GTG – A Productivity Tool for GNOME Desktop

GTG – A Productivity Tool for GNOME Desktop

Posted on November 27th, 2009 linuxandfriends 3 comments

Getting Things GNOME! also known as GTG aims to be a simple, powerful and flexible organization tool to the GNOME desktop environment. It is a productivity tool which aids you in organizing your work flow into tasks and sub-tasks, uniquely tagging them so as to get things done in a more efficient manner.

GTG Interface

Getting Things GNOME (GTG) sports a simple, albeit powerful interface. When you first open GTG, you will be presented the following window where you can add and schedule your tasks.

GTG user interface

Double clicking on a task will open it in a separate window where you can add details of the task, including any sub-tasks.

Enter details in the tasks editor

GTG Terminology

GTG supports a simple syntax which helps it recognize metadata such as tags and subtasks. The following are a few things you need to know to start using GTG to organize and manage your workflow.

Tasks - A task is some work or goal you have to complete in a set time period.

Tags – A tag is a simple word that begin with “@“. All tags are by default highlighted in Yellow color in the editor. You can provide unique tags to all your tasks.

A few examples are @Work, @Home, @Play, @Hobby

Each task can be associated with multiple tags. You can toggle Tags sidebar by pressing F9 key.

Sub Tasks – A sub task is a task that “is related to / a part of”, another task. You can create a sub task within a task by entering the ‘-‘ (hyphen) followed by the sub task name. The following are a few examples of sub tasks.
```
- Buy groceries
- Shop for footwear
```
When you type the above lines and press Enter, each line will be automatically converted into a link. Clicking on the link will take you to that particular sub task’s window where you can add details specific to that sub task.

Workview – If you have lots of tasks pending and you want to zero in on only actionable tasks – those which you can immediately start doing, then Workview is GTG’s way of making it easy for you. When you click on the Workview button, it will show only those tasks that you can start doing right now.

GTG user interface has a lot of similarities with Tomboy. It is not surprising, given the author of GTG has gone on record praising Tomboy as his favourite application.

How to install GTG in Linux

Getting Things GNOME! or GTG is available in the repositories of most main stream Linux distributions. For instance, you can install GTG in Ubuntu Karmic Koala by a simple command as follows -
```
$ sudo apt-get install gtg
```
You can also download GTG package for your Linux distribution from its official website.

GTG is an excellent productivity tool for GNOME that aids in organizing your tasks, thus helping you stay focussed on getting things done.

Related Posts
linux, open source, productivity, software getting things done, gnome, productivity tool
3 responses to “GTG – A Productivity Tool for GNOME Desktop”
- chessboxing November 27th, 2009 at 22:04
  
  Brilliant. I was seeking a gtd program. ta
- x December 5th, 2009 at 12:18
  
  Installing in article: sudo apt-get gtg
  Correct is: sudo apt-get install gtg
  - linuxandfriends December 5th, 2009 at 13:12
    
    Thanks for pointing it out. Corrected the typo.