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.

JoYo,

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,

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.

FriendBesto,

Nextcloud, FreshRSS and KdeConnect come to mind.

zerakith,

How do you use KDEConnect for productivity? I am currently planning a move to KDE Plasma from Gnome (when 6 comes out).

diogocaveiro,

@zerakith @FriendBesto Answering text messages right from the computer is way faster for me. Or file transfers between the smartphone and workstation.

toastal,

Neovim & reStructuredText

sgtnasty,
@sgtnasty@lemmy.ml avatar

I have found Kate to be very capable with python and rust. With Sessions I can also have my own set of notes in markdown. The plugins are plentiful and git integration is built in.

maness300,

fkin love kate

unconsciousvoidling,

Been using Kate as just a notepad…what plugins should I be made aware of ?

sgtnasty,
@sgtnasty@lemmy.ml avatar

Im my distro the all the plugins are included in the repo package. But you just need to Configure Kate and there is a plugins section.

Dragonish,

For keeping track of tasks on my projects i use todo txt. For each of my projects will drop a file named todo.txt in the root. each line is a task, and i order them based on priority. I can walk away from it and when i start working on the project again, i have an simple way to see the list of tasks i have laid out for this project.

todotxt.org

I personally find it less useful to see the “big picture” of all tasks, and this lets me focus on the details of my projects without forcing a bunch of structure.

thepiguy,

My biggest productivity booster is tmux. I constantly ssh into my pc to continue my work. I even restart my window manager sometimes if I wanna play games or something, but tmux is always there in the background. And being able to get up, go to my living room, open my laptop and continue the work I was doing on my pc has definitely saved me from a few mental blocks.

MaxHardwood,

My ssh config has RemoteCommand=/usr/bin/tmux -u new-session -A -s laptop for Host *

lemmyingly,

Why are you working in personal time?

cygon, (edited )

I’m running a few on my NAS:

  • Taiga to manage projects. It’s as easy and pleasant to use as Trello, but with velocity/burndown charts and the whole “agile” thing, but you can also turn parts of it on and off (per project even).
  • Trilium completely cured me of messy note-taking habits, simply by winning on the convenience side. I was firmly in the “folder tree of markdown documents” and “my Sublime Text tabs of random notes have no number” camp before.
  • I’m considering Habitica which lets you set up rewards and achievements for your real life (i.e. apply addictive reward/progress loop from video games to motivate your real self to do things). Also Wger for exercise tracking, but I’m not sure they’re the right thing for my ticket/tracking-averse self (I wish there was something that covered the whole MyFitnessPal/FitDay and the whole Polar Personal Trainer/Garmin Connect side, but FOSS and self-hosted).

For leisure, I also run Stash (it bills itself as an organizer for your porn library, but it’s really good for any kind of clips), Jellyfin for my music and movies and currently both Mango and Kavita for books and comics.

zerakith,

These are really useful suggestions, thanks!

Particularly excited about Trillium. I’m current trying Joplin but labour and time reflect and organize the noted means I’m rarely using it effectively.

Habitica sounds interesting. I definitely feel I need something like that. My struggle sometimes is in splitting projects into bitesize chunks (some are easier than others) some of my work can be quite open ended thought projects. I get caught in a trap of doing the easier work to plan work (like coding) rather than necessarily the most urgent.

procrastinare,

You could try

  • Liftosaur for exercise routines (it has script language even) and can also track body measurements.
  • waistline as a substitute for myfitnesspal or cronometer
  • Nomie for tracking habits, mood, activities and many more

All these apps are FOSS

unconsciousvoidling,

What kind of build do you have for a NAS? How expensive does that look?

cygon,

I’m not up-to-date with current NAS systems anymore – I’m running an older QNAP NAS (TS-453), and it has their proprietary “Container Station” which can run web applications in Docker + LXD containers. Not FOSS, though the containers very much are and can be moved to other systems.

As an alternative, FreeNAS/TrueNAS sells NAS systems where at least the software side is FOSS. They’re quite expensive, though.

The prices of other brands also quickly breach silly levels, but a basic 2-bay NAS is about ~$250 for QNAP, ~$200 for Synology and ~$1000 for a TrueNAS. Without hard drives.

If you’re not interested in the data storage side, a Mini PC w/Proxmox (popular Docker/LXD container engine w/browser-based management) or even a direct install on a Raspberry PI are possible for under $100.

delirious_owl,
@delirious_owl@discuss.online avatar

I use zim for everything

zerakith,

Looks interesting, thanks I’ll check it out!

berryjam,

TaskWarrior

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.

joojmachine,

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

zerakith,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Corgana,
@Corgana@startrek.website avatar

Anyone here have any experience with Anytype?

Dehydrated,

I tried it, but I will stick to Obsidian

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.

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.

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 )

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