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Review
This is the third notes-taking application I review, after the splendid BasKet and Tomboy for GNOME. The latest version is NoteFinder 2.5, and you can download it from here.

NoteFinder is written in Python and it uses the Qt 4 libraries. The main difference between the other applications for taking notes is the interface, which includes a big calendar by default occupying half of the main window.

Although the version number might give the impression that this is a complete application, NoteFinder offers just basic features and no configuration options. I liked that taking notes is handled in two ways: you can add your notes in a rich text format or using the wiki source style. Which got me a little confused over this feature’s usefulness.

It doesn’t allow to configure shortcuts, and in fact I wasn’t even able to find it it provides any, so you’ll have to use the mouse, which is slower in my opinion.

As a conclusion, when I saw the screenshots on kde-look.org I was enchanted to try it out, but after using it for about 10 minutes I came to ask myself whether it’s useful or not. It’s obviously it’s still in development and it misses a lot of features and functionality. Anyway, if you want to give it a try, follow the steps below.

Installation on Debian Lenny
Note: This how-to may also work on Ubuntu and other Debian-based distributions. For other distributions, just search for python qt4 and install the library with your package manager.

First, install the python-qt4 package as root:

apt-get install python-qt4

Next, download the source from here. Uncompress it, and run the install.sh script inside the notefinder-2.5 directory as root:

./install.sh /usr/local/

It’s better to keep the prefix to /usr/local/ instead of /usr/.

Run it as notefinder from any terminal application or type ALT+F2 and enter notefinder in the Run dialogue.

Updated: Jul 04, 2008 (Created: Jul 04, 2008)