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REQUEST: Evernote for Linux


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  • Level 5*
Why on earth does evernote not support linux? Seems to be an obvious gap in the solution.

My guess is that the answer shouldn't be too surprising: the resources to do a Linux app, vs. the potential market share gain. It should be no secret that Evernote in its heart would like to support every platform that there is, including Morse code and that CP/M machine you have mouldering down in the basement behind that old Nordic Trak machine, but they do have limits on their resources. Potential market share is limited so my feeling is that Linux is a bit down the list. Besides, with a published API, and that can-do Linux spirit, maybe a third-party developer might want to take up the cause...

~Jeff

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The compromise would be for Evernote to join the WINE project and provide some people time to work on the WINE bugs/performance issues/whatever that particularly affect Evernote. (This probably ISN'T a lot of time.)

The "compromise compromise" :-) would be for WINE supporters and Evernote to talk - which is, effectively where we are now.

No reason I can think of why the WINE route isn't satisfactory to everyone - perhaps with a little work. And especially with the Evernote 4 code base.

Martin

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Maybe I am expecting too much from a company I pay money to that has the slogan "Access Anywhere... Evernote works with nearly every computer, phone and mobile device out there.."

Anyway, I didn't mean to derail focus from the fact 4.0 does actually work with Wine :)

Is anyone else having problems installing 4.0.2 via MSI?

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Could not reproduce MSI problem.

Distro: Ubuntu 10.04 fully updated.

Wine: 1.2.1 (Latest stable from Wine repository)

Installer: Evernote_4.0.2.3151.exe

Note: First install of Evernote under Wine. My VB XP SP3 machine is working fine. Ran test up to but not past Evernote login. Console log follows:

owyn@owyn-ub1004:/media/Data/Data/Applications/Win XP SP3/Installed/Evernote$ wine Evernote_4.0.2.3151.exe
fixme:advapi:LookupAccountNameW (null) L"owyn" (nil) 0x33f160 (nil) 0x33f164 0x33f158 - stub
fixme:advapi:LookupAccountNameW (null) L"owyn" 0x143c20 0x33f160 0x143b68 0x33f164 0x33f158 - stub
err:msi:ACTION_CallDllFunction Custom action (L"C:\\users\\owyn\\Temp\\msi362a.tmp":L"ExitEvernoteApplications") caused a page fault: c0000005
fixme:msi:msi_unimplemented_action_stub MsiUnpublishAssemblies -> 2 ignored L"MsiAssembly" table values
fixme:msi:ITERATE_CreateShortcuts poorly handled shortcut format, advertised shortcut
fixme:mscoree:LoadLibraryShim (0x683a9dec L"fusion.dll", (nil), (nil), 0x33f938): semi-stub
owyn@owyn-ub1004:/media/Data/Data/Applications/Win XP SP3/Installed/Evernote$ fixme:msg:ChangeWindowMessageFilter 4a 00000001
fixme:msg:ChangeWindowMessageFilter c042 00000001
fixme:msg:ChangeWindowMessageFilter c045 00000001
fixme:msg:ChangeWindowMessageFilter c050 00000001
fixme:msg:ChangeWindowMessageFilter c04f 00000001
err:ole:CoGetClassObject class {6bf52a52-394a-11d3-b153-00c04f79faa6} not registered
err:ole:CoGetClassObject no class object {6bf52a52-394a-11d3-b153-00c04f79faa6} could be created for context 0x1
owyn@owyn-ub1004:/media/Data/Data/Applications/Win XP SP3/Installed/Evernote$

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OK. I re-read the initial report and re-tested using check for updates in 3151 under Wine to update to 3162.

The Temp\Evernote.msi was downloaded but the install did not complete.

Expect that getting a copy of the 3162 installer exe will avoid the problem.

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Got 3164 standalone exe and confirmed your reported problems. Specifically.

- Can not update from standalone when previous version of EN installed.

- Can not use "wine control" etc to remove installed EN application.

Will retest with latest devel (Wine 1.3.7). Noticed comment in release note "Better support for installers with assemblies.".

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  • Level 5*
Maybe I am expecting too much from a company I pay money to that has the slogan "Access Anywhere... Evernote works with nearly every computer, phone and mobile device out there.."

I think that they have a legalistic 'out' on Linux, since you can still use the Web to access your notes. After all, it doesn't say "works natively"... :)

~Jeff

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Will retest with latest devel (Wine 1.3.7). Noticed comment in release note "Better support for installers with assemblies.".

Interested to hear your results, I'm on the 1.3.6 branch.

Just finishing switch to devel. Latest package in PPA is still 1.3.6 but I expect that should change soon. Holding off on 1.3.7 test until package released. I just added one week follow-up to my calendar.

Planning to test "winetricks msi2" with 1.3.6 to see if that fixes the remove software problem.

This is of interest but not a high priority to me. EN4's lower footprint and better performance works very well in the VB machine and I use Chrome + Web on my other systems. I am down to 3 applications that do not have either direct or equivalent Linux apps (Evernote, Media Monkey and iTunes) and they are all installed in the VB machine on this system plus a few other Windows environment apps (CCleaner, Process Explorer, etc.).

I also tested Nevernote a while back but decided to stick with the Evernote "native" UI. I got root-kitted on my only remaining Windows system a while back and decided to go this route instead of re-installing Vista or upgrading to Win7.

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1.3.6 plus msi2 did not fix the remove software problem.

As this was the only usage of Wine on this system I am going to remove everything, including ~/.wine and do a clean retest when the 1.3.7 package is available.

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Wine 1.3.7 fixed the installer problems without MSI2. As before:

- installed on Ubuntu 10.04 from wine PPA repository.

- tested up to but not past Evernote login.

Install 4.0.2.3126 and auto-upgrade to 3164.

owyn@owyn-ub1004:/media/Data/Data/Applications/Win XP SP3/Installed/Evernote$ wine Evernote_4.0.2.3126.exe 
fixme:storage:create_storagefile Storage share mode not implemented.
fixme:advapi:LookupAccountNameW (null) L"owyn" (nil) 0x33f150 (nil) 0x33f154 0x33f148 - stub
fixme:advapi:LookupAccountNameW (null) L"owyn" 0x155b20 0x33f150 0x140600 0x33f154 0x33f148 - stub
fixme:sxs:cache_QueryAssemblyInfo 0x192730, 0x00000001, L"Microsoft.VC90.CRT, version=9.0.30729.4148, publicKeyToken=1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b, processorArchitecture=x86", 0x33fa00
fixme:sxs:cache_QueryAssemblyInfo 0x192730, 0x00000001, L"policy.9.0.Microsoft.VC90.CRT, version=9.0.30729.4148, publicKeyToken=1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b, processorArchitecture=x86", 0x33fa00
err:msi:ACTION_CallDllFunction Custom action (L"C:\\users\\owyn\\Temp\\msi32de.tmp":L"ExitEvernoteApplications") caused a page fault: c0000005
fixme:msi:msi_unimplemented_action_stub MsiUnpublishAssemblies -> 2 ignored L"MsiAssembly" table values
fixme:msi:ITERATE_CreateShortcuts poorly handled shortcut format, advertised shortcut
owyn@owyn-ub1004:/media/Data/Data/Applications/Win XP SP3/Installed/Evernote$ fixme:msg:ChangeWindowMessageFilter 4a 00000001
fixme:msg:ChangeWindowMessageFilter c03f 00000001
fixme:msg:ChangeWindowMessageFilter c04e 00000001
fixme:msg:ChangeWindowMessageFilter c050 00000001
fixme:msg:ChangeWindowMessageFilter c04f 00000001
err:ole:CoGetClassObject class {6bf52a52-394a-11d3-b153-00c04f79faa6} not registered
err:ole:CoGetClassObject no class object {6bf52a52-394a-11d3-b153-00c04f79faa6} could be created for context 0x1
fixme:exec:SHELL_execute flags ignored: 0x00004100
fixme:storage:create_storagefile Storage share mode not implemented.
fixme:advapi:LookupAccountNameW (null) L"owyn" (nil) 0x33f150 (nil) 0x33f154 0x33f148 - stub
fixme:advapi:LookupAccountNameW (null) L"owyn" 0x13b500 0x33f150 0x155bc8 0x33f154 0x33f148 - stub
fixme:sxs:cache_QueryAssemblyInfo 0x183018, 0x00000001, L"Microsoft.VC90.CRT, version=9.0.30729.4148, publicKeyToken=1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b, processorArchitecture=x86", 0x33f9b0
fixme:sxs:cache_QueryAssemblyInfo 0x183018, 0x00000001, L"policy.9.0.Microsoft.VC90.CRT, version=9.0.30729.4148, publicKeyToken=1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b, processorArchitecture=x86", 0x33f9b0
err:msi:ACTION_CallDllFunction Custom action (L"C:\\users\\owyn\\Temp\\msi3ca6.tmp":L"ExitEvernoteApplications") caused a page fault: c0000005
fixme:msi:msi_unimplemented_action_stub MsiUnpublishAssemblies -> 2 ignored L"MsiAssembly" table values
fixme:msi:ITERATE_CreateShortcuts poorly handled shortcut format, advertised shortcut
fixme:msg:ChangeWindowMessageFilter 4a 00000001
fixme:msg:ChangeWindowMessageFilter c03f 00000001
fixme:msg:ChangeWindowMessageFilter c04e 00000001
fixme:msg:ChangeWindowMessageFilter c050 00000001
fixme:msg:ChangeWindowMessageFilter c04f 00000001
err:ole:CoGetClassObject class {6bf52a52-394a-11d3-b153-00c04f79faa6} not registered
err:ole:CoGetClassObject no class object {6bf52a52-394a-11d3-b153-00c04f79faa6} could be created for context 0x1
fixme:richedit:ME_HandleMessage EM_SETMARGINS: stub

Install stand-alone 3274 (which includes remove of 3164).

owyn@owyn-ub1004:/media/Data/Data/Applications/Win XP SP3/Installed/Evernote$ wine Evernote_4.1.0.3274.exe 
fixme:exec:SHELL_execute flags ignored: 0x00000100
fixme:storage:create_storagefile Storage share mode not implemented.
fixme:advapi:LookupAccountNameW (null) L"owyn" (nil) 0x33e900 (nil) 0x33e904 0x33e8f8 - stub
fixme:advapi:LookupAccountNameW (null) L"owyn" 0x13b420 0x33e900 0x155ae8 0x33e904 0x33e8f8 - stub
fixme:sxs:cache_QueryAssemblyInfo 0x1928f0, 0x00000001, L"Microsoft.VC90.CRT, version=9.0.30729.4148, publicKeyToken=1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b, processorArchitecture=x86", 0x33f1b0
fixme:sxs:cache_QueryAssemblyInfo 0x1928f0, 0x00000001, L"policy.9.0.Microsoft.VC90.CRT, version=9.0.30729.4148, publicKeyToken=1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b, processorArchitecture=x86", 0x33f1b0
fixme:msi:ControlEvent_SpawnWaitDialog Doing Nothing
err:msi:ACTION_CallDllFunction Custom action (L"C:\\users\\owyn\\Temp\\msi7b28.tmp":L"ExitEvernoteApplications") caused a page fault: c0000005
fixme:msi:msi_unimplemented_action_stub MsiUnpublishAssemblies -> 2 ignored L"MsiAssembly" table values
fixme:storage:create_storagefile Storage share mode not implemented.
fixme:advapi:LookupAccountNameW (null) L"owyn" (nil) 0x33f150 (nil) 0x33f154 0x33f148 - stub
fixme:advapi:LookupAccountNameW (null) L"owyn" 0x15b140 0x33f150 0x15b788 0x33f154 0x33f148 - stub
fixme:msi:ControlEvent_SpawnWaitDialog Doing Nothing
err:msi:ACTION_CallDllFunction Custom action (L"C:\\users\\owyn\\Temp\\msia338.tmp":L"ExitEvernoteApplications") caused a page fault: c0000005
fixme:msi:ITERATE_CreateShortcuts poorly handled shortcut format, advertised shortcut
owyn@owyn-ub1004:/media/Data/Data/Applications/Win XP SP3/Installed/Evernote$ fixme:msg:ChangeWindowMessageFilter 4a 00000001
fixme:msg:ChangeWindowMessageFilter c03f 00000001
fixme:msg:ChangeWindowMessageFilter c04e 00000001
fixme:msg:ChangeWindowMessageFilter c050 00000001
fixme:msg:ChangeWindowMessageFilter c04f 00000001
err:ole:CoGetClassObject class {6bf52a52-394a-11d3-b153-00c04f79faa6} not registered
err:ole:CoGetClassObject no class object {6bf52a52-394a-11d3-b153-00c04f79faa6} could be created for context 0x1
fixme:richedit:ME_HandleMessage EM_SETMARGINS: stub

owyn@owyn-ub1004:/media/Data/Data/Applications/Win XP SP3/Installed/Evernote$

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Installed auto-update to Wine 1.3.8 and copied existing EN4.1 database(user.exb) to ~/.wine. Logged in under Wine and ran quick tests of UI.

Comparison test of EN4.1 under Wine and Virtual Box XP SP3 showed a few cosmetic differences due to system fonts plus a definite perfomance degradation under Wine. In general searchs ran about 3-5 times slower under Wine than in the VB machine.

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I tried with just upgrading to wine 1.3.8 but I still got the same error:

The Windows Installer Service could not be accessed. This can occur if you are running Windows in safe mode, or if the Windows Installer is not correctly installed. Contact your support personnel for assistance.

So I just nixed my .wine directory, installed msi2, tried to install .net2 and .net3 but I'm not clear whether they were completely successful (in particular .net3 got itself into a loop I had to ^C out of...).

This seemed to work and Evernote is working again! Performance still doesn't seem to great, but hey...

Note I am running:

- 2.6.35-23-generic kernel

- Ubuntu 10.10

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EN4 does not require any .NET components.

As I noted before, it worked on my system with a clean install on Wine 1.3.7 without MSI2.

My prior tests were just of the installers so I did not go past EN4 login.

I decided to do a fuller test with the Wine 1.3.8 release.

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Tried to use latest EN4 under Wine to actually accomplish some work. Gave up due to very sluggish response and other problems as noted below.

Configuration:

EN 4.1.0.3381

Wine 1.3.8

Ubuntu 10.04

Works:

Auto update to 3381 worked without a problem.

Login & Sync.

Evernote WIN/WINE tray icon established. Right click drops down menu. Menu may be in unusual location. Menu items work, including screen clip, but hot keys may fail due to conflict with Ubuntu global hotkey settings.

Fails:

No list context menu in List Mode. Works in XP. Context menu available in Mixed and Thumbnail modes, however, menu very slow to present.

EN crashes if Debug View started in Wine. Was trying to get accurate search timings from debug log.

Copy and paste from Chrome 8 loses formatting and mangles UTF-8 characters, e.g. french e acute.

Hotkeys. Too many conflicts, eg. Ctrl+Alt+T, and the hotkeys can not be modified in EN4 options.

Cosmetic:

Left panel items separated by horizontal lines under Wine. No lines in XP.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Just finished upgrading to Oracle Virtual Box 4.0 which has just hit the Ubuntu Lucid(10.04) contrib repository. This is a fantastic upgrade and recommended for anyone using a Linux host for a Windows guest VM. Some specific improvements I have noticed include:

- Substantially reduced CPU load on host

- USB devices which were not previously captured now work without a problem, eg. Sansa Clip 2G in MSC mode. Will be interesting to see if my previous iPod Touch upgrade problems have also been fixed. I got iOS 4.2 installed but it was a tad complicated.

- Concurrent audio between VMs and host now works without a glitch

- EN4 works as before, just faster.

I also re-tested EN4 with recently upgraded Wine 1.3.10. Basically same as before, works with same problems as previously noted. Biggest issue continues to be slow response, which is even more obvious when compared to VirtualBox4 host.

One more cosmetic problem.

In List mode clicking the column headers works to resort the note list, but, the header does not update to show the selected sort order, i.e no up or down diamond appended to column title.

Just installed Fedora Core on an old Dell notebook and plan to give Wine+EN4 a test there. Don't expect any substantial differences but worth a try.

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PS: One big advantage of EN4+Wine is screen clipping from Linux directly to Evernote without using intermediate capture.

Procedure as follows:

-Start EN4 from Wine Menu, desktop icon, etc.

-Right click EN4 elephant icon from Wine tray (top right in my Ubuntu Gnome install)

-Select Clip Screenshot from context menu. Hot key does not seem to work and you may have to look around for the context menu.

-Select clip region as in Windows

and voila, clip from arbritary Linux screen region has been added to EN.

Of course, the Wine EN has to be synced to propagate the clip to the web and other clients.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The latest Evernote 4 seems to run better under Wine than it used to, but still rather slow.

Actually, the biggest problem I have is that Evernote 4 under VirtualBox or Wine will not keep clipboard formatting when pasting in stuff (such as webpages). To clarify under VirtualBox, evernote of course will keep formatting when copied from another Windows application, but not from a linux one.

Evernote 3 under Wine does keep clipboard formatting. This is the biggest thing that keeps me from upgrading to version 4 and why I'm still using version 3.

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Hmmm. I use native clippers for web pages.

e.g. I have FF & Chrome installed in Linux and IE8 & Chrome in the Windows VM. Each browser instance has it's latest stable browser clipper installed.

I usually clip to the web and then when required I sync the EN4 windows client. Works for me as most of my browsing is done from Chrome in Linux. I then use a Saved Search (Created since yesterday) in EN4 Win to clean up the clips.

I just tested pasting from a Linux app to both VM & Wine EN4 and confirm that it results in paste as text.

One workaround is open a new note in the EN web app in a Linux browser and paste to that area. That worked fine in my test with Chrome8 on Ubuntu.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Reran tests using Wine 1.3.11.

EN 4.2.1.3716 (Public) already installed. No obvious changes. Check for updates showed no new public releases.

Downloaded latest pre-release. EN 4.2.2.3809. Previous recent pre-releases would not install properly. Not specifically a Wine problem as I saw the same sort of problems in Win XP as well.

Ran 3809 installer. No problems. Checked "update to pre-release when available" to set up for future auto-update test.

Re-ran previous problem tests. No obvious change. Biggest problem is still that EN4+Wine is much to slow for production use. Continue to recommend Virtual Box or Chrome for Linux.

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Side note. Latest VirtualBox 4.0.2 frequently loses keyboard integration in VM, ie. no keyboard response in VM. I am seeing this at least once a day in XP VM. Problem also seen previously in VB3.2, but frequency seems to have increased.

Workaround is to minimize and restore VM window in host.

Problem has been reported to VirtualBox.org.

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Updated to Wine 1.3.13 from repository.

Initial update resulted in Evernote and Evernote installer failing to start.

Killed all Wine and Evernote processes, removed Wine1.3.13 and re-installed, re-ran 3809 installer. Left ~/.wine intact.

Worked now, but had to re-login to get EN4 going.

Results seem much the same as 1.3.11 test. To recap:

- Slow, slow, slow

- Right-click context menus are either slow or fail to appear.

- Hot keys (e.g. Ctrl-Alt-T) conflict with Ubuntu Gnome globals

- Left panel items separated by horizontal lines under Wine. No lines in XP.

- Paste as text/corrupted special characters from Linux apps (this also occurs in VirtualBox VM)

- Tray icon context menu shows up in unpredictable locations

- Left click of column header changes sort order but does not show sorted icon(up/down diamond)

- DebugView crashes Evernote

There are a lot of things which work just fine, but, for my purposes the VirtualBox VM approach is still the preferred way to go.

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  • Level 5*

For the Linux users who may not know about this, there's an open source Linux Evernote client now available -- NeverNote -- that was just written up in a Lifehacker post: http://lifehacker.com/#!5762376/nevernote-is-an-open-source-evernote-client-designed-for-linux-no-wine-required. According to the story, it's a Java app, and therefore can also work for Windows and Mac OS users as well (I haven't verified that).

NeverNote home page: http://nevernote.sourceforge.net/index.htm

SourceForge page: http://sourceforge.net/projects/nevernote/

Congratulations to forum member baumgarr, the NeverNote developer (and anyone else involved)!

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I haven't run the latest under Wine, but I can compare it running under Windows with Evernote's native Windows client.

I'll be honest & tell you the drawbacks of NeverNote first.

- It's beta.

- Compared with Evernote under Windows, it consumes more CPU, disk, & memory.

- It is slower.

- It can't do ink notes. To be fair, any non-Windows platform can't do ink notes but the fact that NeverNote can't do them is always the first thing mentioned.

- It doesn't take notes from web cam pictures.

- It doesn't have an integrated screen clipper (although there are ways to setup similar functionality).

- It doesn't have an integrated web clipper (although if you use Evernote's web clipper it can sync and pull your notes down).

- Everybody complains that it is ugly (yet nobody has volunteered to create a better theme :-)).

The benefits (compared with Windows)

- The biggest thing I like is that I can hide some notebooks. I hide my personal notebooks at work, and my work notebooks at home. I also close older notebooks that I seldom use so I don't need to hunt through them unless I need them.

- It can index RTF, ODF, RTF, & MS Office documents as well as PDF documents. I've never done an in-depth analysis on how well it does, but it seems to work most of the time.

- You can encrypt the database, but under Linux this isn't a big deal since you can encrypt your entire home directory.

- You don't need an Evernote account to use it (although I'd highly recommend it since this is beta software).

- Shared notebooks are not in a separate tab, but are integrated along with your normal notebooks. It gets a little odd because of some of the restrictions but it allows you to search shared & non-shared notebooks at the same time.

- You can copy an existing note (although the current version has a bug with this that is fixed in the next release).

- You can do a selective sync and only pull down notes based upon their tag or notebook. This is rather new and it is useful if you have a work PC that you don't want to keep personal information on or if you are constrained on disk space.

There are a few other minor things, but those are probably the biggest differences. I've heard that under Wine some features of Evernote don't work but I don't know what those features are. I've also heard that Evernote is slow under Wine, but I don't have any first hand experience with how Evernote under Wine compares speed wise with NeverNote.

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  • Level 5*

Hi baumgarr,

I was tempted to try running it on Windows, but them I stopped. Has it been tried running in parallel with Evernote? I suppose that you use separate databases, so it's probably safe, except for the possibility of getting note conflicts.

thanks for your work -- very noble.

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Thanks. Everything is separate. I run multiple NeverNote databases against the same Evernote account and run Evernote's client at the same time on the same machine. I've never had an issue. You run the same risk of getting conflicting notes as if you edited the same note on different machines.

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The benefits (compared with Windows)

- The biggest thing I like is that I can hide some notebooks. I hide my personal notebooks at work, and my work notebooks at home. I also close older notebooks that I seldom use so I don't need to hunt through them unless I need them.

- It can index RTF, ODF, RTF, & MS Office documents as well as PDF documents. I've never done an in-depth analysis on how well it does, but it seems to work most of the time.

- You can encrypt the database, but under Linux this isn't a big deal since you can encrypt your entire home directory.

- You don't need an Evernote account to use it (although I'd highly recommend it since this is beta software).

- Shared notebooks are not in a separate tab, but are integrated along with your normal notebooks. It gets a little odd because of some of the restrictions but it allows you to search shared & non-shared notebooks at the same time.

- You can copy an existing note (although the current version has a bug with this that is fixed in the next release).

- You can do a selective sync and only pull down notes based upon their tag or notebook. This is rather new and it is useful if you have a work PC that you don't want to keep personal information on or if you are constrained on disk space.

Sounds like it has some nice features. I'll check it out. I can confirm that the Evernote client on Linux under Wine does run a lot slower than the Windows client running natively. It has some minor quirks. I don't use it as my primary interface for Evernote though so it doesn't bother me to much. It's nice to be able to access it on Linux when I need to; however, the new Web client is looking very nice and I may just end up using that when I need to use Evernote on Linux.

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  • Level 5*

Color me impressed. In a quick (and incomplete) test, everything seemed in order. Saved searches were a little slow to finish, and PDFs were slow to display. But I liked the zoom feature, and everything else I tried seemed to be in order.

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  • 2 weeks later...

These days there are many instances when any random Windows program will work just great under Wine (Linux).

Evernote 4 (latest build) works appallingly bad though:

* It's very slow (as if you tried to run it on a 286 computer - for lack of a better metaphor)

* Serious window redraw issues; also, most of the interface elements look off

One would have expected EN to work better under Wine after dropping .NET.

Do you expect these issues to improve with new versions?

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We exercise the operating system in more ways than your average app due to things like: networking, database IO, embedded HTML editing, etc. Inefficient emulation of any one of the relevant frameworks could have a disproportionate impact on performance. (E.g. if a single one of the low-level IO calls made by SQLite is 10x slower on Wine, that could account for a massive performance hit for the overall application.)

While we're happy if Wine happens to work with Evernote, we do not support or test this configuration.

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Thanks for your reply. Actually it was kind of obvious, so sorry for wasting your time. Perhaps I was just trying to nudge you into the direction of better support for Linux (with or without Wine).

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This is definitively a shame.

I heard about evernote. Tried it on work's windows PC. Hey cool!

And my android phone, so far so good.

Then i tried running it on linux, and oh the disaster ! :?

Sorry to say it, but a lack of a native linux client, or at least a working windows one though wine, evernote is kind of useless to me... Ink notes where something I meant to use....

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This is definitively a shame.

I heard about evernote. Tried it on work's windows PC. Hey cool!

And my android phone, so far so good.

Then i tried running it on linux, and oh the disaster ! :?

Sorry to say it, but a lack of a native linux client, or at least a working windows one though wine, evernote is kind of useless to me... Ink notes where something I meant to use....

I actually use VMware Workstation (Player - free - would probably work just as well, and so would VirtualBox probably) with a Windows XP guest and it's almost perfect (but can still feel a bit clumsy at times).

I've tried NeverNote but I didn't find it very reliable. I'm a heavy user (many notes, attachments) and it couldn't even finish the initial sync (crashing, weird behavior etc.).

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  • Level 5*
I've tried NeverNote but I didn't find it very reliable. I'm a heavy user (many notes, attachments) and it couldn't even finish the initial sync (crashing, weird behavior etc.).

When you found problems, did you report them to baumgarr (the Nevernote developer)?

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Nervernote lacks the few features that make evernote nice. (Screen capture, ink notes....)

It bring almost noting. Might as well use the web client.

I though about virtual box, but bye bye os integration there right ? (Didn't had time to actually try, what's more I don't have a windows VM ready.)

I might give a try to free evernote, but no way i'm going premium until I can have a fully featured evernote at home.

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I use Virtual Box on Ubuntu 10.04 host with a Windows XP guest VM. As andrei said there are a few clunky items, e.g. paste as text from a linux app, but overall very usable.

I have been tracking Evernote 4 with Wine devel releases and Virtual Box stable releases for some time.

See here for more info.

In general my primary interaction with Evernote is clips from Chrome plus later cleanup in the Windows app via the guest VM.

I also agree about the Nevernote comments. It is a good native app but I would rather have the full EN4 windows client.

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I don't want to get into a NeverNote vs Evernote comparison since I'm well aware of the missing features & problems with NeverNote, but a screen clipper is always asked for and there is a way to get one. The easiest thing to do is to use something like Shutter which has the option to save any screen shots to a folder. Then, setup NeverNote to auto-import that folder. I'm not a big screen clipper user but the last time I tried using this method it accomplished everything I needed. I didn't even need NeverNote to be running. I had setup the folder to auto-delete so it simply picked them up the next time it started. You could also do this with Evernote if you don't like their clipper (a lot of people seem to be religious about screen clippers).

In the last few releases you can view ink notes, but you cannot edit them. I'd add editing of ink notes but there is no open API or published file format for me to use. This is the same restriction as other non-Windows Evernote clients. Even if Evernote did produce a native Linux client I doubt it would have this feature since Mac, iPad/iPhone/iTouch, Android, BlackBerry, or Palm devices don't have the ability to edit ink notes either.

If you do get an error using NeverNote and don't mind tinkering around a bit to help debug it then please feel free to submit a report to me over at SourceForge or PM me here. If I don't know about the bug I'll probably never fix it.

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Actually everything works perfect for me with VMware Workstation (including copy/paste etc.). The only remaining issues are likely psychological (that I can't fully use it like a native app, that I have to remember to suspend the VM before shutting down etc.). So I don't think I'd ever go back to another native 3rd party app like NeverNote.

I was hoping though that EN could just put a little time into ironing out the issues preventing a great experience under Wine.

In my experience, this would likely improve the experience for Windows users as well (as the bottlenecks are likely to be issues even under Windows albeit less noticeable).

I wouldn't want EN to commit to having everything work perfectly under Wine for each future version, which may add more complexity to their process but just a little preoccupation on their part regarding this would probably suffice.

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If you do get an error using NeverNote and don't mind tinkering around a bit to help debug it then please feel free to submit a report to me over at SourceForge or PM me here. If I don't know about the bug I'll probably never fix it.

I think I've tried to use Nevernote twice in WIndows 7 (tried it once, tried it several months later) and I also had the very large database size, program does not finish the sync, database is corrupted problem. Pretty much gave up on it at this point. If I recall correctly, the program didn't give an error message and simply failed to open again after the database was corrupted.

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There was a bug that was fixed in the last version that I think may help this problem. It was caused by an incomplete sync not having a parent tag so it went into a loop trying to find a tag that didn't exist when it started. The tags may not be in the correct hierarchy, but it should at least start. If you modify the nevernote.bat to not spawn a separate window and run it from a terminal, you might see more information on the error when you do the initial sync.

Thanks.

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Re-tested with Wine 1.3.15 and Evernote 4.2.2.3900.

No obvious changes from prior tests with one exception.

Used the following as test text in Linux copy buffer.

Édith Piaf (French pronunciation: [eˈdit pjaf], [PEE-ahf, pee-AHF] 19 December 1915 – 11 October 1963), born Édith Giovanna Gassion, was a French singer and cultural icon who became universally regarded as France's greatest popular singer.[1] Her singing reflected her life, with her specialty being ballads. Among her songs are "La Vie en rose" (1946), "Non, je ne regrette rien" (1960), "Hymne à l'amour" (1949), "Milord" (1959), "La Foule" (1957), "l'Accordéoniste" (1955), and "Padam... Padam..." (1951).

Paste into new note in EN via VirtualBox VM works fine.

Paste into new note in EN via Wine has corrupted characters and goes into infinite loop of error dialogs about invalid characters in title.

Had to "kill -SIGKILL" all the evernote.exe processes.

i.e. paste from linux app now works properly in VM.

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Just noticed that paste from a Linux app into VB4.0.4 EN4 client is still paste-as-text.

e.g. Copy some text from an OO doc with e.g. bolding, etc. of text. The styling is lost when pasted to a new note in client, but, is still present when pasted to a new note in Linux Chrome web client.

Other user reported that the problem did not exist using the VMWare client. Looking into whether I can safely use VirtualBox and the free VMWare player on same host system to confirm that this is so.

So, my prior comment was incorrect. Just a worse case variant on pasting text with diacriticals into Wine EN. If the diacriticals are near the start of the pasted text then the automatic title generated by EN4 can contain invalid characters and cause the infinite error dialog loop.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Ran into a VirtualBox/Evernote gotcha.

Evernote can not import a network attached folder.

VirtualBox implements guest Shared folders (ie. host folders) as network folders.

Also drag & drop from e.g. Nautilus does not work. Explicit copy and paste results in pasting the text of the Linux(host) path to the file.

Bah. Sigh.

Oh well. Drag & drop via Windows Explorer in guest VM does work.

Update: Tested on Wine EN

-Drag & Drop from Nautilus to Wine EN works.

-Import folder on Wine Z: drive (host file system) can be added but later fails. No files are imported and Wine Evernote.exe process goes into cpu bound loop.

Update2:

Tools->Import Folder->Remove locks up EN Wine. Now I have to find where that setting is stored.

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Here's my report on the current status for evernote for Windows version: 4.2.3.2.

I'm running Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit.

--Virtualbox approach--

Virtualbox 4.0.4 with Windows XP as the guest OS

Works pretty decently and fast. In rdesktop seamless mode it's almost indistinguishable from running in Windows. One big problem: it can't accept formatting from the guest copy+paste. This may be a limitation of virtualbox's guest additions, but it's a fairly important feature. Also, the systray icon won't work in seamless mode, or integrate into the gnome system tray in regular mode.

--Wine approach--

Wine version 1.3.17

Works reasonably well. Appearance is similar to in virtualbox, although the note previews are perhaps not as high quality. It's also pretty slow, although I think it's better than it was earlier. Copy+paste doesn't keep formatting. This is *not* a limitation of Wine, because the clipboard works properly to keep formatting for some other applications (e.g. MS Word), so I think it must be an issue with how virtualbox requests or processes clipboard data. Systray icon works.

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@travisp

Your results are consistent with my own.

I decided against VirtualBox seamless mode in favor of running the guest VM on it's own desktop with maximized guest VM window. I lose a little of the screen but on a 24" 1920x1068 display that does not make much of a difference.

I also decided a while back to give up on a clean paste from Linux apps to either VirtualBox or Wine EN. I instead paste to Web EN. Currently using FF4 with new EN Web interface. Previously using Chrome but recent problems with Chrome clipper, plus desire to give FF4 a full workout, has pushed me to FF.

The biggest problems I have with Wine EN are:

- Performance

- Can not handle paste of text with diacriticals

- Things break, e.g. recent problem with import folders

The biggest problems I have with VirtualBox EN are:

- Paste as text from Linux apps.

- Very restrictive integration wth host file system

- Frequent loss of keyboard in guest. Minimizing and restoring guest window restores the keyboard.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Whilst it is true that EN runs under wine ... I wouldn't use the adjective "happily" when using it on a netbook.

Slow-to-the-point of being unuseable. The same is true of NeverNote.

The only acceptable wine-related performance I've seen is by using an old 2.x copy of the portable version of EN (it was meant to run of usb drives .. I liked it a lot, but it doesn't support nested notebooks .....)

Alternative for linux users? http://remus-software.org/

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... The same is true of NeverNote.

I don't know if it helps much, but the 0.99 release I pushed out yesterday should have some performance improvements. For me, the improvements when switching notebooks & tags was very noticeable over earlier versions. In addition, you can either not synchronize some notebooks or you can close them. Both should help performance some.

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  • 1 month later...

First of all, I think the Nevernote initiative is fantastic, and such be applauded. It is an open-source clone of an Evernote client, for Linux. I think this will grow into something awesome. it might be all you need. For me though, right now, it isn't complete enough. It will get there, I'm sure, and I will keep checking back and seeing where they have progressed to. I am confident that one day I will migrate to it.

In the meanwhile I had to find a different way of getting EN onto Ubuntu. With the recent overhaul on the EN web interface I can nearly do without a client, but not quite.

In putting EN onto Ubuntu I wanted a way that I knew would work, and that didn't require me to go and learn something new. I like learning new things, don't get me wrong, but I didn't have time (nor the personal bandwidth) to be taking on something new right now (like the well-known Wine windows emulator). Impatience won out over education. So I resorted to using a technique/technology that I was familiar with. I've used VirtualBox in the past, so I installed VirtualBox through the Ubuntu Software Centre.

VirtualBox is a free, open-source means of creating virtual computers. You can run VirtualBox on Windows, Linux & Mac. Once you have it installed and create a virtual computer you can load and run a guest OS in a window on your existing physical machine as though it were a separate computer. First off - you need a fairly beefy PC and about a gig of RAM. You can have multiple virtual computers running at once, if your PC has the power. They can be isolated or networked together through a virtual network.

I created a virtual computer, installed Windows XP in it, installed EN for windows in that and hey presto.

[attachment=0]EN in Windows XP VBox.png[/attachment]

If you install the VirtualBox GuestAdditions in the Guest OS it can share folders with the host OS for easy file transfer, and has tighter integration to the graphics of your host PC. You can then size the guest window to any size and the contents scale accordingly, and you can run the guest in a true full screen mode. As Ubuntu gives you four workspaces by default you can have one dedicated to Windows/EN.

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After a week of Evernote on linux, I find that I use the ENScript.exe with wine to add many new notes from the command line (both scripted and cating files into it). With the only big drawbacks that it doesn't handle html parsing for some reason when creating notes, and the only output for a query is xml (no plain text). I don't know if Evernote plans on adding to ENScript, but it can be very powerful if it had a few more options.

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The one downside is you need to have a copy of Windows.

Yes, you do need a copy of windows. But I would guess that most people moving to Linux are coming from the Windows world, they should be able to use the Windows that was supplied with the PC they are now putting Linux onto.

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... The same is true of NeverNote.

I don't know if it helps much, but the 0.99 release I pushed out yesterday should have some performance improvements. For me, the improvements when switching notebooks & tags was very noticeable over earlier versions. In addition, you can either not synchronize some notebooks or you can close them. Both should help performance some.

Any chance you could release a nevernote server version for Linux? I would be happy if I could move all my ever ore notes over to my Linux NAS server.

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Any chance you could release a nevernote server version for Linux? I would be happy if I could move all my ever ore notes over to my Linux NAS server.

I guess I'm not sure what you're asking for.

If you want to move the location of your db to another drive, then you can either setup a symbolic link for ~/.nevernote/db to some other location, or use the NN_HOME startup parameter. If you move it to a shared location I think you could use multiple PCs with multiple NeverNote accounts to share the same database, but only one can be active at a time since it locks the database when it is running.

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Any chance you could release a nevernote server version for Linux? I would be happy if I could move all my ever ore notes over to my Linux NAS server.

I guess I'm not sure what you're asking for.

Hi,

I'm interested in running my own Nevernote Linux server with all my notes. I know this is not what nevernote does currently, that's why I asked if you ever plan to release a holistic product rather than "just" a client (don't get me wrong with "just").

I know that the added value of Evernote kicks in when the notes reach their servers, but that's just software in the end, isnt it?

I love Evernote, it's just that I worry about my personal information. It worries me that Evernote state "don't put into Evernote what you wouldn't put in your email"... A really need a reliable brain into which I can toss everything that occurs in my life.

Thanks

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Actually, I've been thinking about something along those lines for a few months. The idea would be to have Evernote synchronized notebooks & locally synchronized notebooks that never reach the cloud, but I don't know if I'll ever implement it since it would be a lot of work for a very small number of users. Even if I decided to work on something, it would probably be at least year before anything would be stable enough to beta test.

If I do, however, I'll try to remember to ping you so you can test. :-)

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  • 2 months later...
That needs to change.... It's the one thing preventing me from going premium.

Probably not going to happen:

viewtopic.php?f=30&t=15705#p65878

IIRC, Owyn uses EN 4 successfully under wine & also uses the web client.

Or, you could take a look at Nevernote, the app Dave talks about in the post I linked above. Many people seem to be happy with it.

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Last I try evernote thought wine, it was laggy to the point of being unusable...

Nevernote 's not bad, but lacks some features. And it's evernote's job to provide some way to run evernote on linux. Nevernote existence don't excuse the laziness from evernote. At least test evernote against wine, and make sure to work even if it means patching wine or evernote.

With ALL the features offered to windows user. Including handwritten notes !

The web client can't even create tables !

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I'm paying evernote for premium, not nervnote's developer.

And your point is...???

You're getting exactly what you paid for, a premium account. No premium user is paying for a client. They are all free. Web, Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, all free. You're paying for the cloud service, ability to add all file types to notes, larger upload limits, larger note sizes, etc.

However, even if the clients were payware, it's still not EN's job to provide a client for every OS on the planet. As metrodon pointed out, they have made a conscious decision to not do a linux client & that's that. (shrug)

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No offence, but you also chose to use a minority operating system with the full knowledge that there is no garuntee that Application/Service X would be available.

To get a little indignant that a company chooses to prioritise development to larger, more popular platforms seems a little silly to me.

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Requesting Linux support is reasonable, everyone is entitled to their own feature requests, thinking that EN is "being lazy" or somehow owes you Linux support because you pay for a premium account is not. Linux owns less than 1% of the desktop market. It probably makes about as much business sense for EN to develop for that market as it does to develop for the Commodore 64.

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  • Level 5*
Requesting Linux support is reasonable, everyone is entitled to their own feature requests, thinking that EN is "being lazy" or somehow owes you Linux support because you pay for a premium account is not. Linux owns less than 1% of the desktop market. It probably makes about as much sense for EN to develop for that market as it does to develop for the Commodore 64.

Now that I'd pay for!

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Well, this forum answered my question... no linux.

I was going to use evernote, but I use linux for all my development, and development is the only time I need to take notes.

Wine might have been an option, but it's really too much trouble.

Until there's a linux version evernote isn't for me. I'll have a quick look at "Nevernote" and see if that's worth my time.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

I wasnt sure where to place this, but I run Evernote on my Ubuntu 11.04 desktop and I have had no problems with it.

if you are interested then here is how to get it to run.

first you must install WINE, go to yout "software centre" put in the search box "wine" the install.

Download the EVERNOTE exe file

After the exe file has been downloaded, Right click on the file and open up properties and go to "permissions"

click to check the box where is states "Allow executing file as a program"

close all the boxes, then right click on the evernote.exe file and then click on "Open with wine windows program loader"

then just follow the install instructions as per normal windows install.

I hope this helps people, although I cannot guarantee it will work for everyone and with every LInux desktop system.

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Have you tried Nevernote? How does it compare?

Regards: colin_e

I looked at it briefly when I was evaluating my Linux + Evernote options.

I decided against it in favor of Evernote in a Windows Virtual Machine.

But, my decision was very easy because I already had the VM available to support two other Windows only applications.

There have been a lot of changes since then (It is now Nixnote 1.0).

Just added it to my Ubuntu 11.10 application test list. I have a old Dell test notebook hanging around (currently Fedora Core 12) that I am planning to rebuld in mid to end of October. I want to give 11.10 a week or two to settle before I do any tests.

You should check baumgarr's posts for more info.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have tried NixNote on Ubuntu 11.11. While the interface is pretty decent I can't get it to synchronize online. I get this error: "It appears as the synchronization thread has died. I recommend checking stopping NeverNote, saving the logs for later viewing, and restarting. Sorry."

[EDIT] I re-indexed the notes, entered my login credentials into the preferences, and restarted NixNote and got it to sync. It works pretty well. I don't know if I can recommend it though, I'd have to spend more time using it.

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I'm sorry, but it isn't going to happen. Right now, I'm playing with the idea of developing a simple client that is specifically for Ubuntu and would be distributed through the software center since there are so many developer resources Ubuntu is putting out that's geared towards producing applications that integrate with their OS. If I was going to do it, then it would progress slowly since I'm a student that's working on his double major and is holding a job. (Computer Science and Business/programming teacher for kids 10 and over - for those who are interested)

I like to fantasize over building the client using Vala or C++ and GTK3 but fantasizing is a far stretch from actually going through with it. If I get something together then I'll post it right away for the attention of everyone. Also to note, NixNote is a client that's available for Linux - which would be something you may be interested in. While I highly respect the developer for putting forth the time and effort into building the client, I feel that something built using Java/Qt is just too resource inefficient and is hard to integrate into the Gnome environment while, at the same time, sporting a snazzy look.

tl;dr: I might do it, but don't quote me on anything. :D

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  • 5 weeks later...

I'm using Evernote at everywhere, home, office, mobile, etc... And It's very useful for me!

But, I have an only request. (Probably, I think many people discussed about this topics before...)

I really want the Evernote client application for linux!

I know, "Web version" and Open Source "Nixnote" are available on linux.

But, these applications are less useful than the Windows version client.

I tried the Windows version on Ubuntu by "Wine", but very slow and heavy!

I tried it on "Virtualbox" as a guest Windows virtual PC application, but it wasn't useful...

(I thought that "copy & paste" from a text editor was much more useful than that. :-( )

So, I look forward to being released the linux version client.

I'm sure that all "Evernote + linux" users have the same dream!

(I posted the same topic on the "Evernote Japanese forum" in Japanese.

I'm sorry if this multi posting messages made you feel annoyed... )

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