Alternative PRODUCTIVITY apps on Linux

Just say no to subscription softwares. Period. Any softwares you can't install, control, use and own locally will soon have their Feudal subscription slumlords owning you.

I must admit I'm a tad disappointed that Kontact, the suite KDE uses wasn't mentioned. It might be pretty old but its quite powerful and integrates beautifully with KDE. It could use some more love and maintainence though to compete with Thunderbird as a PIM (Personal information management) suite

Planify is the GTK4 rewrite of Planner.

sorry if it's a stupid question by why don't companies like Adobe etc make official Linux versions of their programs?

Notes app recommendation: Notesnook.

I came across this yesterday after searching like crazy online. It's open source and there is a free tier that lets you sync notes across devices. They have an Appimage for Linux as well as apps on all other platforms. There are also paid plans which offer more features but if you just want to sync notes, with a nice UI, and be able to do markdown etc it seems a good choice.

I wanted a notes app that works on Android and Linux with sync so that I can type up blog posts on the go and have them on my pc when I get am ready to publish.

I also wanted a minimal style app on Android that looks good and let's you get on with distraction free typing, which this does.

It also lets you setup 2FA which is great. Your notes are encouraging on device before being synced so no security worries there.

I highly recommend it

I need to check out Thunderbird again and a lot of these others to get a feel for what feels best. Thanks again!

Geary has been my e-mail app ever since I got into Elementary.
I have it on Ubuntu handling 3 different e-mail accounts currently.
I'm also a long-time user of Evolution, and I'll manage e-mail through it as well. But I use Evolution primarily for calendar/events syncing & reminders. I keep to-do lists in it as well.
My current RSS client is Fluent Reader. I love it.
For notes I split between Typora(a MD editor) and Notes-Up. Notes-Up I use because it saves the entire notebooks as a SQL database file, and I just keep that in a shared Nextcloud folder. The issue is there's no client for a smart-phone.

Trilium is the best for me at least. Using it self-hosted on my cluster, also have local app that syncs. It's great, because it's fully WYSIWYG, not just limited markdown.

For ppl who have more time to waste: 😅
Mutt
Task warrior and time warrior
Newsboat
Nvim plus asciidoc or some note-taking plugin
Qutebrowser

for note taking or something like notion i would recommend anytype

You didn't actually showcase anything with Xournal++. Why even bother mentioning it?....

Linux desktop is just a toy and a poor one at that. You are welcome to waste your time on Linux and what works and doesn’t and I will just get on with work.

UpNote

Linux Mint

Currently the apps I use are: Zim, Thunderbird (because thunderbird syncs very well with google calendar and todoist, and I use both) and LibreOffice. To sync all the documents and notes to my phone, I use Syncthing. To write notes on my phone and consult them on my computer, I use the Markor app. And I don't use cloud storage, I simply use an external SSD.

Great work.
Regarding email client. I use Evolution as it is the only one that I found to support certificates to be able to sing emails. I'm still looking for a client that also supports Exchange email server for free.

Hi

Good app choices. Another way is to access your favorite apps, if they exist online, through the WebApp utility on Linux Mint.

Is there a good scale drawing tool I’m a metal fabricator need to draw it out and then run it to see if it work s before building it cnc or model tools

Great list! Thank you. For email I would like to use Geary. But why it's not showing all external pictures in the msg when activated in settings?

Hey first thnx for the vids last I saw your tweaks for gaming but I never saw a what the heck I need to install with out going the nobara distro (which is not working for me) or garuda distro (which is ugly as hell) I am looking for a distro like mint to stop using Windows. thnx :)

I'm surprised you didn't mention the various tools from Proton. The calendar, email, cloud storage, password manager, VPN, and other tools work together pretty well. it is open source and audited, but to get the full effect of the tools should be paid for. You can buy family plans and evenVisioneer level plans which can be shared. Everything is end-to-end encrypted as well.
Thanks for mentioning SoftMaker.. They have had the most MS-compatible office suite since releasing teir first Linux version in 2012, and I've been usingit in Windoze all the way back to 2008. FreeOffice is quitew usable, but the paid version is only 35% of the price of MS.

Excellent list of apps, I will be checking a few out. Much gratitude for the work you put ito this. Subbed, liked and shared to 2 others🙂

I love how many people have commented how long they've been following you. I, too, subscribed a long time ago, but I haven't really seen notifications for a long time. Tonight, when you popped up, I was like "wow, this guy was one of the originals". I'll be sure to click the bell!

Softmaker Office FREEOFFICE 2018 is Completely Free and Fully Featured! it only lacks a couple of Saving Formats. it is he Most Native Office suite to linux than all the others. it is very very light and works on a Pentium III with Xubuntu 32bit.

I stopped using Mint when they dropped KDE Plasma... Just not a Gnome fan.. but.. still I like all your videos!.. Kubuntu is my go to beast!.. I've tried em all - even Alpine.. (facepalm)..

I tried newsflash many times. I would love to use it, but it never worked well for me. Either it crashed on importing rss lists from file. Or it doesn't remember which folders I had open or active last time I had the app open. Unfortunately in all the years, the only rss app that works that way and looks half decent is Liferea. I highly recommend.

The Achilles Heel of Linux is the Apps.

I live in hope, but low expectations.

For an open source (as far as I know) alternative to Obsidian, I can recommend Logseq. I've only scratched the surface, but it has a lot if not all of the same functionality, and some say even better.

My honorable mentions: RSS: Liferea, Notes: GNote.

I can't switch to Mailspring or Geary because they can't import all my old emails from Thunderbird.

Bottom bar is transparent but when you click start mint buttons and all apps and groups shows up, windows don't have any transparent feature hmm is there any way to make that also transparent or half if is possible ?

Joplin is really great

I always end up with my favorites of Thunderbird, Discord, Notesnook and libreoffice. They just work well enough for me there is no reason to change.

I like this video. I've been following you for years, like the app focus. Would be nice to have some more video's about apps in the future. Perhaps centered around a topic, for example PDF reading and annotating and signing.

I have so many OS in different computers and even on my gf's computer and the work computer... so I tend to configure Thunderbird... and I like it for mails, HOWEVER after trying for already 1 year now MailSpring... it is SO HARD sometimes to not blow away all the Thunderbird installations and replace them with Mailspring. At my heart I know Thunderbird is better overall, but the aesthetics of Malspring and easy to use/find options are just lovely. New Thunderbird is looking sharp tho, but I kind of fell in love with Mailspring.
BTW I am in need of creating a Wiki but I have no clue on what to use that doesn't require a lot of knowledge in programming, I was checking on stuff that can be setup with Apache so I can have a local address to get it on LAN but I am still hesitant on what software to use for the creating the wiki itself, any suggestion?

I use Rnote for note taking... It's an awesome Gnome app

OnlyOffice is a HIGH recommendation for me! The best office suite on Linux

I do love Linux Mint... but the first thing I always to is change the icon them. Mint's icons are just awful in my opinion.

I trust in Joplin + Resilio. Very simple to set up, does 95% of what I need to do that isn't related to the browser and Office.

Resilio is harder to setup than SyncThing but the UX and features are better IMHO and it's still easier to setup than Nextcloud. Joplin is just a good simple OneNote replacement with good markdown+richtext editor and nice options of plug-ins that you can use it for a lot of things.

Great Video, wondering that you did not mention Nextcloud as hosted service or self hosted. I have replaced MS Onedrive and Google with that and it syncs very well on many platforms

You also use mailspring? I absolutely love using mailspring for emails.

Great Video. I love NewsFlash. It's so solid and fast.

Nextcloud is a headache both to install as well as setup. I just stick with Google One because it syncs everywhere seamlessly and for €20 a year I get 100GB. It's my photo backup and mounts reliably in Nemo.

Not sure how private Mailspring is. I tried it once but it created some extra folders in my Gmail which I struggled to delete

I'm also using Geary because it's simple, fits the cinnamon aesthetic and Thunderbird is too much

Meh. The current Thunderbird is unusable now that, as of v115, there's no way to have it show you the actual email addresses of the sender before you open it, even with extensions. Just glad I have it set to plain--text 'cos clicking on the "Thank you for your Steam purchase!" mail from Steam Support yesterday morning would have gone badly (I had bought something on the weekend and thought I'd forgotten to move the receipt over to a save folder). :/

EDIT: Oh, and it also doesn't have any daemons, so it has no way to alert you to any new mail or calendar event or anything else unless you keep it open all the time.

I can wholeheartedly recommend Joplin AND their cloud/sync-offerings. I've been using for a while now on Linux, MacOS and iOS and all work flawlessly. Great little tool.

Obsidian is a book writer's best friend!