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Linux system manufacturer System76 introduced a beautiful looking Linux distribution called Pop!_OS. But is Pop OS worth an install? Read the Pop OS review and find out yourself.
More at : https://itsfoss.com/pop-os-linux-review/
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Hands on With System76’s Beautiful Linux Distro Pop!_OS
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(Score: 2) by Marand on Tuesday January 16 2018, @04:16AM (7 children)
Zim's not really intended to be organisation software, it's just a way to display text files with wiki formatting inside folders. If you use folders and text files you're most of the way there already, zim just lists them on the side and lets you put some formatting in. It's more like a writing aid, for keeping a bunch of notes, with no real pretense of being more. If you can make your way around wordpad or a similar lightweight editor, you can handle zim, because it's basically that plus a pane on the side that lists pages. The main benefits over plain text+folders is navigation and editing within a single application, linking to external files and resources more easily, formatting options, and embedding images or other files.
Not much of a learning curve to it either. I got my mother, who had similar note-keeping habits as you, to use it and she loved it as a replacement.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday January 16 2018, @12:53PM (6 children)
Just installed it. Will give it a try: from the initial instance it looks easier than some I've tried, thanks!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Marand on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:04PM (5 children)
You're welcome, hope it works out for you. I friended you so if you have any questions or issues with it you can make a journal entry about it and I'll get notified. Or you can drop a note in the only journal entry I have, it's sort of a placeholder "drop a message here" post for that sort of thing. Either way, I'll try to help if you need to know anything or want other suggestions along those lines.
On a personal note, I still use zim for most of my own notes despite emacs taking over most other text editing tasks. I like org-mode well enough for one-off things, like a single-file outline, and sometimes I use asciidoc for project files (beats markdown handily), but zim still remains my catch-all note holder. It's the digital equivalent of a notebook stuffed with random scribblings, and covers that use for me perfectly; the only thing it's really missing is I can't add sketches and hand-written notes to it without creating them in another program first. (Probably something that could be added as a plugin but I never got around to exploring that possibility...)
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday January 17 2018, @03:46AM (4 children)
How compatible is Zim with revision control? Most word processor file formats are terrible for it. A merge is a calamity.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Wednesday January 17 2018, @04:23AM
Zim notebooks consist of plain text files (.txt extension), with sub-pages stored in subdirectories. So, say you have a TODO page, and beneath that, "Work" and "Hhome" pages. On the filesystem you'll have "TODO.txt", "TODO/Work.txt" and "TODO/Home.txt", with each file being human-readable. Zim files have a 3 line header, similar to HTTP headers with three entries: Content-Type, Wiki-Format, and Creation-Date. After that is the file body, which is plaintext human-readable conventions for formatting, as documented here [zim-wiki.org] and also available within Zim itself.
Which is to say, it's very amenable to version control systems because it's all plaintext. The only exception is, if you choose to attach a binary file to a page (either by adding an image to a page or using the "attach external file" option), you get the usual caveats with binary files and VCS. That and the general human-readability of it make it appealing to me, because I hate locking important info into non-standard formats. If Zim ever breaks or stops being maintained, my data is still readable, and it should be simple enough to make a parser for it if I ever need. :D
(Score: 2) by Marand on Wednesday January 17 2018, @04:25AM (2 children)
Double post because I just noticed after submitting that Zim itself ships with a version control plugin [zim-wiki.org] if you want to automate the process. That page also says basically what I did, and I could have saved myself some typing if I had known about it before posting.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday January 25 2018, @12:06AM (1 child)
I'll answer through to you THIS way: (my zim came with the version control already in action).
I'm using zim now: VERY NICE! Thanks for the info!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Marand on Thursday January 25 2018, @10:01AM
Awesome, glad to hear it's working out for you. :D
It's amazing how useful it can be considering how simple the concept and execution is. Doesn't try to be super fancy, which I think works in its favour, at least for me.