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CherryTree: Best Ubuntu Note-Taking App for Programmers

Last updated: July 20, 2013

CherryTree is a hierarchical note taking application, featuring rich text and syntax highlighting, storing data in a single xml or sqlite file.

CherryTree is perfectly suitable not only for taking notes, but also for managing code snippets. The application supports syntax highlighting for many popular programming languages, so you can use the application as a programmer’s scratchpad. You can also insert code snippets directly into notes using so-called code boxes.

cherrytree-main_window_code

Features:

  • rich text (foreground color, background color, bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, small, h1, h2, h3, subscript, superscript, monospace)
  • syntax highlighting (only when the rich text is disabled in the current node)
  • images handling: insertion in the text, edit (resize/rotate), save as png file
  • lists handling (bulleted, numbered, to-do and switch between them, multiline with shift+enter)
  • simple tables handling (cells with plain text), cut/copy/paste row, import/export as csv file
  • codeboxes handling: boxes of automatically highlighted text into normal rich text
  • alignment of text, images, tables and codeboxes (left/center/right)
  • hyperlinks (links to webpages, links to nodes/nodes + anchors, links to files, links to folders)
  • intra application copy/paste: supported single images, single codeboxes, single tables and a compound selection of rich text, images, codeboxes and tables
  • cross application copy/paste (tested with openoffice and gmail): supported single images, single codeboxes, single tables and a compound selection of rich text, images, codeboxes and tables
  • copying a list of files from the file manager and pasting in cherrytree will create a list of links to files, images are recognized and inserted in the text
  • print & save as pdf file of a selection / node / node and subnodes / the whole tree
  • export to html of a selection / node / node and subnodes / the whole tree
  • export to plain text of a selection / node / node and subnodes / the whole tree
  • toc generation for a node / node and subnodes / the whole tree, based on headers h1, h2 and h3
  • find a node, find in current node, find in all nodes
  • replace in node names, replace in current node, replace in all nodes
  • iteration of the latest find, iteration of the latest replace, iteration of the latest applied text formatting
  • import from basket, cherrytree, gnote, keepnote, knowit, mempad, notecase, tomboy, treepad lite, tuxcards, zim
  • export to cherrytree file of a selection / node / node and subnodes / the whole tree
  • password protection (using http://www.7-zip.org/)
  • tree nodes drag and drop

Install CherryTree on Ubuntu:

CherryTree is available in Ubuntu’s universe repository since Ubuntu 12.04 Precise. Search for and install it from Ubuntu Software Center.

For the latest version, press Ctrl+Alt+T to open terminal and run below commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:vincent-c/cherrytree

sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install cherrytree
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How to Get Better Performance on Old Ubuntu Laptop

Last updated: July 20, 2013

speed up ubuntu netbook
This simple and brief tutorial is going to show you how to speed up your snail-slow laptop by tweaking your Ubuntu system. There’re some tools and apps to improve the overall performance of an Ubuntu powered machine. They are really helpful if you have an old machine with the hardware that are out of date.

Improve Performance with ZRAM on low RAM machines:

ZRAM is a is a module of the Linux kernel that creates a RAM based block device which acts as a swap disk, but is compressed and stored in memory instead of swap disk (which is slow), allowing very fast I/O and increasing the amount of memory available before the system starts swapping to disk.

This gives amazing performance improvements on systems with low RAM. Especially netbooks! Search for and install zram-config from Ubuntu Software Center. Then restart, zram is running silently as a background process.

install zram ubuntu 13.04

Speed up application loading time by using Preload

Preload is nice little application that could make your linux system a lot faster. Preload is an adaptive readahead daemon. It monitors applications that users run, and by analyzing this data, predicts what applications users might run, and fetches those binaries and their dependencies into memory for faster startup times.

Preload is available by default in Ubuntu Software Center. Just search for and install it, then it’ll run silently as a background process. If you want to further tweak Preload, conf file is available at /etc/preload.conf.

install preload on ubuntu

Speed up Unity desktop by disable graphics effect:

Unity 2D has been dropped since Ubuntu 12.04, it’s no longer available in higher editions. If you’re using Ubuntu with Unity as its desktop environment, you can turn off the graphics effect to get a better experience.

To do so, create file .xprofile on user Home folder and open it with text editor (You may check if it already exist by press Ctrl+H to view hidden files). Add below line and save it:

export UNITY_LOW_GFX_MODE=1

That’s it. Hope this tutorial may help you!

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Install Sticky Notes Indicator on Ubuntu 13.04

Last updated: July 19, 2013

In this tutorial I’ll show you a lightweight sticky notes software for Ubuntu users. It’s indicator-stickynotes which allows you to jot down thoughts, lists, and reminders on your desktop. This simple tool works on Unity, Gnome Shell, XFCE/Xubuntu, with partial support for KDE/Kubuntu and Linux Mint (MATE and Cinnamon).

Sticky-Notes-indicator

Objectives:

  • Install Indicator Stickynotes on Ubuntu and Linux Mint.
  • Enjoy!

To get started, add the ppa repository which supports Ubuntu 13.04 Raring, 12.10 Quantal, 12.04 Precise and Linux Mint 13 Maya, 14 Nadia, 15 Olivia. To do so, press Ctrl+Alt+T to open a terminal window, run below commands:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:umang/indicator-stickynotes

Then update the package lists and install the software:

sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install indicator-stickynotes

Sticky-Notes-indicator-unity-dash

Enjoy!

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Install RemoteBox 1.5 on Ubuntu 13.04 and Linux Mint

Last updated: July 19, 2013

As you may know, RemoteBox is an open source VirtualBox Client with Remote Management feature. It allows you to administer an installation of VirtualBox residing on another machine such as a server, as if it was installed locally. You can also interact with the displays of the guests. This allows you to treat VirtualBox much more like an installation of Xen, KVM or VMware ESX. A summary of some of the features of RemoteBox are listed below.

In this brief tutorial I’ll show you how to install RemoteBox 1.5 on Ubuntu 13.04 Raring or Linux Mint.

To get started, press Ctrl+Alt+T to open a terminal window for running commands:

Linux Mint Terminal

Then run commands to install required packages:

sudo apt-get install libgtk2-perl libsoap-lite-perl rdesktop

Then download RemoteBox 1.5 (VirtualBox 4.2.X required):

RemoteBox-1.5.tar.bz2

Decompress the downloaded package, and it should result a new folder called RemoteBox-1.5. In terminal, navigate to this folder:

cd ~/Downloads/RemoteBox-1.5

Then start RemoteBox:

./remotebox

You can right-click on the icon from Unity Launcher and choose ‘Lock to Launcher’ to make it easy to launch next time. Or you can manually add it into Unity Dash.

lock-to-launcher

This is the main window of RemoteBox:

RemoteBox1.5

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Install VDrift Racing Simulator in Ubuntu 24.04 | 22.04 | 20.04

Last updated: March 12, 2025

VDrift is an open source driving simulation made with drift racing in mind. It was available for Ubuntu and Linux Mint users from PlayDeb repository.

Vdrift

For recent Ubuntu releases, there’s a popular xtradeb games PPA contains the game package for Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 24.04, and Linux Mint 21/22. Not only for amd64 (Intel/AMD CPUs), it also support arm64/armhf (e.g., raspberry pi) platforms.

Objectives:

  • Install VDrift on Ubuntu and Linux Mint
  • Enjoy!

To get started, first press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open up a terminal window. Then run command below to add the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xtradeb/play

It will automatically refresh cache after adding PPA in Ubuntu, though Linux Mint user needs to do it manually by running command:

sudo apt update

Finally, install the game package by running command:

sudo apt install vdrift

(Optional) To uninstall the car racing game, use command:

sudo apt remove --autoremove vdrift vdrift-data

Then, use command below to remove the PPA repository:

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:xtradeb/play
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Easy Way to Change Tooltip Background & Foreground on Unity

Last updated: July 19, 2013

Tooltips on Ubuntu Unity by default is white on black. This tutorial shows how to easily change the both background and foreground colors.

Objectives:

  • Change default tooltip background and foreground colors
  • Enjoy!

To get started, install the simple tool Gnome Color Chooser from Ubuntu Software Center.

gnome-color-chooser

Open it from the Unity Dash. Navigate to Specific tab, there you’ll find the option to tweak the tooltips colors.

tooltips-color

That’s it. Enjoy!

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How to Install Google Sketchup 2013 Ubuntu 13.04

Last updated: June 2, 2014

Want to install and use Google Sketchup on Ubuntu 13.04 Raring? Well, this simple tutorial will show you how to do it. With the help of Wine software, you can install and use Windows software easily in Ubuntu.

Wine is a compatibility layer capable of running Windows applications on several POSIX-compliant operating systems, including Ubuntu Linux. It’s free and open-source software. Wine now is getting a lot better at handling Windows software on Linux systems.

To get started with installing Sketchup 2013 in Ubuntu, download the lastest version of wine. To do that, press Ctrl + Alt + T on your keyboard to open the terminal. When it opens, run the commands below to add its PPA.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa

Then run below command to update package lists and install wine1.5 (Now the latest wine1.7 is recommended):

sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install wine1.5

Once wine is installed, run below command to configure it so that Sketchup could be installed. You may need to log out and log back:

winecfg

Next, navigate to Libraries tab, then select ‘Riched20’ library from the drop-down list and add it. When done, click OK

wine-configuration

Download Google Sketchup from http://sketchup.google.com/intl/en/download/gsu.html. Then navigate to the Downloads folder and right-click on the EXE to ‘Open with Wine Windows Program Loader’.

open-with-wine

Follow the setup wizard and finally you’ll get the shortcut on the desktop and Unity dash.

sketchup

That’s it. Enjoy!

UPDATE: If Sketchup hangs after choosing a template, try launching it with /DisableRubyAPI as a workaround. Or read the new post about install Sketchup 2014 in Ubuntu 14.04.

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How to Change Screen Dimming Timeout on Ubuntu 13.04 Laptop

Last updated: July 18, 2013

When you’re running your laptop on battery, Ubuntu dims the screen after a few seconds of inactivity. It annoying and here’s how to increase the timeout.

Objectives:

  • Increase Ubuntu screen dimming timeout on your laptop
  • Enjoy!

To get started, open dconf Editor from the dash search results.

dconf editor in unity dash

In next window, navigate to org -> gnome -> settings-daemon -> plugins -> power. You’ll find the key which says “idle-dim-time”, change its value to what you want.

change idle screen timeout

Enjoy!

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Turn off Screen Dimming on Ubuntu 13.04 Laptop

Last updated: July 18, 2013

When your Ubuntu laptop is on battery, the screen dims after about a few seconds of inactivity. It’s annoying and here’s how to turn if off.

Objectives:

  • Disable Screen Dimming on Ubuntu 13.04 Laptop
  • Enjoy!

To get started, open Brightness & Lock utility from Unity Dash search results or from System Settings.

brightness and lock utility

Un-check the box where it says “Dim screen to save power”

disable dim screen

That’s it!

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How to Flush DNS Cache on Ubuntu 13.04, 12.10

Last updated: July 18, 2013

This simple tutorial will show you how to flush or clear your system’s DNS records on Ubuntu 13.04 Raring and 12.10 Quantal.

Objectives:

  • Flush DNS records on Ubuntu 13.04 or Ubuntu 12.10
  • Enjoy!

To get started, press Ctrl+Alt+T to open a terminal window.

Open Terminal to run commands

Then run command to flush dns:

sudo /etc/init.d/dns-clean restart

You can also use this command:

sudo /etc/init.d/networking force-reload

In addition, to flush nscd dns cache:

sudo /etc/init.d/nscd restart

To flush dnsmasq dns cache:

sudo /etc/init.d/dnsmasq restart
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