I’m finding it harder to get excited about another new Linux note-taking app. A neat sidebar and Markdown support are easy enough to show in a screenshot. What I want to know is whether search works properly, whether I can get all my data back out, and whether anyone will still be fixing bugs in two years. Those questions tend to get much less attention than the launch.
I think Linux would benefit if more developers took on an unexciting job in an existing project: fixing an unreliable import, sorting out keyboard navigation or improving a slow library scan. Instead, another application often appears with those jobs still on its roadmap. That gives users more to try and another set of limitations to work around. It doesn’t necessarily leave them with better software.
A new notes app has quite a lot to catch up with
Joplin already offers synchronisation, optional end-to-end encryption, mobile apps and a web clipper. Zim organises linked wiki pages in plain text files. They suit different habits, and neither will please everybody. There’s room for something simpler, faster or more accessible. But if a new app offers much the same way of working with fewer of the useful features, I’d like its developer to explain why someone should choose it. Calling it “minimal” doesn’t settle that question.
Imagine moving your research into a notes app and discovering that its export leaves out attachments. Or spending an evening organising a music collection in a player that becomes painfully slow once the whole library is loaded. Those are the sorts of jobs an application needs to handle before I’d recommend relying on it. A polished first impression can leave a user with an awful lot of work to undo.
Light Table shows how hard the later years can be
Light Table had an interesting idea: show the results of running code beside the code itself. Its 2012 Kickstarter raised $316,720 from 7,317 backers, and it produced working software. By December 2020, however, its maintainer described himself as the sole programmer working on it in his spare time. The main repository was archived in October 2022. There’s quite a distance between thousands of people wanting an application and enough people being available to maintain it years later.
The maintainer’s proposed changes are revealing. He wanted to reuse existing Clojure tools and contribute improvements upstream, reducing the need to maintain separate versions within Light Table. He was trying to reduce the amount of software Light Table had to look after itself. That’s the part of its story that matters here: an application can be worth building and still struggle to find enough people to keep it going.
“Let people build what they want” is only half the answer
Neovim gives people practical reasons to choose it over Vim, including its approach to extensibility and Lua. Its goals also include making contributions easier. Someone who prefers those choices can explain what they gain from the separate project. That’s a convincing answer to questions about duplication. I’m much less persuaded by the suggestion that every additional editor must be good for users simply because it increases the number available.
Of course, a developer writing a music player for enjoyment might have no interest in maintaining someone else’s code. An existing project might reject their ideas or make contributing unnecessarily difficult. Nobody can order volunteers to combine their efforts, and plenty of experiments are worth trying. But users have choices too. They can decide that an app needs more work before adopting it, however much enthusiasm went into making it.
Before recommending another application, I want a better answer than “it’s another option”. Tell me what it does better, show that the important parts work, and make it clear how I can leave without losing my files. I’d rather recommend a dependable tool than an exciting roadmap.
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