How to install Notes on Linux
Notes is a simple, open-source note-taking application for Linux. The app is open-source and focuses on giving users a place to jot down quick thoughts, ideas, etc. The app is text only, and users can not upload multi-media files like they can on other note-taking applications such as Google Keep, Evernote, QOwnNotes, and others. Still, it’s worth checking out for those that need a basic note-taking app on the Linux desktop. Here’s how to install Notes on Linux.
Ubuntu instructions
The Notes app for Ubuntu Linux has support for a lot of recent releases of the operating system, starting at Ubuntu 14.04, going all the way to Ubuntu 17.04. Not having recent updates presents a problem, as the newest releases of Ubuntu are at 18.04 and 19.04 respectively. Thankfully, the 17.04 release of Notes works just fine on modern Ubuntu systems.
To start the installation on Ubuntu, open up a terminal window by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T on the keyboard. Then, once the command-line is open, use the wget downloading tool to grab the 17.04 release of Notes for your Ubuntu PC.
wget https://github.com/nuttyartist/notes/releases/download/v1.0.0/notes_1.0.0_amd64-zesty.deb
With the download complete, use the dpkg command to install the program.
sudo dpkg -i notes_1.0.0_amd64-zesty.deb
Once the dpkg command finishes, some dependency issues will appear. To fix them, follow our guide on how to correct dependency issues on Ubuntu Linux.
Debian instructions
The developer of Notes doesn’t explicitly support Debian, and there isn’t a standalone Debian button on the download page. That said, Ubuntu and Debian are very similar, so the packages should work just fine.
To start the installation of Notes on Debian, open up a terminal window by pressing the keyboard combination Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T. From there, use the wget downloading tool to grab the Notes DEB package.
Note: those on Debian 9, download the Ubuntu 16.04 package linked here, rather than the download command below.
wget https://github.com/nuttyartist/notes/releases/download/v1.0.0/notes_1.0.0_amd64-zesty.deb
Now that the DEB package is done downloading, use the following dpkg command to set up the Notes app on your Debian PC.
sudo dpkg -i notes_1.0.0_amd64-zesty.deb
When the package installation is complete, Debian will run into some dependency errors. These problems can be quickly corrected by following the information in our guide on how to fix dependency issues on Debian Linux.
Arch Linux instructions
As with most third-party applications available on Arch Linux, Notes is distributed on Arch via the AUR. To get Notes working on your Arch PC, start by launching a terminal window. Then, use the Pacman package manager to install Git and Base-devel.
sudo pacman -S git base-devel
After installing the Git and Base-devel are installed on Arch Linux, it’s time to use the AUR to get the latest snapshot of Notes. Using the git clone command below, start the downloading process.
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/notes.git
The snapshot is downloaded to your Arch Linux PC. Next, it’s time to install the Qt5-base package, as it’s a critical build-time dependency. Without it, the Notes app will fail to build correctly. Using the following Pacman command, set up Qt5-base.
sudo pacman -S qt5-base
Following the installation of Qt5-base, move the terminal session into the “notes” directory using the CD command.
cd notes
Inside of the “notes” folder, run the makepkg command to start the building process for Notes. Keep in mind that this is an AUR package and issues can come up. Be sure to check the comments of the Notes AUR page for guidance if you run into trouble.
makepkg -sri
Fedora/OpenSUSE
As of right now, there’s no official RPM package for Fedora Linux or OpenSUSE. So, if you’re using either of these operating systems, you’ll need to follow the AppImage or Snap package instructions.
Snap instructions
The Notes app is in the Snap Store, which means that even if your operating system isn’t listed on the Notes download page, it’s possible to run the app, so long as the Snapd runtime is supported on your Linux OS.
To start the installation for the Snap release of Notes, enable the Snapd runtime by following our guide here. Once Snapd is up and running, open up a terminal window by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T. Then, enter the command below to install the app.
sudo snap install notes
AppImage instructions
There’s an AppImage release of Notes, which means that no matter what distribution you use, the app will run on it. The AppImage format is perfect for those running a Linux distribution that doesn’t have support from the developer and doesn’t have official Snap support.
To get Notes for AppImage, run the commands below.
mkdir -p ~/AppImages cd ~/AppImages wget https://github.com/nuttyartist/notes/releases/download/v1.0.0/notes_1.0.0_amd64.AppImage
sudo chmod +x notes_1.0.0_amd64.AppImage
Finally, run the AppImage version of Notes by running the following command.
./notes_1.0.0_amd64.AppImage
