I had the chance to take a look at Microsoft OneNote recently, and, having liked the concept since long before Microsoft came up with it, I looked around for an open-source alternative for my GNU/Linux system. I had done the same thing several years ago and come up with nothing, but this time I was pleasantly surprised to find a good replacement, BasKet Note Pads, a KDE application similar to OneNote but with less features.

I had actually tried out BasKet earlier, but it was at a more primitive stage of development then. It seems to have advanced to a greater level of sophistication since then.

Today, I put this software to practical use: I used it to make lecture-notes for a class. That worked out pretty well, although a Tablet PC with a stylus would certainly have been more convenient.

There are a few features missing in the application, such as picture editing and annotation, handwriting/character recognition etc. But it is possible to link an external application (such as Krita) to edit images, and handwriting recognition is not very useful without a stylus, so for personal use, BasKet seems to be an excellent option.

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