GNote is interesting is an interesting application because it is a sticky notes application which allows wiki-like syntax, linking, and so on. And it looks very much like Tomboy, as it’s a re-write of that application. I installed GNote from the PPA. And when it was finally installed, guess what. I launched it and was surprised to see something very similar. Except that, of course, under the Tools menu, there’s no such thing as “post to your blog” as an option.
This is GNote. And yes, it looks very much like Tomboy.
What is to love about it?
- For one thing it loads so much faster than Tomboy.
- Another thing is that it seems to use only half the memory that Tomboy uses.
- It recognized all my Tomboy notes and so I didn’t really have to do anything to make sure it does that. Very convenient.
For me these three reasons are awesome enough. : D
So GNote was written as an exercise in porting Tomboy to become non-Mono and I think that it works pretty well on my netbook. And I like that. Looking for netbook-compatible applications is something I am interested in so that I won’t have to worry much about performance issues and stuff. Here’s hoping that Ubuntu Remix, Moblin, and other netbook-friendly Linux distros will have GNote by default. I like using Tomboy but for the sake of practicality, this looks like the better option. For those who are dependent on some of the plugins for Tomboy, you might have to write your own or just dare to try to use the plugins for Tomboy. However that’s really iffy as an article on LWN pointed out support for them is pretty spotty.
If you’re looking for an alternative to Tomboy which is faster and uses less memory, then GNote is the way to go.
Addendum: If you want to know more about the background of GNote, check this out this blog entry.
