In my current quest to find alternatives to the applications I use the most on the OSX side, i’ve gone out and looked for a “Linux equivalent” of the magnificent “ommwriter” that is available for the mac. This no nonsence distraction free writing application, pushes away all distractions on your desktop and leaves you with ” a clean slate “. For Ubuntu there are several alternatives available and the one that was the most to my liking is “Catlooking Writer”. It basically does the same thing the great Ommwriter does, but there are however no soothing ‘clicks’ as you type nor do we have gentle “pling plong” music in the background. But this can be easily fixed by playing music in the background (Catlook writer does not Kill the sound-stack). The upside is that you have several “types” of ‘themes’ to choose from for you to work in. From a handcrafted paper background, a stark grey or beige one to a “black with green letters” terminal window. For some reason I feel like Doogie Howser when using this theme. The reflective screen of my Imac does remind me that I am in fact, NOT Doogie.
Catlooking Writer from Alex Sychev on Vimeo.
Catlook writer is a pretty good ‘impersonation’ of the famous Ommwriter app, written up by its developer in order to “fill a gap” in the Ubuntu / Linux software collection. Unfortunately he/she didn”t go the extra mile to add in the keyboard clicks and sounds. Probably because he/she has a very noisy keyboard and loves to listen to Abba instead of some new are pling-plong. This “lack to go the last mile” is a little tipical of some open source project out there. When the app is “good enough”, developement gets abandoned and thats that. The great part of “free and libre” software is of course that its “free and libre” but the insentive to excell in order to make the app “commercially compatible” is of course .. absent.
But, its “good enough” as the Y-generation types among you might say. So we will take Catlooking Writer ( even though its name is bizarre ) to heart and use it to wrap out our little blogposts for the time being. We’ll just have some soothing music in our mind and rattle the keyboard extra loud for those clickety clack sounds …
You can find Catlooking writer HERE. (Bonus point : Its available for Windows Too !)