There appears to be a mad rush in the beginning of yearly to seek out methods to be extra productive. New Year’s resolutions, the itch to begin the yr off proper, and naturally, an “out with the old, in with the new” perspective all contribute to this. And the same old spherical of suggestions is closely biased in the direction of closed supply and proprietary software program. It would not need to be that means.
Part of being productive is accepting that failure occurs. I’m an enormous proponent of Howard Tayler’s Maxim 70: “Failure is not an option—it is mandatory. The option is whether or not to let failure be the last thing you do.” And there have been many issues I needed to speak about on this sequence that I failed to seek out good solutions for.
So, for the ultimate version of my 19 new (or new-to-you) open supply instruments that can assist you be extra productive in 2019, I current the instruments I needed however did not discover. I’m hopeful that you just, the reader, will have the ability to assist me discover some good options to the gadgets beneath. If you do, please share them within the feedback.
Calendaring
If there’s one factor the open supply world is weak on, it’s calendaring. I’ve tried about as many calendar packages as I’ve tried e-mail packages. There are principally three good choices for shared calendaring: Evolution, the Lightning add-on to Thunderbird, or KOrganizer. All the opposite functions I’ve tried (together with Orage, Osmo, and nearly all the Org mode add-ons) appear to reliably help solely read-only entry to distant calendars. If the shared calendar makes use of both Google Calendar or Microsoft Exchange because the server, the primary three are the one simply configured choices (and even then, further add-ons are sometimes required).
Linux on the within
I really like Chrome OS, with its simplicity and light-weight necessities. I’ve owned a number of Chromebooks, together with the most recent fashions from Google. I discover it to be fairly distraction-free, light-weight, and simple to make use of. With the addition of Android apps and a Linux container, it is easy to be productive nearly anyplace.
I might like to hold that over to a number of the older laptops I’ve hanging round, however except I do a full compile of Chromium OS, it’s arduous to seek out that very same expertise. The desktop Android tasks like Bliss OS, Phoenix OS, and Android-x86 are getting shut, and I am maintaining a tally of them for the longer term.
Help desks
Customer service is an enormous deal for firms massive and small. And with the added deal with DevOps lately, it is very important have instruments to assist bridge the hole. Almost each firm I’ve labored with makes use of both Jira, GitHub, or GitLab for code points, however none of those instruments are superb at buyer help tickets (with out loads of work). While there are lots of functions designed round buyer help tickets and points, most (if not all) of them are silos that do not play good with different programs, once more with out loads of work.
On my wishlist is an open supply answer that enables clients, help, and builders to work collectively with out an unwieldy pile of code to connect a number of programs collectively.
Your flip
I am certain there are loads of choices I missed throughout this sequence. I strive new functions commonly, within the hopes that they are going to assist me be extra productive. I encourage everybody to do the identical, as a result of relating to being productive with open supply instruments, there’s all the time one thing new to strive. And, when you’ve got favourite open supply productiveness apps that did not make it into this sequence, please be sure to share them within the feedback.