Quick Notes
For power-users, one of the strengths of the GNU/Linux operating system is its extreme customizability. With some knowledge of programming or scripting, and an awareness of the internals of the OS, it’s possible to get any kind of task automated. More than the fact that there are a large number of tools available, it’s the way these tools work together seamlessly that is truly appealing. Moreover, many tools are built from bottom-up — the GUI is added as an afterthought. While this may not be good selling-point when it comes to desktop operating systems, it works extremely well with command-line applications such as scripts, which focus on getting the job done. Indeed, the fact that most scripts work in the background with minimal user-interaction is proof of their efficiency.
For example -
In our hostel, it was announced that snail-mail recipients would be notified via a hostel website. To avoid having to visit the site regularly, I could simply add a cron job that would -
- Download the appropriate RSS feed [wget]
- Search for my name in the list [grep]
- Notify me by email if there is an occurrence of my name [mail]
Another interesting possibility for KDE users (or perhaps others) is a Quick Notes kind of application. Rather than purchase or download an application for making notes and saving them, you could simply add an application button to one of your main menus that executes the following command -
kwrite “/path/Note — ‘date‘”
This will launch the kwrite text-editor, where you can type your notes. The filename is “Note — ” followed by the current date and time. If the file is saved, a new file is created at the location /path/, otherwise it is discarded. Since the file is identified by the current time, each click will create a new note.
To access these notes easily, you could add a Quick Browser item (pointing to “/path/”) to your KDE toolbar.