Previously I mentioned about Evernote on WINE in Linux. It works fine. Some minor problems I faced are upgrading Evernote requires re-install, because of the WINE compatibility with the installer, and Chinese characters are not viewable at the note list, and restricted monthly upload limit. That is why, I am looking for alternative solutions.

The followings are the notetaking applications I tried briefly,

• Basket Note Pad - Very fancy. Uses XML and text files.
• Tomboy Note, Gnote - Android version, Tomdroid notes. Cannot insert picture.
• Xournal - Doesn’t look like notetaking application I am looking for.
• Zim - Wiki format. Still active.
• NixNote - Using Evernote server.
• KJots - Does not run properly in my computer.
• WizNote - Requires sign up. It has web clipper and Android port.
• KeepNote - Uses XML.

Among these notetaking applications, most interesting one is Zim. It can insert a lot of things including picture, screenshot, equation, code, etc. It also allows using tagging. The wiki format is better than XML, since it is just a very plain text file. This mean, I can synchronise my notes over my other devices using the service such as Dropbox, and open the file as long as I have text editor. Editing XML with text editor is not a good idea. The only thing Zim is lacking of is the web clipper and a full port to Android. But this is really a powerful tool, more than notetaking.

This is just a sharing about my favourite software applications which are less popular comparing to others.

Linux distribution: Arch Linux vs Ubuntu, Linux Mint. Reason: Highly customisable.

Desktop environment: Xfce4 vs GNOME, KDE, Cinnamon, Mate. Reason: Traditional desktop look, lightweight yet feature-rich.

Programmer text editor: jEdit, Emacs vs Sublime Text, Atom Reason: jEdit - Cross-platform, unlimited window split Reason: Emacs - Cool!

Text editor: medit Reason: Tab view, start by opening last opened files.

let me tell you… “freemake video converter” is a superb piece of software man~~~~~~~~

why do I use that??

1. I wanted to rip my VCD (DVD, I’ve not tried yet, I think…) so that I can play on USB on my smartTV, it did the job,

2. then, I’ve some old pieces of japanese drama VCD, again, I’d like to join some of the rmvb files and so on… again, it did the job, the output was pretty big (though not THAT big) size though, and it’s mp4, but then, it served the purpose, my aim was to join the movie files…

youtube-dl is available in Arch Linux community repository. But it does not support some websites. So, it can be complemented with You-Get. Both are surprisingly useful command-line tools.

Previously I created a table for Vim and Emacs hotkeys. And there is always an editor war between Emacs and Vim.

Recently, I am learning to use Emacs more. Before this, I learnt Vim. This is because vi is a very common text editor in Linux/Unix. Even busybox also contains vi. Thus, I think Vim is the improved version of the essential text editor, which I should learn.

But after watching the Bloomerg video of Linus Torvalds interview, I decided to learn more about Emacs. Besides that, because of using gdb debugger, command-line interface is really infeasible, I tried TUI (text user interface). But the source code buffer (view) sometimes causes overlay text and cannot refresh. Finally, I used Emacs for gdb debugging. Moreover, recently I read a post, it mentions that Emacs can be used as window manager. And, Emacs can be used to play games (I never try this). This indicates the unimaginable potentiality of a text editor.

Previously I posted about Zotero, and I am using Zotero primarily in my academic study. At the same time, I used Mendeley to manage all the PDF files that I am studying. Recently, I found that inserting new citation in my document using Zotero is a little bit slower (too many references), and at the same time I need to use Mendeley to read the journal articles and search for the text. Therefore, I was wondering whether can I depend on Mendeley only, so that I need not to use Zotero together. So, I converted my document manually and change the citation to Mendley. Then I discovered the following feature differences:

KeePass is my favourite for password manager. In Linux, there are KeePassX and KeePass 2. There are several differences.

KeePass has two versions, they are KeePass version 1 and Keepass version 2, namely KeePass 2. They are using different file formats: kdb and kdbx. KeePass is natively runnable in Windows; KeePass 2 requires .NET Framework 2.0 (and above) or Mono (and above). That is why, KeePass 2 is able to run in Linux. Then, KeePassX is a port of KeePass, so that it works as cross-platform, including Windows. However, KeePassX is not based on KeePass 2. Thus, it cannot read/write kdbx. But, there is KeePassX version 2 in the alpha stage, which is available in GitHub.

After watching the Bloomerg video of Mr Torvalds, I found that he is using Emacs-like editor, which is uemacs, I immediately compiled my Vim and Emacs cheatsheet.

A programmer can write program without IDE, but cannot write without a good text editor. There are a lot of modern text editors. But I feel that learning using a text user interface (console-based) text is very much important. Imagine that you have to use SSH to write some scripts on the remote computer.

HTTrack Website Copier is always my favourite. Internet is not always available. Download a website, especially articles, for offline reading is always a good solution. HTTrack is the best. Previously I used GUI, but in Linux, command-line is a better method.

On the other hand, Android e-book reader I used most is FBReader. It supports multiple e-book format, especially EPUB. FBReader is easy to use, and there is night reading mode. Furthermore, it is open source and available in multiple platforms.

Ubuntu is considered as the most popular Linux distro. It is based on Debian, where Debian is famous of its stability. And Linux Mint, which becomes another most popular Linux distro, is based on Ubuntu and Debian. Recently, there are several Linux distros attract my attention.

Firstly, elementary OS, which is based on Ubuntu, is well-known of its aesthetic design. Unlike other distros which were using common desktop environments, for instance GNOME, KDE, Xfce, and LXDE, it uses Pantheon.