user
olafthelofty

Tutorials
Title Score
Software reviews
Software Score
blender
"I've been a Blender user for year and it's truly brilliant in every respect however Mint should remove this version. It's a joke and may well put people off using it. Even the screen shot is from the ancient pre-2.8 days. You all have two much better options: Either use the Flatpak version of if like me you don't like the bloat download the Zip from blender.org (or builder.blender.org if you want the bleeding edge stuff). It's runs perfectly straight out of the folder you unzip it to. Been doing this for years with no problem at all. "
1
sticky
"Just about the perfect notes app now and the perfect receptacle for quick temporary notes. I have 1.19 on XFCE 21.3 and it's way better than XFCE notes I was using. Sticky had a standard sized icon rather than the yellow dot with XFCE notes. It's multiple notes any colour with usefult font options including checklist and bullets and a built in backup. Shows/ hides with a click of the icon and doesn't insist on showing notes on startup if it's autostarted. Also no issue with the persistant icon in Plank in this version. Good stuff!"
5
app.getspace.Space
"Great simple flashcard app that appears to do exactly what I want with none of Ankis buggy behaviour except... it appears as a small portrait borderless window in the bottom centre of my screen that I can't move, scale or tile with the very bottom edge disappearing off the edge of the screen. Maybe it's a bug that'll get fixed later. Uninstalled but I'll try later versions. Also it's a flathub version. Even though I have several flathub apps installed this very simple app takes a whole Gb of space. Update: I had to reset my system so tried this again. Same. No way to exit the app. Had to use xkill. Uninstalled again. Update March 14, 2024. Tried again. Now it doesn't even run (or appear to run). Mint XFCE 21.3. Not sure what it was doing. Used Timeshift to go back just in case. Beware!"
1
com.neatdecisions.Detwinner
"Brilliant app, just brilliant - but a warning. It selects duplicates faultlessly and not sure how it discovers "similar files" - that's like some kind of magic and I can't fault that either. When it comes to deleting files using "Smart select" it works every time but... it has a really, really annoying flaw. Three times now I've spent and hour plus manually selecting files only to have it un-select all my choices when I press "delete" and also not delete the files. Not good for the blood pressure. Since the last update was three years ago I'm making a wild guess this might not change. Of course I still appreciate the developers' efforts and I'll still use it but only for exact duplicates and if smart select will cut it. In case the dev reads this - it was probably in th order of 200+ files selected for deletion each time in mainly groups of 2 and 3 and a few groups of more."
2
chromium
"Chrome has the option to turn off keyring login. It's been removed in Chromium. So much for choice."
1
com.jgraph.drawio.desktop
"Great concept. Had high hopes and liked it at first but got tiresome and went back to Inkscape which is a much more mature but heavyweight and complex product for my limited needs and LibreOffice Draw is much too basic. Downsides - It's 2023 and I'm editing a text config file for preferences and styles. Default start up asks if you want a previous file then dumps you in a file window at the home folder (change showStartScreen to "false" in the config file, then use recent files) - a list of recent files would be good instead of the home folder. Though multiple glue positions are good, connector lines can be awkward to place accurately without accidentally generating more nodes. Extra nodes can appear at the end of lines and be difficult to delete to the point where they're just easier to "hide". No format painter. Weird defaults that seem to change unexpectedly - I kept getting arrow heads back when I wanted plain lines No selectable connector with plain ends? Odd glitches and crashes. Layers dialog doesn't rememeber size settings and can only use a corner handle to resize No easy way to view all objects present in one layer except turning all the other layers off. No seperate node tool. No use of the mousewheel on value boxes? This would be useful for line thickness, maybe colour for quick selection? Few more I can't remember. Upsides - Lots of content. Attractive but not entirely intuitive interface. Fairly clean export to SVG means going back to Inkscape isn't too painful. I'll definitely come back and try it again in a year or two."
3
org.kde.digikam
"Version 8.2 Flatpak. December 16, 2023. Finally got it working on a folder of my choice using flatseal as suggested by the other commenter (thanks!). Started tagging faces and then ran in to the opaque interface that put me off last time. Nothing seems to work the way I'd expect. For instance I tag a load of faces. Next I want a list of images with those faces. Tried a few YT videos, online reviews etc. I just got frustration and wasted time. Going back to Pix/ gThumb. So much easier and more productive. I'll do it the old fashioned way or maybe pay the price and upload to Google Photos which actually works the way my brain does. "
2
stellarium
"Brilliant. Always has been. One thing - if you get stuck trying to exit either press F11 to window it or mouse down to the bottom and hover till you find the almost transparent exit icon."
5
gnumeric
"I like lightweight easy to use kit like this and for my use case it's more than enough where I need something in a small window as a kind of scratchpad and use LO for the rest but can't use it for this as for some reason the column and row labels are huge and I can't find a way to change it in the settings so back to LO for eveything which is an OK but not ideal solution."
3
io.github.Bavarder.Bavarder
"It was really fascinating when I first started using it but has deteriorated both in usefulness and cleverness. Usefulness because the answers are being truncated to somewhere between about 70 and 100 characters qnd cleverness because it just seems like it's being hamstrung in it's answers almost to being pointless. Update May 26, 2023 On OA SFT-1 12B Still truncating answers but when asked about this apologizes and says it's working on a fix where before it said it hod no information"
3
io.gitlab.theevilskeleton.Upscaler
"Just produced black images. I'll have another go later in devleopment."
1
xtide
"I like it. I'd like it more if I could make the text a lot bigger. Most of us MOBs are wearing glasses by the time we need tide tables"
4
granule
"Blimey. That's a rabbit hole I didn't need late on a Friday night. Completely opaque. "
2
granule-docs
"OK. I made a mistake with this but there appears t be no way to delete the review"
3
org.kde.kwordquiz
"It works but if you want image question and word answer flashcards adding the images is really, really clunky"
2
kwordquiz
"If you just want simple text it's fine and easy to use. Using images is clunky though - no hotkey or drag and drop. Bit frightening for a few hundred images!"
3
anki
"I read reviews saying it was difficult to use? Not really, it could be more intutive to get started but it suited my purposes for a simple picture and text flashcard system. That is until I went to save the deck and it crashed. Tried restarting etc. Same. Uninstalled. "
1
guvcview
"[Cinammon 21, Guvcview] Works very well with everything I plugged into it, even the Veho microscope which is an achievement. Good set of image options and useful hotkeys. Didn't come up in my software manager search so maybe people are missing it like I did until I stumbled on a web review. Could probably do with a more descriptive name."
5
minitube
"[Cinammon 21, Minitube 3.9.1] Bit pointless really. Can't sign in to Youtube (?!?), Can't filter or sort results, Glitchy, loses access to menu occaisionally. "
1
gthumb
"Cinammon 21, Gthumb 3.12.0 - Nearly perfect now the mousewheel can be configured for zoom. I'd like themes, the left sidebar to be configurable and an option to ask with to close the app as I often close meaning to go back to the browser but those are minor issues compared to the excellent (for me) functionality."
5