What are good programs for taking class notes on linux?

Question

I looked at Baskets, but it's way too complicated. Tomboy seems cool, but I don't know if a wiki-style note system is well-suited for CLASS notes. What is your experience?

This is for typed notes (not handwritten, nor on a tablet).

Clarification: A lot of people seem to be posting links to wiki-style note taking applications. I already have tomboy if this is what I choose. My question is whether wiki-style note taking applications are a good fit for class notes.

Answer 1

I usually take my notes nowadays with Emacs Org mode. (And with remember mode, for quickies...). Would be interesting to see how does it fit with school.

As far as I can remember I did pretty outlined notes during school (when I felt the need...) so for me it would fit.

Answer 2

I used TeXmacs quite a bit. It's basically a WYSIWYG editor for LaTeX built on emacs. Once you get the hang of it (it only took me a week or so, and I didn't know much about LaTeX or emacs at that point) you can produce nicely formatted notes with little overhead vs. a plain old text editor, and easily convert them to PDF for later reference.

It was excellent for classes where my notes were basically in outline form with some math thrown in; for classes with a lot of complex graphs and diagrams it was often easier to keep a sheet of paper handy.

I can't say whether a wiki-like system would be better, though I found that whenever I had to cross-reference or search my notes, it was easy enough to just grep the LaTeX (even for math) that TeXmacs produced.

Answer 3

Have you though about mind mapping? I've used sometimes both on college and work, it's very good method to take notes.

I've used Freemind and liked it. There is also a list of mind mapping software here

Answer 4

Try TiddlyWiki for an offline browser based solution. You will need to tweak your browser's safety settings to allow this page to write to your filesystem.

Answer 5

If your school has WiFi (or [you|your parental units] can afford a decent data plan) you might want to look into one of the many online note taking apps. That way it doesn't matter what platform you're on, or what computer you're on.

Barring that, theres a multitude of programs, and while you'll get a decent list of options here, you won't have the answer you want for your note taking style until you start trying them in classroom situations.

For instance, I thought OneNote wasn't going to cut it until I used it in a week-long training seminar my company sent me to. Ever since I've used it for most all of my note taking needs.

Answer 6

Update

I settled on Tomboy as my note-taking application. I chose a desktop application over a web application for a couple of reasons:

• It is much easier to have many windows open in a desktop application.
• The UI is simpler and more flexible--it is not stuck in the browser's chrome.
• Faster and more lightweight than running in a browser.

Not only this, but a web service for Tomboy is currently in the works, which should give me the best of both worlds.

Pros:

• It seems a wiki-style editor is very well-suited for class notes.
• Very simple and intuitive interface--I can focus on my note-taking.
• Very lightweight
• Syncs with a folder in my dropbox.
• Web service in the works.

Cons:

• Sometimes too simple (i.e. missing keyboard shortcut to make text fixed width, or increate font size)
• Because of simple formatting options, not well-suited for mathematical formulas (including simple things like exponents and subscripts).
• Sync is not yet automatic (allthough this is in development)

Answer 7

Have a look at wixi.

Answer 8

Why not try NEVERNOTE - an Evernote clone for linux? Nice application that syncs with your Evernote web client... You can download a .deb package for easy installation. http://nevernote.sourceforge.net/