Turn Gnome into a productivity blaster

If you rely on computers to help you get things done in your personal or professional life, then you’re probably on the lookout for useful applications that will help you stay on top of things. Recently, we took a look at productivity tools for the KDE desktop, but there are plenty of options out there for the GNOME desktop, too. Here are a batch of tools designed with GNOME users in mind.

Tomboy — This is one of the best note-taking apps you’ll find anywhere. It helps track the random bits of info you collect throughout the day and organize it into searchable data. The most recent version also previews a new online note synchronization feature that syncs and shares your notes across multiple computers.

Evince — Everyone needs a reliable document viewer and Evince is just the ticket for GNOME users. It features a robust search that displays the number of results found within a page and highlights them, and uses thumbnail shots of pages so you can jump around quickly in a document. Evince can open encrypted PDFs, and printing is a snap thanks to its GNOME/GTK printing framework.

Evolution — Here’s a full-featured email, address book, and calendaring suite designed specifically for the GNOME desktop. It’s got everything you could hope for in a personal information manager, and then some: a to-do list, support for iCal, user-defined filters, a strong spam catcher, and the ability to easily manage multiple email accounts.

Gnumeric — If you need to track inventory, manage graphs and charts, or crunch numbers, then a good spreadsheet application is a must. Gnumeric helps you plot, graph, analyze, and manipulate all types of numerical data. It will even read and import spreadsheet files created in Microsoft Excel.

GnuCash — If you’re looking for a way to track your finances, you can’t go wrong with GnuCash. It’s one of the most popular personal and small-business accounting software programs for GNOME — and with good reason. It handles reports, graphs, invoices, scheduled transactions, and even double-entry accounting. It’s powerful enough to manage your entire business, but approachable enough to use as a simple checkbook register and bank account tracker.

gLabels — We’ve talked about printing labels from the desktop before but gLabels is so handy that it bears repeating. This free app for GNOME lets you print all kinds of labels and business cards from your laser or ink-jet printer using one of the templates that’s included in the large collection. Don’t see what you need? Then create your own using the template design wizard.