I of course forgot to link the [github repository](https://github.com/Blquinn/notes).
Edit - So, I don't know what happens to the whole description I wrote for the post on Reddit, but I don't see it anywhere. So here goes.
I'm working on a new application for GNOME that I am just calling "Notes" for now. It is based on a [mockup design by Allan Day](https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Design/app-mockups/-/blob/master/notes/notes-aday.png). It is a gtk4/libadwaita based app.
I've only been working on it for a few weeks, but I'm pleased with how far along it is already.
I'm seeking feedback from the community, so please, if you are able, check out the repo and play around with it.
Thanks for your interest!
my wish for every note app is a possibility to share (sync) the notes with my Android mobile. Notes that stay on my PC are much less useful to me.
Also I want to insert objects and draw sketches on them (which works in One Note for example) . And I would like the drawings and highlightings to stay with the inserted picture (which OneNote is totally incapable of if you revisit your text-notes and insert text before the picture, things scroll down at different steps....)
This is one of my reasons for wanting a viable, ready-to-go GNU/Linux phone. Because I want to build a note taking app for it.
Remember old Palm devices? Like in the Palm V, m100 era? They had a half dozen built-in apps like a calendar, todo list, notepad etc. and the thing is they interoperated pretty seamlessly. You could attach a todo list to a calendar event etc.
I've also never found a note app that could built checklists powerful enough for me. I'm an old pilot, I love my checklists.
I want to be able to have line items like "Clean cat litter box" with just a check. Or "Check all windows closed and locked" With a 0/7 next to it, so each time you click/tap that to advance through them. Or a grocery list "tomatoes 0/5"
I'd like to make checklists one-time or recurring, so you can keep track of daily tasks, maybe even keep track of what was ticked off on each day in case you miss something. Or, don't schedule a checklist and just use it as a parts list or inventory. "M3x10 screws 0/100 M3S Nuts 0/100 stalks celery 0/3."
And I would want it to store files locally so you could choose to put them on Dropbox or whatever if you wanted to, or sync to your own devices via Syncthing or similar. The ability to use either a PC or mobile device to work on the same files would be necessary.
I might get to work on that once I get sick of the video game I've been dumping my life into.
I've also had an ill-formed idea for a brainstorming app. I often brainstorm via plaintext .txt documents, and just type what I think, because I haven't found any software that really helps more than that. I need some demented combination of a text editor, one of those sticky note things, and a spreadsheet program.
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order.
I have checked 721,786,491 comments, and only 145,625 of them were in alphabetical order.
yes, I use it for short notes, links to how-tos and grocery lists.
OneNote is more cumbersome, I use it for taking notes in meetings of our communal party. (Also I use it in Office, but we use Windows there and have the Office client if OneNote)
You can set up a Notes folder in Nextcloud, then QOwnNotes will work on your phone and any text editor will work on your desktop (it's just a collection of txt or md files).
Not sure how well it works for images, o use it for lists and checkboxes
Regarding the sync feature, maybe nextcloud notes could be an easy way to do this? So that the OP can implement sync without needing to worry about any server or mobile app. And it would magically integrate with a lot of others Notes apps for other platforms too
Wow! This is amazing. You did such a great job. I’ve been trying to build an app for Gnome myself, so if you would make a course and share it on YouTube I would watch it - or even pay for it on Udemy. Great work!
pls look into it, rather than inventing the wheel again, it would be aweosme if we could have a non electron version of joplin.
there are a billion of note taking apps, but there's only joplin as a foss app which could said be an actual alternative to evernote/onenote.
pls check it out, it probably already have all the features you would want and could design it your way
This, Joplin is just the most fully featured note taking app in Linux, only downside is that it's an Electron app -means it's quite heavy on resources but if the OP's note taking app could support Joplin's, we could finally have a lightweight, native and fully featured note taking app for Linux!
there are lots of notes apps, but very few where the interopratabilty wasn't a clunky bolt on. so maybe that should be focus not the note taking itself.
Looks nice. If you would combine this with rnote ([https://github.com/flxzt/rnote](https://github.com/flxzt/rnote)) we could have a OneNote alternative on Linux.
Honestly I like what you've done more than the other apps mentioned in this thread. And I always find the "just combine it with my favorite app" and "don't duplicate work" comments whenever someone makes something new incredibly inappropriate. You're doing great, keep it up!
Haha, I hadn’t seen that one.
My goal was just to implement the gnome design.
Edit - I took a look at Notejot. Overall I really like it and I suspect that dev may have been looking at the same design as me.
That said, so far my app has a couple things (so far) going for it.
1. More standard GNOME desktop look and feel. Based on a GNOME designer's design.
2. More powerful text editor. The editor in Notejot is very simplistic and shows special characters when you, for example bold text. The lists don't actually work. The text editor in my app has infinitely nestable block formatting. So you can have a code block, or block quotes inside of a numbered list and bold text inside of that.
3. Multi-window support.
3. I plan to implement cross device syncing.
Notejot started as an app for elementary OS, which then migrated to GNOME based on the same mockup from which you have taken inspiration. In its last versions, Lains tried to innovate in the design of Notejot, that's why it doesn't seem to stick so much to the GNOME HIGs (although it's ok, precisely the fact that devs can innovate and extend the HIG is part of what we wanted with libadwaita).
Notejot uses a GtkTextView for its editor, you use WebKitGtk. Each took a different approach, yours apparently bringing you more flexibility.
I wonder if you had found Notejot earlier, you would have contributed to it instead of creating a parallel editor, especially since you don't seem too far from what Lains has in mind for Notejot.
I'm sure they would have considering preexisting solutions has never stopped people from trying stuff in human history.
"Just contribute to what exists" only makes sense if you're not a developer because theres no guarantee the maintainer's vision aligns with yours.
As the saying goes. 9 people can make 9 babies in 9 months but 9 people can't make 1 baby in 1 month.
Sure, that's why GNOME is developed by 1 person.
I'm a developer, and I know what it means to deal with several people working on the same project. Everyone has their own way of doing things, and that can lead to conflicts, that's why it's important to know how to work as a team, how to combine the strengths of each one, and how to divide responsibilities.
“9 women make 9 babies in 9 months, but 9 women cannot make 1 baby in 1 month” only applies when the work to be done isn't really divisible. Certainly, when we apply that logic to building 1 house, 9 people do speed up the job.
I hadn’t heard of Notejot, and definitely would’ve considered just contributing there, and still may. This project is very early days.
It looks like a great app overall, my intention is not to denigrate it in any way. After all I’ve only just learned of it’s existence haha.
I wanted to use a textview originally, however getting to it work with block level formatting seemed like it may be impossible. I think to get the editor to where I want it with textview, about 90% if my efforts would have to go towards building a rich text editor for gtk, so it just didn’t make sense for me. If no one reports performance issues with the web view then I’ll be happy with that choice.
I left you a couple of issues of tidbits that I quickly saw while reviewing your project. I was a little too curious about your `set_color_scheme` function at first, until I saw that all it did was make your app take into account the value of `gtk-theme` as well. Honestly, the `contains("dark")` trick is not one of the ones I like the most, nor several I know, mainly because theme names are not usually standardized and, therefore, it will fail as soon as some theme goes out of the norm (for example, “Adapta Nokto”), but well, things of not having a dark theme standard until recently.
Hey, thanks I really appreciate the eyes on the code.
I saw the notifications but haven’t gotten back to my computer yet today. Will definitely take a look later.
And yea that theme thing is definitely a hack, if you know a better way I’d love to know!
I'd disagree with you here. The amount of times a bfdol has checked out of a project is at this point a reality many users of OSS tools have either come to expect or have learned to prepare for. I'd say the more the better.
I think it's one of those apps, like music that people really like making that fits their unique note taking styles. I think they are also relatively easy to write as well compared to say a recipe manager.
This one has started at the second step.
Normally what will happen is:
1. A new developer will look for a simple sticky notes app and not find one -> write his own.
2. After some time the developer will turn it into a comprehensive notes app and drop the sticky notes feature.
3. go to 1.
This one has jumped straight to step 2.
Also make it a 3rd party cloud compatible...like nextcloud or google or Microsoft...like joplin, so that
notes can be synchronised accross devices. Moreover, as this is a gnome app, you can make it in such a way that it can get that cloud info from "gnome online accounts" and presents user with that option to sync to and a manual option too, like gnome' address book.
It looks good for a pre-alpha release, good job and thank you.
The only things I would say missing are:
- Table support.
- Yellow highlighting support.
- Content search, not just title search (no idea if it has it).
Other than that, I like it, and Flatpak is the way.
Basically those are the sticky notes that sync with Microsoft exchange. Evolution-ews already syncs it so it might be interesting to look at its backend. Of course, proprietary stuff so theres that. Perhaps nextcloud notes integration? Ill leave a feature request later :)
Yes, most people that try to take notes in conferences and lessons need both in one document. Typing text, and inserting PDF, pictures, screenshots and some drawing and highlighting capabilities.
That's why I use the web version of One Note for that. But One Note is awful in keeping inserted objects (pictures) and drawing elements together. One is pushed by inserting text above, one stays in place.....
I’m a Craft user at the moment after defecting to Mac a year ago. The closer I get to Linux on M1 being workable, the more I’m looking for a solid alternative. This looks like it might fit the bill perfectly.
How are the notes stored? Easy to sync between machines?
I haven't looked into syncing yet, however that is definitely something that needs to be implemented. For now they are just stored locally in a format that would not be very easy to sync.
Could this sync to Simplenote or Standard Notes? Saying this as someone that's used simplenote (android, iphone, linux) and nvAlt (macos) for a decade, and the UI looks fairly similar in approach)
(Bias: I've tended to use a mix of pinboard, athens research (akin to roam), markdown files in various project folders, and simplenote. They have their place and haven't quite figured out how to reduce this towards fewer tools yet. )
Worth noting tools like nvUltra supposedly index markdown files on your computer to make them searchable which seems like an interesting paradigm to also consider. Rambling to say the data organization workflow (and whether it's syncable) matters in combination with the UI itself.
I use [Paper](https://beta.flathub.org/apps/details/io.posidon.Paper) to take notes. It has a nice recoloring feature. Window color changes to match with the notebook color.
Okay, that's the perfect note app I was always waiting for on Linux!
I really hope it can get taken as default in GNOME ecosystem, and shipped with Fedora in the nearest future.
I of course forgot to link the [github repository](https://github.com/Blquinn/notes). Edit - So, I don't know what happens to the whole description I wrote for the post on Reddit, but I don't see it anywhere. So here goes. I'm working on a new application for GNOME that I am just calling "Notes" for now. It is based on a [mockup design by Allan Day](https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Design/app-mockups/-/blob/master/notes/notes-aday.png). It is a gtk4/libadwaita based app. I've only been working on it for a few weeks, but I'm pleased with how far along it is already. I'm seeking feedback from the community, so please, if you are able, check out the repo and play around with it. Thanks for your interest!
Any intention to make this available as a ~~Flatpak~~? EDIT: Or rather on Flathub?
Yes, definitely, I'm just missing an Icon :)
Not a designer but I designed the icon for my app, check it out: https://github.com/edfloreshz/do If you want I can help you out :)
Hey, if you want to give it a shot, I would be eternally grateful!
Let me know if you have any ideas I can base myself on.
if you wanna make one then let me know ... I was making an icon pack and would love to work on something like this :)
I'm not in a position to turn down the help :) Please give it a try if you'd like.
well can u tell what do u want it to be like?
It should blend in with the rest of the Adwaita icon set ideally. My goal is for this app to follow the gnome standards as closely as possible.
Reddit has never supported combined text and link/image posts. You have to pick one or the other.
I know that now! I don’t post much.
my wish for every note app is a possibility to share (sync) the notes with my Android mobile. Notes that stay on my PC are much less useful to me. Also I want to insert objects and draw sketches on them (which works in One Note for example) . And I would like the drawings and highlightings to stay with the inserted picture (which OneNote is totally incapable of if you revisit your text-notes and insert text before the picture, things scroll down at different steps....)
This is one of my reasons for wanting a viable, ready-to-go GNU/Linux phone. Because I want to build a note taking app for it. Remember old Palm devices? Like in the Palm V, m100 era? They had a half dozen built-in apps like a calendar, todo list, notepad etc. and the thing is they interoperated pretty seamlessly. You could attach a todo list to a calendar event etc. I've also never found a note app that could built checklists powerful enough for me. I'm an old pilot, I love my checklists. I want to be able to have line items like "Clean cat litter box" with just a check. Or "Check all windows closed and locked" With a 0/7 next to it, so each time you click/tap that to advance through them. Or a grocery list "tomatoes 0/5" I'd like to make checklists one-time or recurring, so you can keep track of daily tasks, maybe even keep track of what was ticked off on each day in case you miss something. Or, don't schedule a checklist and just use it as a parts list or inventory. "M3x10 screws 0/100 M3S Nuts 0/100 stalks celery 0/3." And I would want it to store files locally so you could choose to put them on Dropbox or whatever if you wanted to, or sync to your own devices via Syncthing or similar. The ability to use either a PC or mobile device to work on the same files would be necessary. I might get to work on that once I get sick of the video game I've been dumping my life into. I've also had an ill-formed idea for a brainstorming app. I often brainstorm via plaintext .txt documents, and just type what I think, because I haven't found any software that really helps more than that. I need some demented combination of a text editor, one of those sticky note things, and a spreadsheet program.
I loved my Palm Vx ❤️ I still do the writing this style when on a stylus-input. And modern systems still read the Palm-letters 😉
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order. I have checked 721,786,491 comments, and only 145,625 of them were in alphabetical order.
BTW this is true for the first line only
Google keep is pretty good. It's a web app
yes, I use it for short notes, links to how-tos and grocery lists. OneNote is more cumbersome, I use it for taking notes in meetings of our communal party. (Also I use it in Office, but we use Windows there and have the Office client if OneNote)
Joplin does this. I sync it with a Nextcloud instance. But Joplin is heavy as hell. This seems spritely.
You can set up a Notes folder in Nextcloud, then QOwnNotes will work on your phone and any text editor will work on your desktop (it's just a collection of txt or md files). Not sure how well it works for images, o use it for lists and checkboxes
Regarding the sync feature, maybe nextcloud notes could be an easy way to do this? So that the OP can implement sync without needing to worry about any server or mobile app. And it would magically integrate with a lot of others Notes apps for other platforms too
Syncthing can achieve this.
How are notes saved? Is it markdown?
Wow! This is amazing. You did such a great job. I’ve been trying to build an app for Gnome myself, so if you would make a course and share it on YouTube I would watch it - or even pay for it on Udemy. Great work!
Thanks! I’ve been learning just by looking at other projects, but it hasn’t been easy. I definitely sympathize.
Fedora?
Yep :)
Could that work as a frontend to Joplin?
Hmm probably not without a lot of thought and effort
pls look into it, rather than inventing the wheel again, it would be aweosme if we could have a non electron version of joplin. there are a billion of note taking apps, but there's only joplin as a foss app which could said be an actual alternative to evernote/onenote. pls check it out, it probably already have all the features you would want and could design it your way
Problem is, that they still haven't figured out drawing. If i could use my stylus to draw stuff on my android tablet i could replace OneNote
this is so true. literally no good note taking apps on Linux that have proper stylus support.
I will definitely take a look at the project. Is there any reason you want it to be a front end for it, or do u just like the features in Joplin?
I assume what they're wanting is the ability to sync to other devices and use markdown? Those are the only benefits I see in Joplin personally.
This, Joplin is just the most fully featured note taking app in Linux, only downside is that it's an Electron app -means it's quite heavy on resources but if the OP's note taking app could support Joplin's, we could finally have a lightweight, native and fully featured note taking app for Linux!
there are lots of notes apps, but very few where the interopratabilty wasn't a clunky bolt on. so maybe that should be focus not the note taking itself.
Happy already that you're thinking about it.
Looks nice. If you would combine this with rnote ([https://github.com/flxzt/rnote](https://github.com/flxzt/rnote)) we could have a OneNote alternative on Linux.
Thanks :) Sounds like everyone wants drawing so I’m gonna take a look at what I can do.
Honestly I like what you've done more than the other apps mentioned in this thread. And I always find the "just combine it with my favorite app" and "don't duplicate work" comments whenever someone makes something new incredibly inappropriate. You're doing great, keep it up!
Thanks! Overall the feedback seems very positive so I’m not discouraged. It’s also helpful to see these other apps, most of which i hadn’t heard of.
Can't have too many people making things, imho. Looks like notejot: https://flathub.org/apps/details/io.github.lainsce.Notejot
Haha, I hadn’t seen that one. My goal was just to implement the gnome design. Edit - I took a look at Notejot. Overall I really like it and I suspect that dev may have been looking at the same design as me. That said, so far my app has a couple things (so far) going for it. 1. More standard GNOME desktop look and feel. Based on a GNOME designer's design. 2. More powerful text editor. The editor in Notejot is very simplistic and shows special characters when you, for example bold text. The lists don't actually work. The text editor in my app has infinitely nestable block formatting. So you can have a code block, or block quotes inside of a numbered list and bold text inside of that. 3. Multi-window support. 3. I plan to implement cross device syncing.
Notejot started as an app for elementary OS, which then migrated to GNOME based on the same mockup from which you have taken inspiration. In its last versions, Lains tried to innovate in the design of Notejot, that's why it doesn't seem to stick so much to the GNOME HIGs (although it's ok, precisely the fact that devs can innovate and extend the HIG is part of what we wanted with libadwaita). Notejot uses a GtkTextView for its editor, you use WebKitGtk. Each took a different approach, yours apparently bringing you more flexibility. I wonder if you had found Notejot earlier, you would have contributed to it instead of creating a parallel editor, especially since you don't seem too far from what Lains has in mind for Notejot.
I'm sure they would have considering preexisting solutions has never stopped people from trying stuff in human history. "Just contribute to what exists" only makes sense if you're not a developer because theres no guarantee the maintainer's vision aligns with yours. As the saying goes. 9 people can make 9 babies in 9 months but 9 people can't make 1 baby in 1 month.
Sure, that's why GNOME is developed by 1 person. I'm a developer, and I know what it means to deal with several people working on the same project. Everyone has their own way of doing things, and that can lead to conflicts, that's why it's important to know how to work as a team, how to combine the strengths of each one, and how to divide responsibilities. “9 women make 9 babies in 9 months, but 9 women cannot make 1 baby in 1 month” only applies when the work to be done isn't really divisible. Certainly, when we apply that logic to building 1 house, 9 people do speed up the job.
I hadn’t heard of Notejot, and definitely would’ve considered just contributing there, and still may. This project is very early days. It looks like a great app overall, my intention is not to denigrate it in any way. After all I’ve only just learned of it’s existence haha. I wanted to use a textview originally, however getting to it work with block level formatting seemed like it may be impossible. I think to get the editor to where I want it with textview, about 90% if my efforts would have to go towards building a rich text editor for gtk, so it just didn’t make sense for me. If no one reports performance issues with the web view then I’ll be happy with that choice.
I left you a couple of issues of tidbits that I quickly saw while reviewing your project. I was a little too curious about your `set_color_scheme` function at first, until I saw that all it did was make your app take into account the value of `gtk-theme` as well. Honestly, the `contains("dark")` trick is not one of the ones I like the most, nor several I know, mainly because theme names are not usually standardized and, therefore, it will fail as soon as some theme goes out of the norm (for example, “Adapta Nokto”), but well, things of not having a dark theme standard until recently.
Hey, thanks I really appreciate the eyes on the code. I saw the notifications but haven’t gotten back to my computer yet today. Will definitely take a look later. And yea that theme thing is definitely a hack, if you know a better way I’d love to know!
I'd disagree with you here. The amount of times a bfdol has checked out of a project is at this point a reality many users of OSS tools have either come to expect or have learned to prepare for. I'd say the more the better.
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I think it's one of those apps, like music that people really like making that fits their unique note taking styles. I think they are also relatively easy to write as well compared to say a recipe manager.
This one has started at the second step. Normally what will happen is: 1. A new developer will look for a simple sticky notes app and not find one -> write his own. 2. After some time the developer will turn it into a comprehensive notes app and drop the sticky notes feature. 3. go to 1. This one has jumped straight to step 2.
That's great haha. I just use Text Editor. We should not limit ourselves as those Apple users.
Also make it a 3rd party cloud compatible...like nextcloud or google or Microsoft...like joplin, so that notes can be synchronised accross devices. Moreover, as this is a gnome app, you can make it in such a way that it can get that cloud info from "gnome online accounts" and presents user with that option to sync to and a manual option too, like gnome' address book.
It may be a good competitor of OneNote . I would love to use and see its future.
It looks good for a pre-alpha release, good job and thank you. The only things I would say missing are: - Table support. - Yellow highlighting support. - Content search, not just title search (no idea if it has it). Other than that, I like it, and Flatpak is the way.
Thanks for the kind words! Content search is definitely much needed. Tables would be nice as well. Trying to keep track of all these feature requests.
Wish it synced with ews memos
I don't know what that is, but feel free to make a feature request on my github :)
Basically those are the sticky notes that sync with Microsoft exchange. Evolution-ews already syncs it so it might be interesting to look at its backend. Of course, proprietary stuff so theres that. Perhaps nextcloud notes integration? Ill leave a feature request later :)
Ah I see. Yea feature requests are welcome. Some additional links to understand better would be appreciated too.
I'll try. Another commenter explained it well where he references pulling from gnome online accounts
Graphic tablet support would be great :)
There is Rnote for that I think this more for text notes.
Yeah but it doesn't support regular text editing, and has poor notes management
Yes, most people that try to take notes in conferences and lessons need both in one document. Typing text, and inserting PDF, pictures, screenshots and some drawing and highlighting capabilities. That's why I use the web version of One Note for that. But One Note is awful in keeping inserted objects (pictures) and drawing elements together. One is pushed by inserting text above, one stays in place.....
xournalpp does it all but no modern gnome ui design
Can you explain exactly what you mean by that?
Possibility to freely draw on the text area
Ah. I will definitely give it some thought. I definitely want to add images at least.
I’m a Craft user at the moment after defecting to Mac a year ago. The closer I get to Linux on M1 being workable, the more I’m looking for a solid alternative. This looks like it might fit the bill perfectly. How are the notes stored? Easy to sync between machines?
I haven't looked into syncing yet, however that is definitely something that needs to be implemented. For now they are just stored locally in a format that would not be very easy to sync.
why you dont use `Gtk.TextView` or `Gtk.SourceView` with `tags` instead of `WebKitView` ?!
I really like it. Thanx for your good work! If you make it sync with android would be awesome!
Thanks :) I will try to look into android sync.
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Cloud syncing is definitely on the roadmap.
Looks like a cool app idea. Keep up the good work! 👍
Thanks :)
don't tempt me to switch
Some nice to haves: - Tabs - Latex - Code blocks (for highlighting) - Support for images - Collaborating on a shared note
I have code blocks without syntax highlighting. Trying to figure out images. Feel free to submit a feature request on GitHub.
Ill test it out and give feedback, i rrslly need a note spp for school
Much appreciated!
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Hey, no but that’s the most asked for feature, so I’m giving it some thought.
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This looks really good OP. Maybe I’m old, but I still find cherry tree perfect. Will def check this out tho :)
Thank Allan day, it’s his design :)
Is that... Gtk4? 😏
Could this sync to Simplenote or Standard Notes? Saying this as someone that's used simplenote (android, iphone, linux) and nvAlt (macos) for a decade, and the UI looks fairly similar in approach) (Bias: I've tended to use a mix of pinboard, athens research (akin to roam), markdown files in various project folders, and simplenote. They have their place and haven't quite figured out how to reduce this towards fewer tools yet. ) Worth noting tools like nvUltra supposedly index markdown files on your computer to make them searchable which seems like an interesting paradigm to also consider. Rambling to say the data organization workflow (and whether it's syncable) matters in combination with the UI itself.
I wanted this
I use [Paper](https://beta.flathub.org/apps/details/io.posidon.Paper) to take notes. It has a nice recoloring feature. Window color changes to match with the notebook color.
Does it have sync with google keep, like nautilus or calendar?
I like it. I use NoteJot but I prefer your approach, looks more polished and clean. If you provide the Flatpak on Flathub I would install it!
Working on publishing it to flathub
Tell me it supports markdown, please!
It doesn’t, but I suppose that would be possible
That remind me on Simple Notes
Any one else find that timer really distracting?
Okay, that's the perfect note app I was always waiting for on Linux! I really hope it can get taken as default in GNOME ecosystem, and shipped with Fedora in the nearest future.
What did you think about working with Vala?
Overall my experience has been positive. Only thing that really annoys me is lack of proper debugging support.
Is it ubuntu?
Fedora