this post was submitted on 13 May 2024
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I'm bored and want to practice my Rust skills. I am the creator of open-tv. If you have any idea for a linux desktop app, even if it seems quite complex, I will take it.

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[–] [email protected] 66 points 1 month ago (3 children)

An app that tracks how much time you spend using each app. Locally obviously. I want this information so I can see how much I should donate to each project each quarter.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago

This. This is a hole in the market I think.

Windows used to have a similar hidden feature that my friend used all the time to tracking his work projects, but they removed it some time ago.

This is a good idea. It could even be later expanded to a sort of "digital wellbeing" type use case with time limits or reminders on certain apps, etc...

[–] Para_lyzed 5 points 1 month ago

This is a very interesting concept, and I would also like it. Would this even be possible on Wayland though? I know it should be possible on X11, but I'm unsure if the Wayland isolation would entirely prevent a usage tracking program like this from seeing what the focused window is, or seeing the total time a process has spent in the background (depending on what type of usage is being tracked).

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[–] recklessengagement 31 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Make an app that is a little ASCII potted plant in your terminal and every time you type something it waters the plant and it grows

[–] AnUnusualRelic 34 points 1 month ago (2 children)

When nothing happens for too long, the plant withers and starts losing leaves. For each leaf that falls, a random file is deleted in /sbin.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago

Lol and maybe when the plant blooms you can have sudo back.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

This reminds of a stupid filesystem pet idea I had a while ago. Running as a daemon, it walks through your filesystem and sometimes leaves traces (as files), maybe you'll find it sleeping in your downloads folder every now and then. I thought it was a cute idea, but didnt actually think about implementing it, for obvious reasons, it could go so horribly wrong 😂

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (8 children)

Obsidian 1:1 open source alternative.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The world needs the ability to sync freetube and newpipe. It's the missing link for both Apps, to be usable from home, to out and about

[–] Fredol 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

I agree, but I think something is already in the works, I'll check and probably make something practical to sync the two. It's not really a new app that's needed but a feature integrated into freetube/newpipe

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 month ago (9 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

I would love a text based ActivityPub client focused on meaningful discussions: threaded view, ability to follow threads or branches, highlight posts based on keywords.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

I'd like to see a simple, dependency-free, calculator app, written in Rust, using egui. All other GUI calculator apps I've seen so far are unnecessarily heavy, using bloated toolkits like GTK or Qt.

This would be handy for those run a GTK/Qt-free environment, and/or those who just want a tiny calculator app (optimised for the smallest binary size) without any external dependencies. Preferably even compiled using musl, to remove any glibc dependencies - resulting in a simple, small, portable binary that can run on any distro and doesn't even need to be installed.

Eventually, I would like to see this idea expanded to other apps - such as a simple text editor, a simple image editor, and maybe even a simple and lightweight web browser using Servo.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)

A Linux implementation of Microsoft's Powertoys. Having all those utility features in one app would be great.

[–] Fredol 9 points 1 month ago

Could be a decent idea

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago (1 children)

a 🔥blazingly fast🔥 voxel based open world RPG with soulslike and medroidvania elements

[–] Psythik 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Or maybe a 100% science-based dragon MMO?

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[–] shrugal 14 points 1 month ago (1 children)

An app to manage important config and unit files (fstab, hosts, sysctl, systemd units, ...), and present them as settings menu or editor with auto completion and tooltips. Kinda like how VSCode handles settings, where you can use the GUI or a context-aware text editor.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (3 children)

If you move to OpenSUSE/SUSE you have this via GUI GTK Yast apps. pretty much anything you want to adjust (kernel param, samba, add devices, alter services, etc) is available via GUI

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

GUI app to create/edit/config Samba shares.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (13 children)

Idea 1

I've been looking for a journal/to-do/checklist app that isn't completely thumb chewing stupid. I've yet to find anything as good, flexible and feature complete as what you'd get on PalmOS devices in the early 2000s.

I often use my journal for brainstorming and planning, and basically the best I can do is bulleted lists. I would like a checklist section that can do things like recurring tasks, one-off tasks, daily tasks, and persistent tasks. (Daily tasks: Feed cat. Each day it puts a task with that name in the Tasks window for you to check off. Persistent tasks: Fix the kitchen drawer. This same task remains in the Tasks window until it is checked off, and then stops appearing.) I would also like "take 5 loads of yard debris to the road 0/5" and be able to click to advance it to 1/5. Marry this with a journal app so that you can keep track of progress on stuff like fitness goals or whatever.

And please. Even if it is stored as human-readable markup, please. PLEASE. Let the user edit it in rich text mode. Too many of the "journal" apps out there require you to edit in markdown mode and then you can switch to a "view" mode to see what you've done. Also: Don't be that guy whose app cannot be themed. I don't want some light mode Gnome lookin' bullshit in the middle of my dark mode Cinnamon.

Idea 2

Do a fully local fitness tracker. Apple/Google/Samsung health apps are there primarily to invade your privacy and no one should ever use them. I get that this one is more useful as a mobile app running on a device with MEMS sensors, possibly rigged to a smart watch with biometric sensors, and there is no such thing operational in the GNU/Linux world, but still it might get some use.

Idea 3

You asked for it: Woodworking CAD. This "seems quite complex." The best workflow I can find is in FreeCAD, which is too complex and cumbersome for the job. It's a general purpose engineering CAD system and it's designed to work in abstract absolutes; you can't think in terms of "put a mortise and tenon joint here" you have to think "create a sketch on this face and constrain a rectangle to this edge with these dimensions." And then it doesn't give you things like automatic cut schedules, materials lists, templates. FreeCAD is allegedly extensible, it is allegedly possible to create your own workbench to add more specific features. I even tried. There is no documentation, they didn't write down what they were doing as they were doing it, so...I'm not sure why they bother at this point.

I've been interested in a CAD package that works the way a woodworker works. I've thought about trying to implement this in the Godot game engine, but even then the project strikes me as "monumental."

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[–] Krafting 11 points 1 month ago (3 children)

A music player for Jellyfin (that support SyncPlay)

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[–] danielfgom 11 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Implement a wireless file transfer protocol that works with Apple's Airdrop and Android's Quick Share.

In other words Airdrop for Linux that works with both iOS and Android.

  1. Create a software tool with UI that allows syncing of a phone with Linux to copy over photos, documents, music etc.

Must work with ios and android

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (2 children)

In other words Airdrop for Linux that works with both iOS and Android.

May I introduce you to LocalSend

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (4 children)

1 is great.

for 2: syncthing is exactly this.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Afaik, there is no app to very easily generate GIFs.

  • select images
  • select duration
  • select quality / size
  • generate gif (avif?)

plus:

  • optimized for smartphones

There is switcheroo which makes image conversion easily. It converts to gif as well but only 1 image to 1 gif, not 2 images to 1 gif.

It should be straight forward since image magick contains all neccessary commands for gif creation

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (3 children)

What about a fully featured PDF tool (page deletion, blank page instertion, OCR, edition, conversion, cropping, reorientation, etc...). This is a very missing feature of the linux world, we always have to jump from one software to another. An alternative would be to build the plugins of Okular to allow to make these operations.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Real time midi sequencer for the trs-80 model 100

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[–] warmaster 9 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Do you know what really doesn't exist?

A pure, HTML only, WYSIWYG text editor. Every text editor out there is either XML, JSON or Markdown based. HTML is the most widely adopted standard ever and is the best for storing content long term. People could write CSS themes, you could even add paged media support.

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[–] thedeadwalking4242 8 points 1 month ago

Obsidian clone thats better than logseq

[–] fart_pickle 8 points 1 month ago

Voice assistant that allows to perform common tasks like setting up calendar events, sending emails, opening apps, etc. Bonus points for "connect to server abc" and the assistant would open the terminal and ssh to abc server.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (8 children)

A simple GTK4 + libadwaita sound recorder. I know it's probably a 1 day task but we seem to lack a good modern recorder for my favourite DE.

P. S. I smell another downvoted to oblivion moment for liking GNOME

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

@Fredol a simple, clean-looking GTK4 client for Syncthing.

[–] j4k3 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

A simple intuitive whitelist/blacklist firewall with logging for both inputs and outputs. I shouldn't have to navigate NFT's complexity or write scripts simply to list all the websites I'm willing or unwilling to connect to and their port number. There are silly limitations on all the tools I've tried.

I use a whitelist because my code sucks, and PDF datasheets for hobbyist hardware projects can be super sketchy to download. I have somewhere around 600 entries on my list. It feels like an intentionally obfuscated/overcomplicated issue in OpenWRT and elsewhere from a user's perspective.

I really don't trust local LLM's overall now that they've been shown to have hidden vulnerabilities and would love to have an easier way to monitor an outputs log and sandbox really.

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[–] Cris_Color 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

A gtk app for YouTube and/or twitch intended for media PCs would be neat, with controller/remote support and ui optimization for air mice.

I don't like the ux of kodi very much and trying to get it to play YouTube has been a nightmare 😅 a simple app with a decent user interface would be very welcome

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

I desperately want a simple GUI for setting the sample and bit rates for my audio input device. Mine is a Focusrite 2i2 gen 3, but there should be a fairly universal way to do this in Pipewire.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

A backup and restore utility which allows me to export/restore system settings and installed apps. This would make a reinstalll much less time consuming and allow installs of the same configuration on other computers.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

How about a doc editor, not code editor, not m$ word. Just a simple modern doc editor.

We really don't have a native asciidoc editor, not even one. Unlike other apps which we don't use it frequently that even electron liked apps' performance are acceptable, doc editor should be built in native.

We have something like https://www.appflowy.io/ and https://www.getgrist.com/, but none of them are native.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

A gui app that lets you:

  • symmetrically encrypt and decrypt text and files with AES-256 and without any weird formating that would make it incompatible with openssl.
  • generate (without writing to file) RSA-(2048-4096) keys and asymmetrically encrypt, decrypt, sign and verify text and files.

It should be simple without any advanced options or storing any data or credentials or saving anything without asking the user. For example;

For symmetric text:

  • 3 text boxes, 1 for input, 1 for output, 1 for password, encrypt/decrypt radio, 1 button.

For symmetric file:

  • file picker, 1 password text box, encrypt/decrypt radio, 1 button

For asymmetric generation:

  • 2 text boxes, 1 for priv key, 1 for pub key, 1 button.

For asymmetric text:

  • 3 text boxes, 1 for input, 1 for output, 1 for priv/pub key, encrypt/decrypt/sign/verify radio, 1 button

For asymmetric file:

  • file picker, 1 priv/pub key text box, encrypt/decrypt/sign/verify radio, 1 button
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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Not sure if you can use rust to write browser plugins, but I really want a plugin that when you right click a link, you have to option to open the link with javascript disabled. Chrome or Firefox.

[–] AProfessional 4 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Extensions are in Javascript.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

There's a big lack of a decent RC airplane simulator on Linux. One that you can plug a transmitter in via USB or Bluetooth and go from there. Real flight is the king but it's Windows only.

[–] iopq 5 points 1 month ago

Clozemaster-style spaced repetition app for languages. It reads a sentence with text to speech, you have to fill in the blank with your target language. Translation can be shown if you're stuck, and you can turn on hints when typing. It shows the words based on the SM-2 algorithm or similar

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