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For some historical perspective, consider this. When Tomboy was new, people complained about its ‘bloat’. Why? Because it’s ‘unnecessarily’ written in .NET, and

For some historical perspective, consider this. When Tomboy was new, people complained about its ‘bloat’. Why? Because it’s ‘unnecessarily’ written in .NET, and Mono was a ‘huge and bloated’ dependency.

GekkePrutser 6y ago
I know, and I don't like the fact that it uses .NET either.. Especially because it doesn't use plain .NET but GTK as well. It's a bit of a hassle installing, even on Windows systems that come with .NET but not GTK. However its performance is amazing, it's the fastest notetaking app I've ever used. And I also really loved the lack of the concept of 'saving'. Everything you type is automatically saved.
bachmeier 6y ago
It was a little more than that. It was the only app on the live CD of several major distros that relied on Mono. That meant, back in the days of CD's that could hold 800 MB (?) you had to remove a whole lot of other stuff from the live CD, all for an app that most people didn't use. (As was pointed out at the time, what's the purpose of a notes app on a live CD, where you don't even have persistent storage?) It was widely perceived, correctly in my opinion, as a way to get Mono installed on everyone's machines. After the pushback Miguel de Icaza got pissed, trashed Linux every chance he had, and switched to Mac. I'm not going to relitigate all of that, but it wasn't just that Mono was bloated. * Here's just one link: https://tirania.org/blog/archive/2013/Mar-05.html https://tirania.org/blog/archive/2013/Mar-05.html "Machine would suspend and resume without problem, WiFi just worked, audio did not stop working, I spent three weeks without having to recompile the kernel to adjust this or that, nor fighting the video drivers, or deal with the bizarre and random speed degradation that my ThinkPad suffered."
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
  Haha that random speed degredation happened to me even in Windows. Turned out to be a bug in the T470 firmware that throttled the cores down to a couple of hundred Mhz when on battery. I could literally watch the windows being drawn. Not sure if this was what happened for him, probably not as he wrote that years before the T470 was released, but I'm just saying it's not necessarily Linux related. But overall I've had no such issues with Linux during the last years. I use all 3 desktop platforms a lot, and my favourite was Mac, but due to Apple's constant "dumbing down" (both the OS and hardware) to appeal to the iPhone/iPad userbase it meets my needs as a power users less and less.
entropie 6y ago
Is there something (very) similar to Tomboy? Man I loved that thing and considered multiple times that I should write my own version (besides are horrible vue app approach I failed on this).
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
  Yeah I know, I miss it so much too. It was just the perfect app. Not trying to do too much, not too little, and really efficient at what it did. I could type out structured notes while on a call without even having to look at the screen. And finding them back was so much easier than in OneNote. As I mentioned there is Tomboy-NG: https://github.com/tomboy-notes/tomboy-ng/releases/tag/v0.29 https://github.com/tomboy-notes/tomboy-ng/releases/tag/v0.29 . It's a complete rewrite in a different language (Pascal with Qt). It doesn't have the same ultra-fast feel of the old one though. And hyperlinks to other notes don't seem to update instantly like on the old one. I've tried it once but I never had that real "wow" feeling of the original.
JohnTHaller 6y ago
One key difference is that you don't have to bundle a full copy of .NET with your app, consuming additional download bandwidth, install space, and RAM when running. Running 6 Electron apps is running 6 different browsers all at the same time.
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
  Yes this is exactly why I don't like Electron. But also: The UI. Electron apps have a very distinct "non-native" UX about them. Sure they look kinda pretty in many cases but they don't integrate well with every client OS. They all do their own UI thing, just like in the early days of Linux on the desktop. There's a few gems that use Electron really well. VS Code comes to mind. But even Microsoft itself publishes some really poor electron apps, like Skype for Business and Teams for Mac that are horrible resource hogs.

GekkePrutser 6y ago

I know, and I don't like the fact that it uses .NET either.. Especially because it doesn't use plain .NET but GTK as well. It's a bit of a hassle installing, even on Windows systems that come with .NET but not GTK. However its performance is amazing, it's the fastest notetaking app I've ever used. And I also really loved the lack of the concept of 'saving'. Everything you type is automatically saved.

bachmeier 6y ago

It was a little more than that. It was the only app on the live CD of several major distros that relied on Mono. That meant, back in the days of CD's that could hold 800 MB (?) you had to remove a whole lot of other stuff from the live CD, all for an app that most people didn't use. (As was pointed out at the time, what's the purpose of a notes app on a live CD, where you don't even have persistent storage?) It was widely perceived, correctly in my opinion, as a way to get Mono installed on everyone's machines. After the pushback Miguel de Icaza got pissed, trashed Linux every chance he had, and switched to Mac. I'm not going to relitigate all of that, but it wasn't just that Mono was bloated. * Here's just one link: https://tirania.org/blog/archive/2013/Mar-05.html https://tirania.org/blog/archive/2013/Mar-05.html "Machine would suspend and resume without problem, WiFi just worked, audio did not stop working, I spent three weeks without having to recompile the kernel to adjust this or that, nor fighting the video drivers, or deal with the bizarre and random speed degradation that my ThinkPad suffered."

GekkePrutser 6y ago
Haha that random speed degredation happened to me even in Windows. Turned out to be a bug in the T470 firmware that throttled the cores down to a couple of hundred Mhz when on battery. I could literally watch the windows being drawn. Not sure if this was what happened for him, probably not as he wrote that years before the T470 was released, but I'm just saying it's not necessarily Linux related. But overall I've had no such issues with Linux during the last years. I use all 3 desktop platforms a lot, and my favourite was Mac, but due to Apple's constant "dumbing down" (both the OS and hardware) to appeal to the iPhone/iPad userbase it meets my needs as a power users less and less.

entropie 6y ago

Is there something (very) similar to Tomboy? Man I loved that thing and considered multiple times that I should write my own version (besides are horrible vue app approach I failed on this).

GekkePrutser 6y ago
Yeah I know, I miss it so much too. It was just the perfect app. Not trying to do too much, not too little, and really efficient at what it did. I could type out structured notes while on a call without even having to look at the screen. And finding them back was so much easier than in OneNote. As I mentioned there is Tomboy-NG: https://github.com/tomboy-notes/tomboy-ng/releases/tag/v0.29 https://github.com/tomboy-notes/tomboy-ng/releases/tag/v0.29 . It's a complete rewrite in a different language (Pascal with Qt). It doesn't have the same ultra-fast feel of the old one though. And hyperlinks to other notes don't seem to update instantly like on the old one. I've tried it once but I never had that real "wow" feeling of the original.

JohnTHaller 6y ago

One key difference is that you don't have to bundle a full copy of .NET with your app, consuming additional download bandwidth, install space, and RAM when running. Running 6 Electron apps is running 6 different browsers all at the same time.

GekkePrutser 6y ago
Yes this is exactly why I don't like Electron. But also: The UI. Electron apps have a very distinct "non-native" UX about them. Sure they look kinda pretty in many cases but they don't integrate well with every client OS. They all do their own UI thing, just like in the early days of Linux on the desktop. There's a few gems that use Electron really well. VS Code comes to mind. But even Microsoft itself publishes some really poor electron apps, like Skype for Business and Teams for Mac that are horrible resource hogs.