Zim Wiki: A Personal Notes Wiki for the Linux Desktop

Zim Wiki aims to bring the concepts of web wikis like Wikipedia to the Linux user's desktop. While there are many pieces of desktop wiki software out there, Zim has quickly become one of my favorites for organizing my notes and thoughts.

The first thing that attracted me to Zim Wiki for taking notes on my Linux desktop was the fact that it supports inline images. There are other great notetaking applications and outliners out there, but I like to be able to insert images from the web, or even scanned-in illustrations into to my notes. Zim Wiki allows me to drag and drop images onto my notes with ease.

As I began to delve deeper into Zim Wiki capabilities, I became even more impressed. Zim allows me to organize my note in sets of hierarchical documents (So I can create a note, and then create another comment or "sub-note" of that one) as well as create tags for each document. The robust search mechanism allows me to find pretty much any note with ease, even if I don't have it organized into any kind of structure. I can also keep multiple sets of notes, called "notebooks" that let me organize even further.

When it comes to actually taking notes, Zim has several features that let me write ideas and thoughts out as quickly as possible. The most important of these features for me is the way Zim allows for the quick creation of lists. There's no need to open up a "lists" or "bullets" toolbar like in some word processors....simply start your line with that asterisk, press Space, and you'll find that the asterisk has been converted to bullet point and that you're ready go. When you press Return to go to the next line, a new bullet point is created for the next item. To leave bullet/list mode, all you have to do is press Return twice. Wait, it gets better! If you start your list with a number or letter instead of an asterisk, Zim will automatically number or letter your list in the correct sequence. This allows for quick, on the fly lists while taking notes with zero hunting and pecking through pesky menus.

Zim also allows for automatic linking. If you type any URL with "http://," then a clickable hyperlink is automatically created. You can also create new note pages on the fly in similar way by simply typing the name of your new page preceded by colon. When you click on the automatically generated link, you'll be taken straight to your new note.

Zim also as an integrated todo list manager, so that you keep your tasks, due dates, and priorities right with your project notes. This feature alone makes Zim stand out among its competitors for serious notetaking, because Zim can become a complete system for managing all of the information related to your projects. With its ability to attach documents and other files to notes, Zim can be your hub for total productivity.

We haven't even gotten into the plethora of keyboard shortcuts for Zim, or Zim's ability to export to HTML with custom stylesheets, or Zim's little extras like word-count and spell-check, but you get the idea. Even though Zim is still beta software, it's remarkably functional and totally stable. All of its data is stored a simple text format, so it's easily searchable, syncable, and future-proof. Zim has become my primary application for taking and storing notes on my Linux desktop, and I highly recommend it to anyone needing take and keep notes on their computer.