefox add-ons site and install your add-ons.

I offer no guarantees that will work. If it doesn’t, please don’t blame me.

If use uBlock Origin in Firefox, don’t need to reinstall it — as I mentioned earlier, a version comes baked into LibreWolf.

Final Thoughts

When I first decided to try LibreWolf, I didn’t know what to expect. And, more to the point, I didn’t think I needed to use something other than Firefox — I was more than happy with using Firefox as my main browser. But as I used it, my period of test driving LibreWolf kept getting longer and longer. LibreWolf gradually grew on me. So much so that I’m using it as my day-to-day window into the web. Sometimes, I even forget that I have Firefox installed on my laptop.

— Scott Nesbitt

To make installing applications easier, and avoid spiralling people into dependency hell, a pair of package management systems have gained a lot of traction in the Linux world over the last few years. Those systems? Flatpak and Snap.

Both are controversial. Both regularly raise the ire of people in certain corners of the Linux world. And I’m not going to go into any of that — if you’re interested, turn to your favourite search engine.

That said, Flatpak and Snap aren’t going away any time soon. So let’s take a look at how to use both Flatpak and Snap to install software from the Linux command line.

What are Flatpak and Snap?

Flatpak and Snap, as I mentioned a couple of paragraphs back, are package management systems. The idea behind them is to simplify the installation and management of software on Linux by including dependencies (like libraries or other software) with applications. The idea is to ensure compatibility of those applications across different Linux distributions.

Flatpak

Flatpak was created by the GNOME project. It’s a sandboxed environment, meaning the applications that you install using Flatpak are isolated from the rest of your system. This reduces the likelihood of conflicts and making updating those applications easy.

If you need to install Flatpak, you can find instructions at the Flatpak website.

Snap

Snap, on the other hand, was developed by Canonical (the company behind Ubuntu). Like Flatpak, Snap offers a sandboxed environment for applications (called snaps). The idea is to ensure the security and compatibility of applications across various Linux distributions.

Snap relies a program called the snap daemon to install and manage snaps. The snap daemon comes as part of many Linux distributions. If you need to install it, you can find instructions on the Snapcraft website.

Installing Applications with Flatpak

Let’s assume that Flatpak is installed on your computer — either as standard kit with your distribution or because you installed it yourself. So how do you install applications with it?

You can do that in two ways. One way is to search for an application on the Flathub website, copy the command to manuallly install it, and then paste that into a terminal window. Or, if you know the name of the application, you can open a terminal window and use this command to search for an application:

flatpak search [application-name]

For example:

flatpak search kooha

The case of the application’s name doesn’t matter — using Kooha and kooha return the same results.

Once you’ve found the application that you want to install, run this command:

flatpak install [application-name]

You’ll be asked to type Y or n. Type Y to install. Flatpak adds a shortcut to the application to your desktop menu.

Installing Applications with Snap

Let’s assume that the snap daemon is installed on your computer. So how do you install an application using snap?

As with Flatpak, you can do that in two ways. You can search for an application on the Snap Store, copy the command to manuallly install it, and then paste that into a terminal window. Or, you can find the name of the application by typing this command in a terminal to search for it:

snap find [application-name] | more

For example:

snap find notes | more

Adding | more to the command breaks a long list of results into individual pages that you can scroll through by pressing the spacebar on your keyboard.

When you’ve found the application that you want to install, run this command:

sudo snap install [application-name]

You’ll be asked to enter your password. Once you do that, the application installs and you can fire it up from your desktop application menu.

— Scott Nesbitt

There are still some people who shy away from Linux because they believe that regularly jumping to the terminal is a must when using it. Power users often reside there, that’s true, but I know more than a few people who’ve been using Linux for years and who’ve never once been on the command line.

While I don’t believe that you need to use the command line to get the most out of Linux, a little knowledge of the command line can go a long way. Let’s look at three useful terminal commands. You might not always use them, but they can come in handy when you need them.

ps

Use ps to display information about the applications and processes that are running on your computer. The command displays several bits of information including a numeric identifier for an application or process (called its PID), the name of the user who started application, and more.

The ps command has a number of options, but you really only need to know one of them. To see what applications and processes are currently running, type:

ps -u [your-user-name]

Where [your-user-name] is just that. In my case, for example, that’s scott.

What you wind up with is a long list. You’ll need to scroll up in the terminal window to see all of it. You can get around that by typing:

ps -u [your-user-name] | more

Adding | more to the command puts what’s essentially a page break what ps spits out. Here’s an example:

Press the spacebar on your keyboard to move to the next page.

kill

Use the kill command to shut down an unresponsive program. The program that you’re shutting down doesn’t need to be a command line program, either — it can be one running on your desktop, too.

To use the kill command, you first need to get the PID of the program that’s frozen using the ps command. A program’s PID is the number on the left side of the screen, as shown below:

Once you have the PID, type this at the command line:

kill [PID]

Let’s say that the Firefox web browser has decided to stop responding. Use the ps command to get it’s PID — here’s an example:

In this case, Firefox’s PID is 4109. Now, type this at the command line:

kill 4109

If that doesn’t work, you can add -9 to the command to brute force the shutdown of Firefox (or any stubborn program), like this:

kill -9 4109

which

Use the which command to find the executable file for an application. It searches the directories listed in the PATH environment variable set in a file called .profile, which resides in your /home directory.

Why use it? I find which to be useful when I need to add an application to a menu using a utility like Pin It!. Using which is faster than stumbling around in a file picker.

To run the command, type this in a terminal window:

which [executable-name]

So, if you want to find where the executable pdflatex resides, type:

which pdflatex

The command display the full path to the executable file — for example, /usr/bin/pdflatex.

As I mentioned at the top of this post, you might only use these commands once in a while. But they’re definitely handy when you need them.

— Scott Nesbitt

Sure, you can do that in your web browser by right clicking on a link and choosing a save option. But if you can do that, and more, with two terminal commands: cURL and Wget. Let’s take a quick look at the basics of how to use both of them.

using cURL

In case you’re wondering, cURL is short for Client for URLs. cURL’s primary purpose in life is to move data between computers — like between a web server and your desktop or laptop.

How do you use it? Crack open a terminal window and from there, go to the directory in which you want to save the file you’re going to download. Then, enter this command:

curl -O [URL]

Replace [URL] with the full URL (along with the file name) of what you want to download.

Let’s say you want to download the file Super-Terrific-Demo.ogv from the website of online conglomerate CompuGlobalHyperMegaNet. To do that, use this command:

curl -O https://compuglobalhypermeganet.io/media/Super-Terrific-Demo.ogv

Some Useful Options

cURL has several other options that you might find useful. Here are two of them:

If your download stalls for whatever reason, you can re-run cURL with the -C option. The download restarts at the point at which it stalled.

You can also run cURL in the background by adding the -b option to command. That way, you can use the same terminal window (or the same tab in the terminal window) to do other tasks while a file is downloading.

Using Wget

Wget, short for World Wide Web get, differs from cURL in that you can use it to grab a single file, to download the contents of directories, or to grab entire websites.

To download a file using Wget, go to the command line and navigate to the directory in which you want to save what you’re going to download. Then, type this command:

wget [URL]

Replace [URL] with the full URL to the file that you want to download. If you don’t specify a file name, Wget pulls down the entire directory.

Two Handy Options

Here are two options that come in handy when you’re using Wget.

To download a file but save it on your computer with a different name, add the option –output-document=[new-file-name], where [new-file-name] is the name and extension that you want to give the file.

To resume a stalled or stopped download, add the –continue option to the command. Wget picks up from where the download stopped.

Getting More Information

This post just barely scratched the surface of what cURL and Wget can do. If you’re interested in diving more deeply into both, here’s some information that can help you:

• cURL man page
• Wget manual

I’m still moving in, so publishing might be a bit sporadic over the next week or two. But in all the ways that matter, this is the same Open Source Musings that you’ve come to expect.

Feel free to keep checking back for new posts. Or subscribe to the RSS feed.

While I try to do as much of my work as I can in plain text, one limitation that I run into is project management. I prefer a slightly more visual representation of where moving parts of my projects are while I’m working on them.

For that, I use a simple kanban board. While kanban boards are widely used in software development, manufacturing, and elsewhere they’re also a great tool for personal projects.

On the open source side of the fence, you can turn to applications like WeKan or Nextcloud Deck to do the job. But what if you don’t want to turn to the web and, instead, have a kanban board on your desktop?

The open source pickings in that area are a bit slim. While I found what looked to be a promising open source desktop kanban app, but I couldn’t get it to run. Then I ran into Focalboard, from folks behind the Mattermost collaboration tool.

I spent a few weeks using Focalboard to manage a couple of projects. Let’s dive in and find out what came of that.

Getting Focalboard

There are three versions of Focalboard. The one I downloaded, which was most relevant to me, was the Personal Desktop edition. Grab the file focalboard-linux.tar.gz (there are also versions for the macOS and Windows desktops).

Once it’s downloaded, extract the archive to a folder somewhere on your computer. From there, double click on the file focalboard-app. After a few seconds, Focalboard runs and displays this screen:

You’ll learn what to do next in a moment.

(Focalboard doesn’t add itself to your desktop or application menu after you start it. To do that, you can use a little utility like Pin It!.)

With that out of the way, fire up Focalboard and you’re ready to go.

Adding a Board

A board is a container for the tasks in a project. It also defines your workflow for that project — a kanban board is really just a set of columns that represent a stage of work.

As you saw, when you start Focalboard for the first time you need to create a board. You can do that by choosing one of the templates that come with the application.

Of the templates, I only found two that were potentially useful for my purposes — Personal Tasks and Project Tasks. Your mileage will vary. Choose a template and then click Use this template.

That said, you don’t need to use a template. You can click Create an empty board. You get a blank canvas that you can set up as you see fit:

Click + Add a group to add a column to the board. Then, double click header of column and type a name a name for it — for example, Drafts. You can also click the ellipsis (...) beside the name of the column to select a colour for the column’s header:

Repeat that until you’ve added all the columns that you need for the board. Here’s what a simple board looks like:

You can add as many boards as you need. Usually, that’s one per project. However, I know people who, when working on big projects, break those projects down into segments, with a board for each segment.

Adding Additional Boards

So what happens if you want to create another kanban board? Click +Add board at the bottom of Focalboard’s left pane. A familiar window, containing a containing a list of templates that you can use, displays :

From there choose a template or click Create an empty board. Then, add and configure columns.

Adding Cards to Your Board

Cards are the individual tasks on your board. To add one, click +New under a column. A blank card displays, as shown below:

Give the card a descriptive name — for example, Write Focalboard post. You can click +Add a property to insert a field, a date, a URL, or more on the card. On one of the boards I created, I added a text field labelled Publication Date to my cards.

You can also add a description to the card and click Attach to attach a file to the card if you need to.

When you’re creating a card, Focalboard adds an icon to that card (as you can see in the screen capture above). It’s not my kind of thing, so I constantly find myself clicking the icon and selecting Remove icon. More on this in a few paragraphs.

Here’s a card that’s ready to be added to the board:

Repeat that for every task in your project.

Here’s an active board:

Using Your Board

Focalboard works like any other kanban board application that you might have used in the past. You move cards through a project’s workflow by dragging them to the next column on the board. You can also change the order of the cards in column by dragging and dropping them vertically.

As well, you can show or hide the attributes that you’ve added to a card by clicking the Properties above the column headers. Here’s an example from one of my boards:

Other Features

You can create a template by clicking +Add board and then clicking +Create new template. From there, add columns and properties to the board. When you save it, it’s added to the list of template that displays the next time you click +Add board.

If you’ve used another kanban board application — like Trello, Asana, Notion, Jira, or Todoist — you import data from them by clicking Settings and choosing Import. You can also export an archive containing your boards in Focalboard from the Settings menu.

Do you remember me mentioning the annoying icon that’s added to every card that you create on a board? You can stop that from happening by turning off Random icons option under the Settings menu. At least, that’s the idea. Whenever I do that, the setting doesn’t persist the next time start Focalboard.

Final Thoughts

Focalboard is a good option if you want to use a kanban board to manage your personal projects without having to turn to a web-based application — open source or otherwise. It’s easy to use and while it may seem a bit basic, Focalboard does just enough and does it well.

But in my drive to simplify and consolidate various things digital in my life, I now work with notes mostly on my desktop. That, in turn, recently drew me back to an application that I’d investigated in past.

Meet QOwnNotes. If you’re familiar with it, QOwnNotes might seem like a strange choice for me — it packs more features than I need or use. But you can also make it as barebones or as complex as you need or want.

After I took QOwnNotes for a lengthy test drive, I came away with new appreciation for it. Let’s jump in and see what I discovered.

Getting QOwnNotes

The fastest, easiest way to install QOwnNotes is to use the software centre (or whatever it’s called) in the Linux distribution that you use. I installed it on my laptop using the Zorin OS Software app.

You can also download an AppImage, or install it via Flathub or as a snap. The choice is yours.

If you’re of more technical bent, you can compile the source code.

Getting Started with QOwnNotes

When you start it up, you’ll notice that QOwnNotes has something of a cluttered user interface:

Out of the box, QOwnNotes reminds me of the Geany text editor in that the interface contains a lot of what I don’t need or use. But like Geany, you’re not stuck with all of that.

You can change the look and feel of the interface by clicking Note > Settings. Ignore most of what you see, and jump to the Interface section of the Settings window. These are the key items I changed:

• Layout — Select Minimal.
• Editor fonts — I set those to IBM Plex Mono (my monospace font of choice).
• Toolbars — I removed most of the buttons from the main toolbar, since I never use them.

Here’s what the QOwnNotes window looks like after I set it up to fit my needs:

QOwnNotes has quite a few more settings. Feel free to poke around in them.

Selecting a Folder For Your Notes

Some people keep all of their notes in a single folder and use either tags or search to quickly find the notes they needs. And QOwnNotes has a pretty decent search function.

I’m not one of those people. I prefer a bit of organization, which comes in the form of folders. In QOwnNotes’ settings under Note folders, you add one or more sets of folders. You could, for example, have a folder for personal notes and separate ones for your projects.

Those folders don’t need to be in the same directory on your computer — you can, for example, point QOwnNotes to a folder in your /home directory and to the notes folder in Nextcloud.

Taking Notes

Either click the New note icon on the toolbar or press Ctrl+N on your keyboard. Your new note contains a default title, which consists of the word Note followed by the current date and time. Here’s an example:

Change the title and then start typing. QOwnNotes supports target="_blank"Markdown, which you can add by hand or using a toolbar icon.

Here’s an example of a note:

And here’s an example of a preview of a note, which you can call up by clicking the Show Note preview panel button on the toolbar:

QOwnNotes automatically saves your notes as plain text files, with the extension .md, to the folder that I mentioned a few paragraphs ago.

Adding Images to a Note

You can also add images to a note by either:

• Pressing Ctrl+Shift+I on your keyboard and pointing QOwnNotes to that image, or
• Copying the image to your clipboard, right clicking, and selecting Paste html or media

In both cases, QOwnNotes adds the Markdown code for the image. When you preview the note, the image displays along with the text of the notes.

Importing Notes

You don’t have to start from scratch. If you use Evernote, Joplin, or Tomboy, you can import the notes that you have in those applications — learn more about how to do that at the QOwnNotes website.

You can also import text files on your computer. From the Note menu, select Import > Import notes from text files, and then point QOwnNotes to the folder containing the text files that you want to import.

Installing Scripts

While QOwnNotes has a number of settings and features, you can add more to the application using scripts. They are, as you’ve probably guessed, like little programs that extend the capabilities of QOwnNotes.

To install a script, click Notes > Settings. In the Settings window, click Scripting. From there, click Add script and then select Search script repository. This window displays:

Find the script that you want and then click Install. To be honest, I’ve only found five scripts to be useful. They are:

• ATX Headline - Tells QOwnNotes to use hashtags (#) to format headings.
• Blank Note - Adds a button to the toolbar which, when I click it, creates a note with no heading or text.
• Export notes as one HTML file - Enables me to select multiple notes and save them as a single HTML document.
• Paste HTML as GitHub Markdown - If I’ve copied some HTML from somewhere, this script converts it to Markdown when I paste it into a note.
• Duplicate note - Makes a copy of a note. This is useful when I use a note as a template.

Final Thoughts

QOwnNotes comes very close to being my ideal note taking application. While it does pack far more features that I use, it’s fairly easy to streamline the user interface to make it seem like many of those features aren’t there.

While I’m still not entirely sure I’ll continue to use QOwnNotes into the future, for now it’s working for me. With QOwnNotes, I can quickly jot down, organize, and use my notes. And isn’t that the point of a tool like this?

When I moved overseas, those dictionaries went to new homes. Since then, I haven't replaced those tomes. When I need a dictionary, I turn to the Linux command line and use dict. And, no, doing that isn't as geeky or techie as it seems.

Let's take a quick look at using dict to look up new and unfamiliar words.

Getting dict

You can quickly install dict with a desktop package manager like Synaptic. But that's not the only way to do the deed. You can also install it from the command line — it is a command line application after all ...

If you're using a Linux distribution based on Debian (like Ubuntu, Linux Mint, or Zorin OS) you can install dict in a terminal window using this command:

sudo apt install dict

If you're not using a distribution based on Debian, try using your distro's equivalent command — for example, pacman on Arch Linux or dnf on Fedora.

Using dict

When you need to find the meaning of a word, crack open a terminal window, then type dict [word] — for example:

dict woolgathering

Here's the result:

dict's results often go beyond the bottom of a terminal window. To get around that, you can add | more after the command like this:

dict woolgathering | more

Here's the result:

Adding | more breaks the results up. You can move to the next page or pages by pressing the Space bar on your keyboard.

You can also get the definition of a phrase by surrounding the words that make up the phrase with quotation marks. For example, to look up the meaning of free software, type:

dict "free software"

Using Other Dictionaries

When you ask dict to look up a word, it turns to one or a small handful of its available dictionaries. The dictionaries that the application chooses is based on the context of the word or phrase that you enter. For example, if you enter a more archaic word, dict will scour the older dictionaries at its disposal.

But those dictionaries aren't your only choices. You can focus your look up on a single dictionary. dict gives you access to a number of dictionaries — some general purpose, some specialized, and a few for foreign languages.

You can view the available dictionaries by typing:

dict -D | more

Which looks like this:

Let's say you want to look up a word or phrase using The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing. To do that, type:

dict -d foldoc [word or phrase]

For example:

dict -d foldoc "open source license"

Which returns this:

Final Thoughts

There's a lot more that you can do with dict. What I've outlined in the previous few hundred words is how I use dict. Your mileage may vary.

That said, even though dict is a command line utility, it's not overly techie. It's easy to use and it's useful. On top of that, it saves me time when I need to look up a word or two.

Two or three years ago, when I was using elementary OS as my main Linux distribution, I came across an application called Planner. At the time, I thought it wasn't all that bad a piece of software but it didn't pique my interest. When I heard a new version had been released, I decided to give it a peek.

I finally got around to doing that in the winter (in the southern hemisphere) of 2023. Let's jump into Planner and take it for a spin.

Getting Planner

If you use elementary OS, you can install Planner from the AppCenter. It's also available in the software centres for other distributions. Check yours to see if you can install Planner from there.

Or, if you prefer, you can install Planner as a FlatPak.

Using Planner

When you first start Planner, you choose to save your information on your computer, to hook Planner into service that uses CalDAV (like Nextcloud Tasks), or to link it to a popular to-do list application called Todoist. Here's what that looks like.

Once choose an option, you're stuck with it. If you want to switch to something else, click on the Settings icon and then select Delete all my app data. This wipes out all your data, and you get a clean slate. Start again from the window above.

In case you're wondering, for this post I chose to work locally.

To start using Planner, click +. A card displays where you can enter details about a task, as shown below.

Click Schedule to add start or due date for that task. This is optional, but can come in handy later (as I'll discuss in a few paragraphs). Once you've done that, click Add Task.

Working with Projects

Out of the box, every task you create goes into Planner's Inbox. If you need to, you can add projects to group tasks around single theme.

To add a project, click + beside the Projects label in the sidebar. In the window that displays, enter a name for the project and optionally choose a colour for it. Here's an example:

Here's a list of projects in Planner's sidebar:

To add a task to a project, click +.

Working with Sections

You can also add sections to a project. This helps make your tasks a bit more granular or can reflect stages in your project.

Add a section by going to a project. Then, click ... and select Add section. Type a name for the section and then press Enter. Add a task to the section by clicking ... to the right of the section's header and selecting Add task.

Here's example:

Planner and Your Calendar

If have added start or due dates to your tasks, they'll appear in the Scheduled section. To view them, click Scheduled in sidebar. Once there, you can navigate to the day on which you plan to start one or more tasks, or when they're due. Here's an example:

If you have an external calendar synced with your desktop, any events or appointments on that day also display (as shown in the image above).

Sharing Your Tasks

If have an email client installed on your desktop, you can email list of tasks in a project to yourself (or someone else) by clicking ..., selecting Share, and then selecting Email.

Also on the Share menu is the Markdown option. Selecting that option copies tasks as a Markdown-formatted checklist to your clipboard. From there, you can paste the checklist into a text editor, a dedicated Markdown editor, or any other productivity app that supports Markdown.

Changing Planner's Settings

Planner's settings are fairly basic. You can choose:

• The date and time format Planner uses,
• How you want to sort your tasks, and
• Which project is one that Planner focuses on when you start it.

You can also enable dark mode and which events to sync from a calendar that's linked to your desktop.

As as I said a paragraph or two ago, Planner's settings are fairly basic. Realy, what more do you need?

Final Thoughts

Planner is a nice little application that combines your desktop tasks and synced calendars in one place. It might not have all the bells and whistles that hardcore productivity hackers demand from their apps, but so what? Planner isn't designed for them. It's designed for the average computer user who wants to get things done.

If I ever decide to go back to using only digital tools to stay organized, I'll definitely give Planner another look.

— Scott Nesbitt

That said, there are more than a few solid Markdown editors for the Linux desktop — I've looked at a few over the life of this blog, as you might recall.

It's time to look at three more. So let's jump in, shall we?

Formiko

You can do more with Formiko than edit Markdown files. You can also use it work with files formatted with reStructuredText. For the purposes of this post, I'm only looking at it as a Markdown editor. In that capacity, Formiko does a good job.

The editor itself is quite minimal. Aside from a basic toolbar at the top and a running count of words and characters at the bottom, you get a canvas on which to edit, as shown below:

You can also preview the file that you're working on or have a split screen — the editing pane on the left and the preview on the right. Here's an example:

One useful feature of Formiko is the ability to format previews and output with a CSS file of your choosing. Here's an example of a preview using a CSS file that I cobbled together:

If you need to export your file, you can only save it as HTML. If you're using a custom CSS file Formiko applies that to the resulting HTML file.

Formiko doesn't have too many options. Aside from being able to use a custom CSS file, you can also change the orientation of the split screen preview (with the editor on top and preview below), as well as the engine with which to preview and export your files. I'd like to be able to be able to change the editor's font; it's just a bit too small for my liking.

ThiefMD

ThiefMD is one of the more feature-filled Markdown editors I've taken for a spin in a while. In addition to Markdown, you can also use ThiefMD to write screenplays using Fountain, a Markdown variant for working with scripts. Even though you can do all that (and more) with it, ThiefMD doesn't feel heavy.

When you first fire up it up, you're asked either to open a single file or add a directory:

The first option is obvious — you can work on standalone Markdown files. The second option is for when you have a project like a book. You can use ThiefMD to manage, keep track of, and work on the components of that project. At the time I wrote this post, I didn't have a bigger project that I was working on, so I only used ThiefMD to edit individual files.

That said, ThiefMD is great for doing that. You get a simple, clean interface that's a blank canvas for your writing. Here's an example:

You can also preview your work side-by-side with the raw text, as shown here:

In addition to that, you can select Publishing Preview from the hamburger menu to get an idea of what you're working on will look like when you export it. Here's an example:

You can export your work as HTML, a PDF, an EPUB, a .docx file, a LaTeX file, or as an MHTML file.

What sets ThiefMD apart from Formiko (and many other Markdown editors) is that it's very configurable. I'm not going to look at all of ThiefMD's configuration options, but here are some of the highlights. You can:

• Download files to change the look and feel of the application.
• Get CSS files to change the format of exports.
• Change the font used in the editor.
• Set the margins of PDFs.
• Connect to ThiefMD to several blogging platforms — including WriteFreely, Ghost, and WordPress — and publish directly to a blog from the editor.

And quite a bit more.

Marker

Market is a minimal but useful editor for the GNOME desktop. It doesn't offer much in the way of features, but don't let that put you off. It's still very usable and useful.

Start Marker up and you get a split-screen view, like this:

Open a file formatted with Markdown and you get a running preview in addition to the text that you're editing, as shown below:

You can turn the preview off if you need to — I do, mainly because I find it a bit distracting and it takes up editing space.

If your documents are of a more techie bent, you can add equations, Mermaid diagrams, and graphs created with a tool called Charter. You can also pop open a window in which you can add hand-drawn diagrams or a signature to your documents.

You're not stuck with Markdown files, either. You can export your documents in these formats: HTML, PDF, RTF, .odt, .docx, and LaTeX. Aside from the HTML export (more on this in a moment), the results are adequate.

Marker only has a handful of customization options. To get to them, click the stacker menu in the top-right corner of the screen and then click Preferences. Some of those options include:

• Enabling text wrapping and where the right margin is.
• Enabling the spelling checker and syntax highlighting.
• Showing line numbers.
• Setting the tab width.

You can also apply styles to your previews. Marker comes with 18 stylesheets. When you export your documents to HTML, the resulting file uses the stylesheet that you're currently using for your preview. here's an example:

Final Thoughts

Formiko, ThiefMD, and Marker all have their strong points. If you're looking for an easy-to-use Markdown editor you can't go wrong with any of them.

— Scott Nesbitt

Thanks to the support of the Open Source Initiative, that community now has a new home: OpenSource.net. That site's in its early stages, but there's still quite a bit to learn there.

As a former Opensource.com correspondent, it's great to see the community find a new corner on the web. And I'm hoping that it grows and thrives. You can help make that happen by sharing your knowledge.

(Note that Opensource.com is still around but the site's not being updated. And there's no guarantee Red Hat will keep it running into the future.)

— Scott Nesbitt

The utilities I'm about to look at are ones that you might not always use, but they are handy to have around when you need them.

Let's jump in, shall we?

Breathing

Sometimes, we all just need a break. It doesn't have to be very long — only a minute or two, but that's enough time to refocus ourselves and relax a bit.

That's where Breathing comes in. It does one thing and one thing only: helps you reset by getting you to breath slowly and regularly for a short period.

When you start up Breathing, you get the button shown below:

When you click Go, a countdown starts and you breath in and out at the cadence Breathing dictates, like this:

Desktop Files Creator

Not all software comes in a nice package. Sometimes, you download an Electron app or an AppImage. But when you do that, the launcher for that application doesn't automatically appear in your applications menu.

Sure, you can create a desktop file but that's a bit of a chore. You need to know the structure of that file, then have to save it in a hidden folder in your /home directory. It's a bit more work than it's worth.

Why not let Desktop Files Creator do the heavy lifting for you? As its name states, it creates that file I mentioned a paragraph ago. All you need to do is fill in a few blanks, as shown below:

Those blanks include the name of the application, where it is on your hard drive, and the location of its icon. All of that looks something like this:

Click Create and then click OK. You'll need to log out and log back in before you see the icon in your application menu.

Paper Clip

You probably don't need to do it very often, but there might come a time when you need to modify the metadata of a PDF file. Information like the title, the author, the date the PDF was published, keywords, and more.

Sure, you can try to regenerate the PDF or pull it into a PDF editing application to make those changes but why grapple with that bulk when you can use a lightweight tool like Paper Clip instead?

Using it is pretty simple: fire up Paper Clip, then open a PDF file. The PDF's metadata displays, as shown below:

In the example below, I'm adding some keywords to the metadata and I've changed the Modification Date:

Once you've made your changes, click the stacker menu in the top-right corner of the window and then click Save.

— Scott Nesbitt

Part of that process had me pondering what my ideal note taking application would look like. The results of that pondering, to be honest, surprised me. Well, just a little ...

Let's take a peek at what my ideal note taking tool looks like.

(Remember that what's below is a picture of my ideal tool. It might not be what's ideal for you, but that's OK. Not everyone uses applications in the same way and for the same reasons, or needs the same things from an application.)

To start, my ideal note taking tool must be free and open source software. That's a deal breaker. The name of this blog is Open Source Musings, after all ... I try as hard as possible to live my life in FOSS, so that rules out more than a couple of desktop note taking applications that have become popular in recent memory.

The primary way that application saves individual notes must be as plain text files. I don't want to have to deal with a SQLite database (or any database), even if the application has the option to export notes as plain text. Exporting is something else I don't want to deal with. Why add another step to the process?

Of course, my ideal note taking tool must support Markdown. It doesn't need to have a Markdown preview function, but syntax highlighting would be a nice feature. And the tool should have the option to save the files that make up my individual notes with the extension .md.

I should also be able to set the note editor's font and the size of that font. Yes, I do have specific likes and requirements around that, especially now that I'm older and my eyesight isn't quite what it once was.

My ideal tool should recognize folders and subfolders on my hard drive. That's how I organize my notes — using folders to group them in categories or projects. Barring that, the application should allow me to tag notes and filter those notes using those tags.

A built-in search function is also a must, especially if the tool doesn't support folders and/or subfolders. That search function doesn't need to have complex search syntax. It should be quick and simple.

Speaking of simple, the interface should be just that. And minimalist. Two panes (one listing my notes, and one displaying the note I'm working on), a basic toolbar or easily-accessible menu, and not much else.

The application itself should also be simple. It shouldn't have too many frills, it shouldn't do 42 things that I don't need it to do. It should have the features that I use. If there are any extras, they should be few. And it shouldn't require me to shoehorn the way I work into the tool's design.

Finally, not being able to sync with an online service is an option. I've found that rarely, if ever, do I look at or add to my notes while using a phone or tablet. Being able to use my notes across devices or being able to store them on someone else's computer is no longer the big selling point it once was.

There's nothing on the Linux desktop that meets my requirements to the letter. A small handful of note taking applications come close, but not close enough. What I'm looking for combines elements of Paper, Iotas, Auer Notes, Notable (no longer open source), and nvALT with a bit of Standard Notes mixed in for good measure.

While writing this post, I could hear the strains of the What about ...? and Why not just use ... choruses. The tools that the members of those choruses usually suggest are, for the most part, just too much for my needs. I don't need all of the features of those tools. I don't need their bulk and their complexity. And I definitely don't need the idiosyncrasies baked into many of those tools.

Maybe, one day I'll find that ideal FOSS note taking application. Well, the one that's ideal for me. Until then, I'll stick with what I'm using. It might not be perfect, but it's more than good enough.

— Scott Nesbitt

So, it's time to look at another pair of desktop tools to help you manage your passwords. Let's dive in, shall we?

Secrets

Secrets uses the popular KeePass password database format to store and secure your passwords. The user interface is simpler and cleaner than most other password management applications based on KeePass. But don't let the lack of (visible) options put you off. Secrets does its job well.

When you first first it up, you can either create a safe or open an existing one. A safe is simply the KeePass database that holds your passwords. If you create a safe, you'll also need to secure it with a password.

Once you've done that, click the + icon on the toolbar to add a login or to create a group (more on groups in a moment). Let's say you're adding a new login. This screen displays when you click +:

You can add a name to identify the entry in your safe along with a URL, as well as user name and password for the login. You can further identify the entry by changing its colour and/or adding an icon.

A couple of paragraphs ago, I mentioned creating groups. Groups are a way to organize similar types of passwords — for example, Communication to keep your logins for chat and email services in one place. Here's an example of the groups from my safe:

So you have a login saved in Secrets. Now what? To use it, find the login. Copy the username and password, as shown below:

Then paste them into the the login box for whatever you're trying to log into.

Master Key

Master Key is even simpler than Secrets, but it's also as effective. And Master Key is a little different from Secrets.

As with other applications of this type, you need to create and secure a password database when you first start Master Key. But it's when you add a login that the differences become apparent, as you can see in the image below:

While you can add the domain name and user name for the login you're adding, Master Key generates the password for you. You can choose the number of characters in the password, as well as whether to include uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. That will, in theory at least, create a more random and secure password.

As with Secrets, when you want to log into something, find the entry in Master Key. Then, copy the user name and password as shown below:

After that, paste the information into the destination login box and you're ready to go.

Final Thoughts

Both Secrets and Master Key are easy to use, easy to set up, and easy to maintain. There's not a lot of visual clutter — you get the basic password management functions that you need, and not much else.

Admittedly, using these two applications isn't as convenient as using something like, for example, Bitwarden in your browser. However, your passwords aren't on someone else's computer. You're in control of your information. For many of us, that's all that matters.

— Scott Nesbitt

For the slides, I could have fired up LibreOffice Impress or shaken the rust of my skills with Reveal.js. But I just needed simple slides, created quickly. Which gave me the excuse to try out an application that's been on my radar for a while: Spice-Up.

Let's take a look at it.

Getting Spice-Up

Spice-Up is made for elementary OS. So, if you use that Linux distribution you can grab it from the AppCenter.

What if you don't use elementary OS? You can find it in software centres of other distributions. You can also install Spice-Up via Flathub. So much for being locked into elementary OS ...

Once it's installed, fire it up. You're greeted by this window:

Using Spice-Up

Create your first slide deck by clicking New Presentation. You're given the choice of seven templates that you can use:

Click on one and you're ready to go.

Creating Slides

Once you select a template, it creates a desk with the title slide visible, as shown below.

You can change or delete the text that's there. Using contols in the top of the application window, you can add these to a slide:

• A text box,
• An image, or
• A shape

Add another slide by clicking the + icon in the bottom left of the window. Continue building your slides by adding text, images, and/or shapes until the deck is done. If you've created slides before, that's probably nothing you haven't done in another presentation tool. Just so you know, Spice-Up saves your work as you type.

Here's a completed slide deck in Spice-Up:

Modifying Your Slides

Admittedly, the templates that come with Spice-Up aren't anything too fancy. They do, however get the job done. You can, though, modify your slides by:

Changing the background colour of a slide, as shown below:

Changing a slide's background pattern, as shown below:

And adding a transition, as shown below:

You should change all of those settings on the sole slide in the deck immediately after you create a new presentation. From there, you can clone the slide to reuse them. I'll be looking at how to do that in a moment.

Other Functions

While Spice-Up is a fairly basic application, it does have some useful features. The first of which is the ability to add presenter notes to a slide. Do that by clicking the Presenter Notes icon on the toolbar to open an editing box, as shown below:

If you have a slide with elements that you want to reuse, you can clone it to make an exact duplicate of the slide. This is useful, for example, if you have a list in which you want to highlight a different item in each slide, while dimming the other items in the list. To clone a slide, press CTRL+D on your keyboard.

You can also save a slide deck as a PDF file by clicking the Export to PDF button on the toolbar, as shown below:

Viewing Your Slides

Click Start Presentation button in the top-right corner of the window.

Spice-Up goes into full screen mode, with your first slide loaded. Use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move between the slides.

Viewing Your Slides Without Spice-Up

According to the developer, you can also launch your slide deck in a browser — your slides are in what's essentially an HTML file (with some JavaScript, CSS, and SVG thrown in for good measure), but with the extension .spice.

When I tried to open one of those files in Firefox, the browser just kept spawning tabs. I had to shut down the browser. The Chromium-based browser I tried only displayed the HTML source of the .spice file. And Web just wouldn't recognize the file.

However, when I changed the extension to .html, all three browsers opened the slides. I only needed to switch to full screen mode to get the full effect.

A Trio of Small Problems

After you create a slide deck, it's given the name Untitled Presentation. You can only change that name on the Welcome screen. It would be more convenient to be able to do that on the slide editing screen.

While you can save your presentations as a PDF, you can't export them to formats that other presentation tools (like LibreOffice Impress) can read. That's probably not an issue for Spice-Up's intended audience, but I'm sure for some people that would be a make or break omission.

As I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, you can add presenter notes to slides. That said, I couldn't figure out how to display the notes when viewing a slide deck.

Final Thoughts

On the rare occasions that I give a talk, slides are mainly prompts. My slides are never anything fancy — no motion, animation, or embedded whatevers. Often, those slides are just simple text and or image. Or just a word, a la the Takahashi method.

For what I need to do, Spice-Up works as well for me as other slide creation tools. It's a quick and easy way to build and organize slide decks of the kind that I prefer to use.

— Scott Nesbitt