Planner 2.6 – An open-source Todoist alternative for Linux

https://useplanner.com/release/2020/12/24/merry-christmas-everyone-planner-2-6-is-here/

by rayrag • 6 years ago

240 42 6 years ago

marvion2• 6 years ago

It's so sad to see cool Linux tools without a Windows version:(

I get why; I'm just sad - especially because some Linux users are annoyed by "Windows only" tools and then they use linux only features, that never can't be ported to other operating systems as well(not because lack of people, but incompatibility).

Planner is one of those amazing niche tools that doesn't exist for Windows. It looks amazing - congrats!

AsyncAwait• 6 years ago

I get where you're coming from but Linux exclusive desktop apps are so rare that it is probably worth it using tight platform integration as a way to convince users we have quality, nicely designed desktop apps too, especially considering Todoist have a Windows app but not a Linux one[1].

1 - https://todoist.com/downloads/windows?lang=en

marvion2• 6 years ago

I totally understand why. It just felt weird the first time I came across a beautiful Linux Mint app, that couldn't be ported to windows..

.. the cool thing is, that it is possible with WSL and it probably will be almost seamless in the future - without additional work for the devs.

I specifically want to use Planner because of the local mode. Afaik ther are no nice local-only todo apps for windows with sub-task support.

spondyl• 6 years ago

considering Todoist have a Windows app but not a Linux one

Todoist does have a Linux app, although it's effectively an electron wrapper around the web app. Having said that, I don't think this is unique to the linux version though? https://todoist.com/downloads/linux

ajvs• 6 years ago

Linux is open-source so it tends to follow that open-source projects choose to develop for it too.

mbirth• 6 years ago

From the screenshots it looks very similar to Microsoft To Do: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/microsoft-to-d...

rayrag2• 6 years ago

Github repo: https://github.com/alainm23/planner

Nabati• 6 years ago

For Todoist users, the Board View was introduced in this new update, a more visual way to organize your Planner projects.

For someone not familiar with Planner, this sentence was really confusing for me, "for users of other service, there's a feature in this service", and it's not clear what the connection is.

_odey2• 6 years ago

Took me a while to find it, but this seems to be the repository:

* https://github.com/alainm23/planner

Some notes from a quick browse:

- Licensed GPL-3

- Written in Vala, using GTK

- Uses sqlite

- Meson+ninja as build system (which I like)

If it ran on Android too I'd replace Orgzly with this as I wish to have a tool I use both on my phone and laptop, synchronized via Syncthing (so far orgmode in emacs + orgzly gives me what I want, but I wish I had something a bit more pretty and user friendly like this Planner).

tgflynn• 6 years ago

Thanks. I don't understand why they didn't include a github link on the website.

jmnicolas• 6 years ago

You have to pay for it on the Elementary store, so maybe they don't want you to find it for free easily.

nguyenkien2• 6 years ago

Planner sync with Todoist [https://todoist.com/downloads/android]

_odey2• 6 years ago

Yes but I don't want a 3rd party to access my data. Right now I sync peer to peer via WiFi, no server involved, and would like to keep it that way.

ekidd• 6 years ago

Todoist sync looks like a really terrific feature, but as far as I can tell, it's broken on some Ubuntu 18.04 systems due to WebKit2GTK issues. https://github.com/alainm23/planner/issues/302 The joys of software development.

finchisko• 6 years ago

Does Planner support any basic form of time tracking?

itgoon• 6 years ago

And/or cost tracking? That's the one feature missing from the simple planners that I've been wanting.

TeMPOraL• 6 years ago

And/or task dependency (as a DAG, not a tree)?

bschne• 6 years ago

Haven't used this personally, and it definitely seems to have taken lots of inspiration from Todoist, Things 3, et al., but it's really great to see this sort of well-designed app that looks like a lot of thought went into the UX even for non-advanced users for linux!

hcal3• 6 years ago

I've been using this for a long time and I am Patreon supporter. When I switched from Mac to Linux I had to find a replacement for my todo/planner app called Things. Planner was initially a good enough solution, but Alain (the developer) has gone above and beyond to deliver an amazing tool. It is now every bit as good as Things and the Board view will be an awesome addition.

This is one of those times where the open source option is clearly the best tool. You don't give up anything. Plus, and I think this is important for something you use all day long, it is has a nice visual design that is easy to use and figure out.

hanklazard• 6 years ago

Looks great for when I’m on my Linux laptop. Any way to use on iPhone without dealing with Todoist? Like a markdown text file or something.

ruph123• 6 years ago

That is true except that it does not offer a sufficient solution for a synced mobile app.

I was very happily using it and even created a Todoist premium account only to find out that the interpretation between the two tools is very lacking and a lot of the things I configured and structured did not make it to Todoist and vice versa (notes, folders, hierarchies, etc). If there would be a 1–to-1 translation between the two this would be awesome.

Having a great Linux Todo app is really great. But I have to be able to at least __see__ everything the same way on my smartphone, even if I can’t edit it. Having a half baked solution like this makes it unusable.

neilv2• 6 years ago

In case anyone else was wondering, this doesn't seem to be the same thing as the Planner app of Gnome: https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Planner

(Gnome's Planner doesn't look like it's being developed at the moment, but it's a pretty decent tool in the style of old-school Microsoft Project. The files are also pretty git-friendly. I'd actually been thinking of moving back to it, since it's lower friction to edit than Instagantt, and also lets one assign multiple resources to a task.)

hcal3• 6 years ago

I wish someone would pick it back up. It was pretty useful. It took some work to get it to run on Modern Fedora and I had a lot of stability problems with it.

neilv2• 6 years ago

FWIW, I don't recall a stability problem with it on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. I exercised a lot of features, but I didn't use it for a long duration (CEO wanted to try having the entire company updating Instagantt).

At first glance, I wondered whether Gnome Planner was one of those open source projects that was started overly-ambitiously, and then quickly abandoned when development got difficult. However, after using it, I got the impression that Gnome Planner was mostly there.

ognarb• 6 years ago

Maybe you could take a look at Calligra Plan, it is one of the only part of Calligra still actively maintained.

https://calligra.org/plan/

drran• 6 years ago

It looks like the project is alive:

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/planner

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/planner/-/merge_requests

GartzenDeHaes• 6 years ago

For me, lack of project leveling was a stopper. Without leveling, you're just making fancy charts.

johnchristopher• 6 years ago

There's something weird these days about how there are a lot of cool apps in elementary and rearely deb/ubuntu packages :/. Is that a writing on the wall ? I usually want to test them out but the vala/meson/ninja compilation steps often gets in my way.

j1elo• 6 years ago

I was curious about the Elementary AppCenter and what distribution format they use: https://docs.elementary.io/develop/appcenter/publishing-requ...

Turns out they use .deb packages, so the packages should be available somewhere.

fleg• 6 years ago

A lot of them are available as Flatpaks, too. Planner is available there as well: https://www.flathub.org/apps/details/com.github.alainm23.pla...

solarkraft• 6 years ago

Is there a chance to of getting synchronization via something non-proprietary? It looks great, but still lacks a mobile option.

tux• 6 years ago

Good looking GUI, too bad it requires "evolution-data-server" to build and run.

ISL• 6 years ago

Does the underlying datastructure allow for permissioned collaboration with others?

Can I share just a project with a co-worker without sharing the entire task database?

mgbmtl• 6 years ago

Looks great! Could I use this (and todoist) to aggregate tasks from various sources, such as different Gitlab instances, GitHub, etc?

FreeFull• 6 years ago

For those using Arch linux, this seems to be the AUR package for Planner: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/elementary-planner/

inferense• 6 years ago

I appreciate its open-source nature. Although, to be completely honest, the functionality and design don't seem to provide anything unique in comparison to already existing apps like trello / todo apps which I believe suck. I have tried many of "productivity" tools but somehow always ended up with pen&paper or notepad app. I wonder if that's the best we can do in 21st century. And all of these apps seem to follow the same design paradigm.

After a pro-longed experimentation and reflection, I designed my own system. Shared it with friends and we're building a tool with a slightly different approach. Hopefully to address user problems holistically. If anyone's curious I'd be happy to share our work once ready. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/18lEuJ9cQLhgiPaH1K1bp2j8yy_B...

jgilias• 6 years ago

This looks pretty good!

One of the most important things to me when using Todoist is seamless syncing between mobile and web. I absolutely need the possibility of quickly jotting down a task when I'm on the go. As well as getting a quick overview of the day in the morning or late in the evening without having to use the computer.

Todoist is actually one of the few apps I pay for and feel happy doing that. For me it's really money well spent as I'm pretty sure I recover the yearly cost in productivity gains in a few days max.

That being said, it's always nice to see good open source software being actively developed!

29athrowaway• 6 years ago

GNOME has an app called Planner:

https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Planner

Planner is packaged in many distros, e.g.:

- https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/planner/

- https://packages.debian.org/source/buster/planner

- https://packages.ubuntu.com/groovy/planner

There's this unspoken rule of open-source project naming etiquette where you try to not use names used by projects once they reach certain level of popularity.

Planner 2.6 – An open-source Todoist alternative for Linux

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