What Are Your Favourite Productivity Apps in Zorin?

Chat about Zorin
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So, what are your favourite open source productivity apps, and why? I'm really interested for myself, and friends and family who might take the plunge and give Zorin a try.

I tried Evolution email client and hated it. From the get-go the order of emails was upside down! I've never seen new emails enter at the bottom of the list before! There wasn't an obvious way to change it, plus I hated the interface, so I ditched it.

Productivity apps can be a huge thing for many people, so what's your experience? What makes your work life easier and creative?

TIA

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Uhhh .... there's so many good open apps out there :slight_smile: What to pick what to pick.

Inkscape

Who needs expensive vector applications when you can use Inkscape to make your graphic? Inkscape got it all! And it's free!!!

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"Productivity" is quite a vague category, I've come to learn. Depending on what any given person typically does day-to-day and what they determine as their metric for being productive, the tools to assist them vary wildly!

That said, I have a few things I always use, both at work and at home, which massively help me do Things:tm: on computers:

  • Flameshot: a very flexible, free, and open source screenshot tool miles ahead of the default gnome application, and much less cumbersome than the KDE counterpart; somewhat familiar to Greenshot I used to use on Windows, which doesn't seem to be actively developed these days anyway.
  • Virtual Desktops: it can take a little while to get used to, but I feel like becoming comfortable with splitting things between 2 or 3 virtual desktops really helps my productivity - particularly in a work / professional setting - even with multiple physical screens to work with.
  • VS Codium: the less evil twin to Microsoft's VS Code, I basically use this in place of Notepad and honestly haven't yet got to grips with all it can do (I keep putting off figuring out Workspaces...) but it's absolutely amazing once you've configured some settings and installed some plugins; not quite an IDE, but a notable step above Notepad++ or Sublime Text in terms of usability, extensibility, and productivity IMO.
  • ungoogled-chromium: the less evil twin to Chromium, the unloved and suspicious dregs of Google Chrome, this takes a hot second to fix (it defaults to "nosearch" in the URL bar and can't install Chrome extensions at all) but plays nice with most services that insist on you using Chrome while also having the most seamless PWA feature of any browser I've tried on linux; combine separate profiles with the PWA feature, and you can create your own apps for most websites with the benefit of extensions (dark mode, adblock, userscripts, etc.) and dev tools access!
  • Yakuake: a persistent drop-down terminal with lots of customisation, supporting split views and tabs and a few other cool tricks.
  • Bitwarden: my password manager of choice; pretty easy to use but still has some nice power-ish features, I guess; with linux, Windows, and Android apps as well as browser extensions like you'd expect. I keep meaning to look into the self-hosting option they have.
  • Mullvad: a cheap, privacy-focused VPN utilising WireGuard and OpenVPN with linux, Windows, and Android apps. They don't require any personal information from you and while they do take traditional payment methods they suggest you pay via anonymous means if possible. They also make a browser but I haven't tried that, so can't recommend it.
  • Ventoy: flash your USB stick with Ventoy and then you can just copy ISOs and other bootable image files onto it, without having to reflash the stick each time you want to boot a different thing! I keep a couple sticks setup with Ventoy and an assortment of linux, Windows, and utility ISOs like gparted, clonezilla, and Super Grub2 Disk.

Not really productivity by any means, but honourable mentions:

  • AudioTube (linux) / RiMusic (Android): YouTube Music without logging in, paid subscriptions, or ads; not much else to say here, really :sweat_smile:
  • Tasker: an Android app to automate stuff on your phone; unfortunately modern versions of Android somewhat hamper a couple of great features I used to rely on, it's still nice for switching WiFi, VPNs, and ringer on & off based on my location.
  • AdGuard: a DNS / adblock provider, I use several of their services from their public DNS as a last line of defence to AdGuard for Android (works like a VPN to route all traffic through filter lists and custom DNS) and AdGuard Home which I have running on a Raspberry Pi 24/7 as my home network's default DNS provider so every device (including games consoles and Kindles) can benefit from ad and tracker blocking.
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Wow, @Ultrabenosaurus , that is an impressive list! Great response, I really appreciate it!!!

Some things I have already, like AGuard (only discovered that recently).

I had no idea how flexible Ventoy was and my next task is to flash a Toshiba I have spare because I do want to try a couple of other distros out, see how they feel.

I've actually made a to do list from your post already! Oh, and "productivity" was deliberately vague... get more diverse input that way.

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I'll second Ultrabenosaurus' recommendation of Bitwarden. Additionally:

  • Calibre: An INCREDIBLY full featured tool for organizing a large library of ebooks. It supports PDF, EPUB, and LOT more, including formats it can't open due to DRM. (glaring at you, Amazon) If it can't open them, it can still transfer them to a reader, and let you apply metadata. It'll import as much metadata as it can, but you can add everything from tags of your own to ISBN. As a tabletop RPG gamer with TONS of PDFs for various systems' sourcebooks, it's been a great help. Why productivity? Well, I'll never be able to get my employer to LET me use it, but for more than a decade, a huge portion of my job was maintaining our documentation, based on another company's, and handling huge volumes of PDFs that were regularly updated/changed was a big part of it. Being able to use this would have made my life MUCH easier than organizing solely by directory structure.
  • Minder: A tool for laying out mind maps. Think of a completely local Miro, basically.

They're sadly not open source, but I WOULD mention these for their strong Linux support anyway:

  • Discord: It may seem strange to put this under productivity, but it's what my labor union uses to communicate, and their Linux support is MUCH better than I would have expected. I just wish they'd set up a repository so I didn't have to download a new .deb every time it updates, but at least the client tells me it's there.
  • Obsidian Notes: Very nice notes tool, somewhat akin to OneNote. While the client isn't open source, the the notes themselves are kept in markdown to ensure you're not locked into Obsidian at any time.
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Into that category of "productivity" I use Logseq for note taking and day to day organization. I actually found out about Logseq through Zorin, if I recall correctly they added it to education version

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The main thing that kept me from using Logseq was that I already had a LOT of Notes in Microsoft OneNote that I wanted to retain while migrating away from Microsoft entirely. Obsidian has a OneNote importer plugin. Searching Logseq's plugins, I didn't see OneNote anywhere.

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Thanks @Harry_A , very timely as I was just comparing different "note takers". Unfortunately, Logseq doesn't support non-Chromium browsers, like Firefox (I just tried to use the tutorial), so I have to exclude it. Odd, because if you found it in Zorin Ed', the default browser is Firefox! Oh well!

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I haven't tried it yet, but I recently heard about this new Firefox-derived browser called Zen that's seems to be trying to pick up the hype from Chromium-shills like Brave and Vivaldi and :nauseated_face: Opera GX in terms of UI with things like vertical tabs, workspaces, side bars, and split-screen views.

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@Ultrabenosaurus , that looks really good! I tried installing Mullvad browser but it was beyond me in complexity, and I wasn't prepared to put the time into learning how to, basically because it's based on Tor, which I found unusable (plus, I don't really need that level of security and privacy), although I'm definitely going to put the effort into the VPN next year.

I'm really annoyed with FF opting us all in to their " Privacy-Preserving Attribution" experiment without consent. I get the argument that more anonymised data make the individual more difficult to "fingerprint" but I like to be given a choice. Anyhow, Zen looks good do far.

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It is maybe not directly an Productivity Tool but for me essential on every Gnome Distro: The Extension Manager.

When you like the Gnome Style but not the Vanilla Gnome Desktop this Tool is a Must-Have in my Opinion!

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Thanks @Ponce-De-Leon , that's one I have already - yes, it is essential, i agree!

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Obsidian is great, I have used it too, for me the main reason for using Logseq was the way that organize the notes and the bullet points, out of the box was more suitable for and the way I work

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@Locklear93 and @Harry_A , the one I did a comparison with was Joplin. it seems quite similar but you don't need a Chromium based browser to use it.

I think Obsidian will be really useful in the classroom - it's already on my list to delve into. I've just watched a tutorial and will check out more. Thank you for the recommendation.

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As you said the manager is not directly for productivity, but many extensions are, me specifically use Clipboard Indicator and Caffeine

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Browsers aimed at enhanced privacy are most effective when used with the out-of-the-box defaults. This helps to blend in with the masses, which also implies it's most effective the more people use it. But a lot of websites these days rely heavily on 3rd party services that are likely blocked.

Speaking of browsers, I would recommend using different browsers and/or profiles for different purposes. For example, I use Firefox with several profiles, each with its own settings, theming, extensions, search engines, etc. And then I use other browsers as well.

This strategy is good for my privacy but also for my productivity as I don't mix business with pleasure, so to speak.

For notes, I used to use Standard Notes and I still use it from time to time since it has a decent Android app. However, I've come to appreciate the simplicity of using smaller, dedicated tools that do one thing only, so I've been using nothing but Vim right in the terminal for my notes.

An excellent video on the topic:

One difference though, while I like the Markdown format, I very much prefer Asciidoc, since it's an actual specification with well-defined syntax. More importantly, it has dedicated tools created by the same developers that make it working with it a breeze. I use this to create PDF documents very easily, even with things like inline images and such.
Although when I need to share a document with others for editing (the .doc file, as opposed to the final document meant for reading, or .pdf) I still use something like LibreOffice Writer.

Another tool that I've been enjoying quite a bit lately is the i3 tiling window manager. There are others that I would like to try, but tiling window managers have been quite the find for me.
This is my current setup, which I've barely changed since I started using it:

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I have used Thunderbird as my email app for about as long as it has existed (a long time!) on Windows and now on Linux. It does all I need, managing several email accounts. I have a reseller account for website hosting for clients, and run 4 of my own domains each with their own email accounts.

I very much like that its interface is customisable, I went into its config to set the dpi to scale up the entire interface. By default on my 1920px (old 14" laptop) it was way too tight . ( can look up the instructions if anybody wants, I don't have them to hand at the moment).

I like that Reaper has a similar setting. I wish more software did this. Severe eyesight difficulty has increased my appreciation for larger type and interface options!! While I'm on it I found the fractional scaling in this Zorin 17 to be very unreliable, basically unusable.

I know Reaper is commercial, but its a fantastic tool for audio production. I'm slowly testing the waters in music production in Linux. For now that is my biggest Windows requirement. I started using Reaper on Windows a while back - aiming to use software that runs on both systems to get used to it first.

In a similar vein I started using LibreOffice on Windows as well as Linux, but recently switched to SoftMaker Office following @swarfendor437 espousal of it. Also installed on my Windows. One license covers 5 installations. They also offer FreeOffice which loses some features but is probably good enough for many use cases. I have had zero issues swapping documents with my main client's team, so far as I know they have no idea I'm not using MicroSoft. The caveat with all these free office versions is mainly with spreadsheets - so far as I know if you use macros and formulas then it won't work. Simple spreadsheets, no problem.

Mullvad VPN as mentioned above.

VSCodium as also mentioned above, having used VSCode on Windows a lot. I've used FireFox for years on Windows, in part because of their philosophy (which seems to be changing...) and because I find the web developer tools are superior to the ones in Chrome.

For graphics, I am running my Affinity Photo 2 in a virtual windows under Boxes. I have added my voice to the Affinity forums in the hope they might work on a Linux version. I had used Photoshop from version 2 upto CS, which I stuck with as being the last one on a CD. Paid-for versions as I used it in my professional work. But I refused to follow them down the subscription route.

I have tried GIMP many times over the years (on windows) and found it impossible, and lacking CMYK made it a definite 'no' as I regularly require this.) I am starting to learn Krita (so far for simple edits, crops, resizes) and am realising its pretty good. I was initially put off by its vibe of being for painting rather than photo editing.

I am starting to learn DarkTable as an Adobe Lightroom alternative. It is very capable, big and complex. Again, I am stuck on my old version of Lightroom (v6) before they went subscription. The issue here is having a large existing library in Lightroom.

Moving further afield, I recently built myself a NAS box, principally for expanding storage. I've installed it with OMV which I am liking very much. Its a custom Debian-based NAS. I am starting to learn about Docker Compose and all the amazing free software to power all sorts of server tasks I never knew I needed. I am loving Immich which is a free self-hosted Google Photos alternative.

Zorin is a very enjoyable system to use. On Windows, I get frustrated by the system. Using my ancient laptop with Zorin makes me smile, I love it. It reminds me of my youth programming on Atari STe (I created some free MIDI apps that were well regarded, way back).

I'm using Eartag (in the software under Zorin) every week for meta-tags on MP3 etc. I regularly download lectures which are never tagged, so this is handy. I'd love if Nautilus could display mp3 file metadata.

Apologies, I've probably taken up way too much space. Hopefully some of it is useful.

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Oh, and RamBox (the free version). I know it requires a login with them, but its always good idea to have multiple email accounts for these things.

It wraps websites into an app-like environment which you can enable on-demand rather than taking up memory leaving them perpetually open in a browser tab. I use it for WhatsApp, telegram, Discord so they are all in one place, as well as several other websites I use for various services all the time.

Its available as a snap in the software centre, I installed the .deb from their download page.

Having used Authy authenticator on my phone, and being troubled at their withdrawal of their Windows app, thus making the app phone-only which is way too vulnerable to me (I originally naively used G***le authenticator and took ages to regain access to websites when my phone died). I just set up Ente Auth which is open source, and free.

They have apps for Android, Mac, Linux and Windows, available for download on GitHub, including rpm and deb. I'm using it now, perfectly synced between phone and laptop, and tied to my email rather than a phone number.

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OK. At this point I should like to point out that I would have preferred it if the title had been "What are your favourite productivity Apps in GNU/Linux?" I don't use Zorin much these days. I've had it as a VM on other distributions so I could help out on the forum and one fateful day there had been an argument in the family and I 'foolishly' formatted the wrong hard drive and wiped out my Zorin 15 Pro install! So just before lockdown I had been using FerenOS as my daily driver, which had Cinnamon DE. This later was replaced with FerenOS with Plasma as the Cinnamon DE version was ditched. So for starters, Firefox ESR for browsing, Evolution for mail. For Office Suite, at the time, SoftMaker Office 2018 Professional in combination with LibreOffice Writer, the latter primarily used to compress images as TextMaker 2018 did not have this function until the current version. The other need for Writer was to create a simple sentence with font spacing, save as .docx, open in TextMaker 2018/2021 to establish what TextMaker's font spacing was in % as unlike Writer, it did not use pts like Word does. As a Vision Support Technician, modifying documents for low-vision and Blind students from pre-school to higher education to age 25, I needed applications that would help me with my work, obviously.
So I needed Inkscape to create clear images as well as being able to create suitable tactile diagrams for blind users. Ironically, long before lockdown, we used to use a program called TGD Pro to create tactile diagrams, but it was limited to A4 production of swell paper, and additionally it later came to light that the Developer had sold the Software to two different parties, the official owner being Duxbury! So we had to look for an alternative. I am pleased to say I was instrumental in moving the Service to move to using Inkscape before my Supervisor was going to spend £200 on a program that was not needed! Fortunately, many years ago, having just completed training in Braille Translation using Duxbury Braille Translator for Windows, and before the School's I.T. Department blocked the use of an integral part of the program, Braille Build, I was able to use it to create a Braille Font which is 80% of a Braille dot size. Why 80%? Well this was needed when creating diagrams with labels, including X/Y graphs, which would be output to swell paper. When the swell paper is passed through a Zyfuser, or Picture In A Flash device, the heat from the device swells the dot to 100%. So the default font for Inkscape was always set to brl80 font Normal at 24 pt. It was easy to change this to Arial Bold for low vision users depending on what size of font each low-vision student required. A lot of work was also needed to 'unclutter' images from reading books that had images from the original captured reading book. At work we had access to JASC Paint Shop Pro 8, which was our mainstay for image manipulation. This was another great Paint package swallowed up by Corel that ruined it's interface. This meant using GIMP (Gnome Image Manipulation Program). (I have since learned that https://archive.org holds Paint Shop Pro 9 which Corel no longer offer and it works perfect with WINE.) I even had to prepare an online video for Teaching Assistants in the Service on how to use GIMP as we only had licences for Paint Shop Pro on Desktops based in the Service. Now the other key applications relate to pdf's, and for this, the principle application which I had only discovered with using FerenOS, is Okular. This is a superb piece of Software, and again, I provided a training video for this too. I could extract Text, Images, and Tables and place the extracted data into TextMaker and it speeded up my workflow to no end. The othe pdf applications which were essential to me were:
LIOS (Linux Intelligent OCR Solution)
pdf arranger
ocrmypdf
pdftk (pdf toolkit) - to repair corrupted pdfs.
In the last year of my employment I needed to modify Exam papers that were pdfs, so I purchased pdf Studio Pro 2020. With this I was able to modify the paper, using it in combination with Inkscape, to modify images in an AS Physics Paper. Whilst working on this I suffered hard drive failure. Using a combination of pdftk, pdf Studio Pro and LibreOffice Draw I was able to revive the corrupted AS Physics paper. LibreOffice Draw was anle to rescue the modified images created in Inkscape to save me from starting from scratch as LibreOffice Draw can be used to view pdf's (as well as MS Publisher files) but cannot edit them. Now in terms of Braille Translation, American Printing House had just created some free Braille Translation Software, Braille Blaster. This worked great in FerenOS but would not work well when I migrated to Devuan 3.0, which meant I had to resort to the Windows 7 Pro Virtual Machine in virt-manager to use the Windows version of the application. The only other reason I had to use a VM of Windows was a shared work allocation mailbox which I could not setup in Evolution, in spite of being successful in setting up my work's Outlook365 account in Evolution. (The IT department had not made a good job of masking Outlook365’s settings page which was covered in a white, just left-clicking removed the whitespace!).
Last but by no means least, Remmina Remote allowed me access to the School's Server where our Service work files resided. Unlike Microsoft Edge in the VM that needed 3 separate logins to connect, Remmina only needed it in one! It also meant I could access my Z:\ drive (my workplace Desktop). I posted images to the IT Department but never got a response!

[UPDATE: Forgot one more App, Jitsi (https://meet.jit.si. The service via the school used teams which I refused to use as it always fell over. I created a meeting room and they would kindly join it. I also used it to keep in touch with a Teaching Assistant using the chat function. It was quicker than sending emails when discussing work request specifics or things in general. It privided a form of social contact during lockdown.

I also used Calibre for the last few months of my employment creating 4 epub books from .docx files created in TextMaker for Y9 (US = K9) students English subjects to be used on Kindle. It is also where I discovered that images with balloon text in a .docx file don't convert properly. I wrote a training document on how to work around this problem using Inkscape

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Ooh, fellow Atari user! I grew up with the Atari 800, then 800 XL, then 520ST before my family switched to IBM compatibles in 1992. Sorry, I realize that's not really on-topic, but it's so rare to bump into people who even know Atari MADE computers.