What Linux "Productivity" (ideally FOSS) tools do you use?

I’m in a bit of a productivity rut and whilst I suspect the issue is mainly between the keyboard and chair I’m also interested in what (FOSS) tools there are that people find effective.

One of my issues at the moment is cross managing different workstreams particularly with personal projects which are more in the “if I have time category”.

I’m interested in anything that helps manage time or limit distractions or anything that makes it easier to keep track of progress/next steps for project when there may be a bit of a time gap between.

nephs,

Logseq may help?

I keep a few entries in the content page, for each project, and in each page I got an updated todo list.

You can also capture everything in the same place, journal style, then link it back from the content pages. I find it very powerful.

And it’s FOSS. And md/filesystem based, so I just sync it between devices with git.

Kata1yst,
@Kata1yst@kbin.social avatar

Zettlr for technical writing into any format.

Obsidian for a second brain based on the molecular notes method. And yes, I've tried all of the FOSS alternatives. None are ready to replace Obsidian yet.

Wallabag for saving resources offline for easy and permanent reference.

Lunarvim for actually sitting down to work instead of fiddling with and optimizing my setup.

spacebot3000,
@spacebot3000@lemmy.world avatar

I’m with you on obsidian. Logseq comes close, but the app falls a bit short for me as of yet.

CaptainPedantic,

I haven’t tried Obsidian, but I use Logseq all the time. What do you think is holding Logseq back? I’m just curious.

I know for me the mobile app lacks some polish and it lacks plugins, which is annoying.

PlexSheep,
@PlexSheep@feddit.de avatar

Plugin support is a huge thing, obsidian does this so good. Also, tags are pretty cool, not sure if logseq has them. Do I remember correctly that Logseq does not store your stuff in a pure mix of markdown and directories, or was that another App?

CaptainPedantic,

Logseq has tags. Logseq does store data in markdown files. There’s one file for each page.

qaz,

Are you perhaps thinking about Anytype?

spacebot3000,
@spacebot3000@lemmy.world avatar

Honestly, I just found the android app incredibly clunky and annoying to navigate. I’m hoping it’ll improve with time, because I would like to move to a FOSS solution.

coffeejunky,

I tried obsidian, but the Android app is pretty terrible. So in the end I still use Google keep. I would definitely like a more open Foss option, but haven’t found one that works on Linux and Android that I like.

Corgana,
@Corgana@startrek.website avatar

I’ve been interested in Anytype, it’s supposed to be like Notion, which I haven’t used either. You might want to check it out. I’m also trying to get away from Google Keep.

shadowintheday2,

Just wish obsidian had better encryption support

Dehydrated,

You can use Cryptomator to encrypt your entire Obsidian Vault

yieldsfalsehood,

I capture all my predictable work items in icalendar-encoded files that I mostly author by hand in emacs. I use evolution for a conventional calendar view on my computer. I adb push to my phone and use icsx5 to import so I can view events there as well.

I’ve also been working on a project to produce a printable view that’s reasonably mature at this point. It accepts VEVENT, VJOURNAL, and VTODO entries and groups them by day, month, or year. Todo items are rendered as lists so I have a little circle to fill in when I’ve completed the work. I display both the title and description for all types, with the description processed as Markdown. So for instance a VJOURNAL with a weekly recurrence, a title like “This Week”, and a description like * n* n will appear every week in the printout as a blank list for jotting down two items not captured in my calendars.

I’ve been using the daily grouping so far to produce a weekly “checklist”. Every few weeks or so I hack on my RRULEs based on what’s working for me. For instance I bake a loaf of sourdough every week so I have events for feeding the starter, mixing the dough, then baking. I set each of those to recur on subsequent days of the week so they all magically fall into place then I shifted the start days around until I found my ideal baking day. I also have an entry for changing the bed sheets every week, and another for washing the washing machine scheduled for the same day of week at a slower frequency. Capturing everything that needs to be done (with some editorializing on granularity) and evolving their recurrences is the fundamental way I synchronize independent work, leaning on icalendar for expressiveness like this recurrence for planting the garden on the Saturday before Memorial Day weekend:


<span style="color:#323232;">RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=5;BYDAY=SA;BYMONTHDAY=16,17,18,19,20,21,22
</span>

The workflow doesn’t require the bespoke tooling since I can see all my maintenance items alongside my meetings using any application that can render icalendar. That was key to getting moving, but having the print out lets me feel more productive. I knock out all the routine stuff throughout the day and find that “if I have time” becomes “what do I want to do with this time”.

There are tools in the project for generating events for solstices and equinoxes as well as sunrises and sunsets. I include all of those in my printed daily view but exclude the sunrises and sunsets from evolution by capturing them in separate files. I also separate routine/noisy tasks like “change the bed sheets” from holidays and operational work like “plant the garden” or “change the water filters” so those become more visible.

Fubarberry,
@Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz avatar

I use Gnome as my main DE, so I use the Pop shell for automatic window tiling. It’s not being actively maintained anymore while Pop works on their new DE, but it still works pretty great. I have my eye on Veshell which is an upcoming DE from the guy who made the Material Shell overhaul for Gnome. It’s a significant change to the UX compared to any other DEs I’ve tried.

My main productivity work is making vector files for a laser cutter, so I use a combination of Inkscape and Lightburn (not FOSS) for that. I also use Openscad and Prusa Slicer for making various repair parts, but that’s not usually paying work.

On the terminal side I prefer fish and kakoune. Kakoune’s changes to the vim/neovim keybinds are a lot more intuitive and easier to learn imo, but come with the obvious downside of learning something less universally useful than the vim keybinds.

MetricIsRight,

Thank you for reminding me of Material Shell, I tried it years ago on an older build of Zorin OS and it crashed constantly. Excited to give it another whirl, and great to see he’s working on the same concept with a new implementation,

JoYo,
@JoYo@lemmy.ml avatar

joplin has allowed me to be a lot more flexible with managing and viewing my sheet music.

i converted my notes pretty easily and now i have access to them on all my devices.

Azzk1kr,

I just wished Joplin would store notes as some kind of plain text, like Obsidian does. I’ve also been trying out AppFlowy, which looks kinda promising (and Foss), but it stores notes in a db as well.

Fisch,
@Fisch@lemmy.ml avatar

Joplin does store the notes as plain text files, they’re just named after IDs, so you can’t tell which note is which

RockyC,
@RockyC@fosstodon.org avatar

@JoYo @zerakith is my second brain. I store damn near everything in there. The only thing I wish it did better was tables.

JoYo,
@JoYo@lemmy.ml avatar

I mainly use joplin for tables. it can’t do equations but for set lists and repertoire it’s much easier to use than anything else i’ve tried.

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/02e84990-9b3b-418b-9303-e45b8be85999.png

RockyC,
@RockyC@fosstodon.org avatar

@JoYo I do use tables in Joplin, but when they get large, dealing with them in markdown becomes unwieldy.

Feathercrown,

Honestly Obsidian or a similar note-taking app is enough for me. It has a KanBan plugin if you like using that, otherwise just use bulleted lists.

abbiistabbii,
@abbiistabbii@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Obsidian is amazing and more people should use it.

Scrath,

It’s not foss unfortunately and the license prohibits its free usage in a company

LemonLord,
@LemonLord@endlesstalk.org avatar

At the moment they are “don’t be evil”. It’s easy to access all your data in a folder with md files. I like Obsidian and use it on all devices with syncthing. Of course private use. In the long run I will migrate to emacs with my notes. But it’s one of my favorites at this time, too. But of course FOSS will be always free and fair.

thisfro,

Zotero and logseq

wolf,

I ended up using spreadsheets for keeping track of todos and habits. LibreOffice Calc is the obvious solution for FOSS, though I am using Googles Spreadsheet for cloud syncing and the Android/iPhone apps. If I get trouble with Google I will just copy and paste to LibreOffice and I am good.

For notes, IMHO nothing beats a good directory structure/layout and markdown. (Sorry, org-mode guys. :-P )

coolmojo,

Have a look at Super Productivity it is a todo list app with projects, time tracking, break time reminder. It is completely offline, no registration required.

krash,

Many have already mentioned Obsidian, I too ventured to it from Joplin and couldn’t be happier.

Other (FOSS) tools I use for productivity… GUI tools:

  • nocodb - a web-based database which can be accessed over API too
  • I’m keeping an eye on vikunja.io, hope to have it mature and implement more features regarding project management
  • paperless-ngx, make order of your paper-mess.

CLI tools:

  • Fish - a very nice and modern shell
  • chezmoi - a really nice dotfile manager
  • lsd instead of ls, dust instead of du, zoxide instead of cd
  • kopia - awesome backup tool. How backup is related to productivity? Disaster recovery ;-)
Falcon,

Try bare git repos over chemo, I’ve been much happier with that over chezmoi

gazby,

Just because the phrasing of this post implies Obsidian is OSS, just FYI to others, it isn’t 😢

Also +1 for Vikunja! 👍

zerakith,

Useful suggestions, thank you!

I’m going to try some of the more FOSS options (I’m on Joplin at the moment) first but if they don’t work out I’m going to give Obsidian a try.

Corgana,
@Corgana@startrek.website avatar

Anyone here have any experience with Anytype?

Dehydrated,

I tried it, but I will stick to Obsidian

procrastinare, (edited )

I use a variety of FOSS tools for both personal and work productivity.

For personal I use:

  • Nextcloud (Calendar, sync files, contacts etc, forms, availability sharing)
  • Thunderbird (Mail & Calendar)
  • Vikunja for managing all my projects/tasks. Also is very useful to have shared tasks with relatives. Another useful feature is that it can share specifics projects to people that do not have an account (for vacancy planning for example)
  • Tasks.org to manage Vikunja tasks in Android
  • Logseq for managing all my thoughts, ideas, tracking content like books, movies, videos watched
  • Nomie (specifically this maintained instance which has some new features). I use it to track myself (mood, anxiety, adhd, symptoms, food and drug consumption, people). It has an API so I for example can automatically insert activities from Garmin API. It is very useful to correlate things in life, or to tell the doctor if a specific symptom has flared up or not and many more things
  • Omnivore is my read-later off choice app, replacing Wallabag. It has an EXTREMELY polished interface, can aggregate RSS feeds, supports tags, comments, many filters and more. But the amazing thing is that it has a plugin for Logseq which automatically syncs all my highlights, notes and tags to it
  • Ferdium to quickly access all my important services
  • Syncthing on my phone, laptops and Kobo to sync Logseq between devices and books/articles from my PC to Kobo
  • Liftosaur for exercise routines (it has script language even) and can also track body measurements.
  • waistline as a substitute for myfitnesspal or cronometer

For work use:

  • Logseq is my main tool, with the capability of connecting to Zotero, reading papers and taking notes which with queries I can leverage it to see new ideas forming. It also acts as the best logbook I’ve ever used through its powerful templates and queries which simplifies a lot the work of comparing results since it can all be done automatically
  • Zotero to manage all my papers
  • neovim with vimtex, ltex-ls and ultisnips to write documents in LaTeX very fast. Also have some scripts to manage vector graphics very easily using github.com/gillescastel/inkscape-figures
  • Inkscape for doing all the images for my papers since I plot my graphs in SVG. This way I can edit graphs after ploting and never lose quality
  • Ranger file manager
  • Espanso

Update 1: Fixed Nomie link Update 2: added waistline and liftosaur since I had forgotten Update 3: added Inkscape

settoloki,

Your nomie link isn’t working, this is the one that interests me the most. But I’m trying logseq too. Thanks for the recommendations

procrastinare,

Strange, try these links maybe:

Let me know if any of those are working. You could also search for daily nomie in your preferred search engine. The developer of this maintained version is github.com/RdeLange

settoloki,

That’s the one ta, this looks interesting

cashews_win,

Why Logseq over Obsidian?

Helix,

It’s FOSS.

Falcon,

Foss I suspect.

I avoid obsidian for the same reason, instead I use org mode and MediaWiki (see also dokuwiki)

procrastinare,

As the others said, the main reason is that it is FOSS. Before Logseq, I was using Standard Notes, which is also FOSS and was enough for my needs then.

Then Logseq appeared at the same time I was learning about graph structured and linked notes as the likes of Tiddlywikis and RoamReasearch

zerakith,

These are all excellent suggestions and your username is very apt :)

My read it now is just save as epub and at some point send over to ereader so Omnivore could help me a lot.

procrastinare,

Thank you, glad to help!

Yeah that’s what I was doing before but in a more streamlined way. Wallabag has an integration with KoReader (which I have installed in my Kobo). So I saved articles in my browser or phone and then pulled them from Wallabag directly in the Kobo.

I hope the dev of Omnivore eventually implements this. He is very responsive and fast implementing features

eugenia,
@eugenia@lemmy.ml avatar

10-15 years ago the suggested app listings would be about apps that you create something with them, eg gimp, freecad etc. Most of what you suggest here are just apps to manage yourself, where you control your life down to minute detail. I consider such apps to have the effect of losing freedom and the randomness of life. Basically, we’ve moved from being creator beings, to barely living, and requiring app assistance for it.

WbrJr,

Interesting take. I think different though, because it does not mean we are not free, I think it helps in moments we are lost. I often find my self overwhelmed by what I need to do so organising myself or keeping myself organised can be very important to me. I don’t use apps to this extend yet, but plan on doing so after building my Nas. I think it’s also very interesting to keep track of my health and mood in order to learn patterns I should avoid in order to stay mentally stable

ray,

Do you know if it’s possible to use Vikunja as a frontend for next cloud tasks? It does it have some extra sauce on top of caldav?

procrastinare,

No, Vikunja has both the front-end and backend for the tasks and is the caldav provider itself.

You can use planify and Tasks.org as frontends to manage Nextcloud tasks on your computer and phone, respectively

Interstellar_1, (edited )
@Interstellar_1@pawb.social avatar

I make use of flowtime, which is an timer app similar to pomodoro but with a smarter system for scheduling breaks. Instead of having a set time to go on break you can go on break anytime, and the app calculates a good break time. It also shows your working statistics, which is quite cool to see.

zerakith,

This sounds interesting I did have some success with Pomodoro but stopped for some reason. I’ll try flowtime out, thanks!

joojmachine,

Love Flowtime, I use it almost every time I need to work on something other than my full-time job

berryjam,

TaskWarrior

delirious_owl,
@delirious_owl@discuss.online avatar

I use zim for everything

zerakith,

Looks interesting, thanks I’ll check it out!

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