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Comment by criddell | Hacker News Reader

It's a lot of money, but for about $1300, a 13" iPad Pro + Apple Pencil + paper-like screen protector + Concepts or Notability or GoodNotes or Muse or even OneNote basically gets you there too. The drawing tools are great, the handwriting recognition is pretty amazing, and it's easy to scan documents or add photos with the device's camera.

With focus modes, you can hide everything else and make the iPad into a dedicated note keeping device.

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Another option is a Samsung tablet with an s-pen. Some people prefer it to an iPad setup.

(I just got an S7 lite, on sale). I like it a lot so far, but I've only had it for two days so I dont want to comment on using the pen until I've had the tablet for more time.)

I think my ideal environment would be more of a pen-based org mode with good handwriting recognition and editing.

Samsung has good hardware but the software just isn’t there. Of all those programs I mentioned, I think only OneNote is on Android.

Any recent iPad is compatible with the Pencil (although it depends which gen of the pencil). So you can get all of this for far less money if you go for the cheapest 9 inch

+1 for goodnotes, I keep track of every paper I've read and research I've done since grad school using the app, you can search, import anything, it's awesome.

Right, you've listed a lot of apps that seem to address this space. I think the biggest factor that eliminates them in DeVault's mind is limited to no Linux support and an iPad obviously isn't running Linux either.

I only mentioned this stuff because he said it should be on Linux, not that it must.

Yeah, sorry, part of my intended point that I don't think entirely came across was not that these software options shouldn't be brought up as possible answers (they should! Thanks) but that it does seem to point to an under-served niche (Linux support) and that would be exactly the sort of under-served niche that would make some of these answers "non-obvious" to someone like DeVault when looking for off-the-shelf solutions. DeVault in fact may be calling for someone to more directly serve this niche (and other comments here touch on that), but yeah if he has a chance some of the options you mentioned are likely worth investigating as current off-the-shelf options.

On desktop Linux, every niche is underserved (with the possible exception of text editors). There's hasn't been much going on in the Linux desktop software world for the past twenty years. It seems like anytime something new comes out that runs on Linux, it's only on Linux because of some cross-platform library and as a result compromises have been made.

> There hasn't been much going on in the Linux desktop software world for the past twenty years.

As a daily user of Linux on the desktop I am totally biased -- but can you provide some examples of this? From my (subjective) perspective, Linux desktop software is pretty active.

However, I totally agree with your point about Linux being an afterthought for a lot of desktop apps and made possible only by tooling comparable to Electron.

Some points I could see:

1. I still can't ditch X-11 for work (because of Zoom[1])

2. My point above about desktop Linux support being an afterthought for most desktop apps

However, I feel like on the other side there is a huge desktop application library that is pretty active.

[1] https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/6634039380877-Shar...

The best platform examples for me are GoodNotes and Procreate. I bought an iPad and Pencil four years ago just to run GoodNotes and when I needed a better drawing app I found Procreate. They are both amazing and should be 10x as expensive as they are.

What's an example of a desktop Linux application that is so good that somebody will setup or buy a Linux machine to run? I don't deny they exist, but it's been almost 15 years since I worked in Linux full time and when I did I mostly used cross-platform software. Off the top of my head, I just can't think of anything. The killer app back then for me was Linux itself mostly because I enjoyed tinkering and configuring and I couldn't afford the machines I really wanted (something from SGI or Sun or Next).

Despite all that, Linux may be the most successful OS out there. It's the foundation for Android and ChromeOS, it powers a bazillion appliances and gadgets. It's basic infrastructure for a lot of what powers everything we do online. But I don't consider any of that to be desktop Linux success stories.

> The best platform examples for me are GoodNotes and Procreate.

These are great examples.

> What's an example of a desktop Linux application that is so good that somebody will setup or buy a Linux machine to run?

This is a tough question as most of the software I use on Linux can be used on MacOS with its ancient FreeBSD userland or Windows with WSL or natively. I feel that often developers who don't treat Linux as an afterthought also make things available for other platforms.

I know for me, I use a Linux machine for the software ecosystem I use to keep things keyboard driven. skhd[1] on MacOS and Autohotkey[2] on Windows can help but when I have tried both it is not quite as flushed out in my opinion. I also use Linux for increased privacy and a more minimal environment compared to MacOS or Windows. I would say those are compelling reasons to use Linux and are directly impacted by software available for Linux. One could also argue the lack of undesirable software (bloatware, adware, etc.) is also a compelling reason to use Linux.

This all being said, I am not one to argue this is the year of the Linux Desktop. I'm a security engineer and the lack of standardization on the desktop side of Linux is a HUGE weakness and until that is addressed I don't think it will ever be the year of the Linux Desktop.

[1] https://github.com/koekeishiya/skhd

[2] https://www.autohotkey.com/

No longer an Apple user, but this is making me wonder if I need to get an iPad again. Fuck my life.

Not an apple fan, but I cannot be separated from my iPad (and the pencil) for this particular use case.

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