10 Free and Open Source Productivity Tools for GNU/Linux
There are many productivity tools for GNU/Linux other than OpenOffice.org, KOffice and other office-related productivity tools. Here are the overview of 10 of the productivity tools available on GNU/Linux:
- Tomboy
- A note-taking application
- Useful for project research, create a to-do list, and other related tasks
- Create notebooks and organize the notes by category
- Hamster
- A time-tracking GNOME applet
- Sort activities by category
- Kexi
- A database management application
- Similar to Microsoft Access
- Support .mdb Import
- Referencer
- Organize research documents
- Write bibliography
- I recommend Zotero Firefox plugin for use with Firefox to assist with research
- PDF Mod
- A simple PDF editor
- Add, edit, and reorder pages
- NO annotate and edit text features
- Okular
- Universal Document Viewer
- Annotate each files
- Planner
- Simple Project Management application
- features task allocation
- Kcontact
- Personal Information Manager (PIM) suite
- Bundle of KDE Productivity tools
- Includes KMail, KAddressBook, KJots, KOrganizer, and others
- gLabels
- Contains number of business card and label templates
- Includes CD labels and floppy labels
- Includes a template designer to create own templates
- Kivio
- A flowchart and diagram application
- Can export to JPG, PNG, and BMP
For more information about these tools, please read the original article.
Mozilla Prism Running on my GNU/Linux System
Mozilla Prism is a Mozilla Lab product that available in both Firefox add-on version and stand-alone version. It has the ability to run web apps directly on the desktop using Firefox Gecko engine. Web apps that created using Prism can be placed onto the application dock and in the system tray.
This morning I remembered the use of Mozilla Prism is because of the performance of Ubuntu on my netbook. Firefox always freeze every time I refresh my Gmail webpage. I need to get rid of this issue, so it was the first to come to my mind to solve this problem: Mozilla Prism. I used Prism before on the Windows. I never tried it on GNU/Linux since I migrated to GNU/Linux one year ago. First I installed Prism as a Firefox add-on from Mozilla Prism website. It failed. The web apps created through this add-on simply failed to launch. It launched another instance of Firefox browser instead of a new minified version of Firefox. After its failure, I downloaded the stand-alone version of the app. It successfully launched the main conversion window directly in the extracted folder. However, it needs to manually type the URL address that you want to convert to a web app. After that, it launched a new minified Firefox version for each converted web app.
It runs and converts web apps on my 32-bit Ubuntu netbook without problem. However, the issues became to come up when I tried to run Prism on the 64-bit based Fedora. According to the Prism spec, it doesn’t have 64-bit version for GNU/Linux available yet. Unfortunately, it still doesn’t work even I installed 32-bit components on my Fedora system. As far as I know, it couldn’t run on the 64-bit GNU/Linux system because it couldn’t load XPCOM and I couldn’t find any clue about what is XPCOM.
The overall performance of Prism compare to the standard Firefox browser is faster response and less freeze during the use of my gmail web app. I felt opening gmail is quicker and JavaScript becomes more responsive.
Prism is a good application to get the most out of the web apps. I hope Mozilla would continue to improve the usability of this app. The features I would like to see in the future version of Prism are to have ability to open the new window link directly inside the web app window or open a new minified Firefox window instead open in the regular Firefox browser window, to have more options in the Prism preferences dialog box, and to enable the new tab button as sell as enable Ctrl-T keyboard shortcut to open a new tab in the web app window.
Ubiquity Experiment was Ended For Now
Ubiquity was an experiment Firefox add-on released by Mozilla back in 2008. It basically added a command line interface to the browser to search almost everything on the web using Google search engine. According to the Ubiquity homepage, the first phase of the experiment was successfully ended in 2009. Some of its feature has been integrated to Jetpack, another experiment add-on developed by Mozilla to allow web developers to develop Firefox add-ons more easily. Mozilla stated on the Ubiquity homepage that it will launch second phase of the experiment in “indefinite future”.
I used Ubiquity long time ago. In my experience, it is very easy to use, best for people who love using the command line. However, I always forgot to use Ubiquity by pressing Ctrl+Space when I was doing my research rather than use the search bar. Maybe sometimes in the future Mozilla should add the option to add Ubiquity onto the Firefox toolbar in their Phase II experimentation.
Google Toolbar has slowed my Firefox Performance
I installed Google Toolbar Firefox extension today to see how does the new Google Toolbar affect the performance of Firefox. I tried the earlier version of Google Toolbar before to use Page Rank and it slowed my Firefox performance. Since then, I have waited Google to release its new version of Toolbar hope it would solve the problem. Sadly, Google Toolbar still causes the performance of my Firefox to go down. I have no choice other than to uninstall the extension once again. Hopefully Google will solve this performance lag in the next release of Google Toolbar for Firefox.
Use Google Reader to Monitor Web Pages Without RSS
Google Reader recently receives an update. It now has the ability to automatically look for RSS feed once a web address is entered into the Add Subscription box. If it can not find any feed, Google Reader would monitor the web page. According to this Google OS post, the ability to monitor the web page changes is based on the popularity of the web page. However, it cannot monitor the web page that requires user login and the web page that contains frame, and it can only monitor web pages that written in English.
I will stick to Google Reader’s RSS feature. As for some sites without RSS feed, I have been using Update Scanner Firefox Extension before I switched to Google Reader. It can monitor almost anything, including web pages that contain frame and support multiple languages on the web pages. It can also can monitor the pages that require user log in as long as the user is logged in and has the correct cookie information.