In today's open source roundup: Seven apps for note-taking in Linux. Plus: Samsung's Galaxy A7 phone announced, and DistroWatch reviews Linux Mint 17.1 Cinnamon Note-taking apps for Linux Taking notes is something we all do at times. But finding the right application for it can be a pain. Fortunately, MakeUseOf has compiled a helpful list of seven note-taking apps for Linux users. Danny Stieben at MakeUseOf reports: As a college student, it’s important to be able to write down notes efficiently and find them quickly when needed. As a Linux user, you sadly won’t have access to official desktop clients for Evernote, OneNote, and Simplenote. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t get stuff done, including writing notes. Here are seven different applications you can use to write notes and increase your productivity. Do note that several popular note-taking services do have web versions available, but we’re going to assume that you know about them and will instead focus on alternative desktop applications you can use. Xournal Tomboy/Gnote nvPY NixNote and GeekNote RedNotebook Future Pick: Springseed More at MakeUseOf Samsung’s Galaxy A7 phone announced Samsung’s Galaxy line of phones have long been one of its staple products. Now the company has announced its new Galaxy A7 phone. Brandon Chester at AnandTech reports on the Galaxy A7: The Galaxy A7 comes with one of two similar processors depending on which SKU you buy. The single-SIM LTE model comes with Samsung’s Exynos 5430 which has a 1.8GHz 4 x Cortex-A15 cluster and a 1.3GHz 4 x Cortex-A7 cluster. This model uses Ericsson’s M7450 Cat4 LTE modem. The dual-SIM LTE/3G model uses Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 615 MSM9839 which has a 1.5GHz 4 x Cortex-A53 cluster and a 1.0GHz 4 x Cortex-A53 cluster. Beyond the SoC, we see what looks to be standard specs for a 2015 mid-range phone. The Galaxy A7 is actually very similar to the Desire 826. It has a 2600mAh (9.88Wh) battery, a 13MP rear-facing camera, 2GB of LPDDR3 RAM, 16GB of NAND, and a MicroSD slot. The Galaxy A7 bests the Desire 826 with its size though. It’s smaller, lighter, and much thinner. In fact, with a thickness of only 6.3mm, it’s thinner than Apple’s flagship iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. More at AnandTech You can also read the official announcement at Samsung’s Mobile Press site: The Galaxy A7 is equipped with a multicore processor combining two separate quad core processors, enabling users to quickly and easily perform data intensive tasks. The Galaxy A7 has 16GB of memory and 2GB of RAM to power all of a user’s favorite apps and media, and is supported by a long-lasting 2,600mAh battery. The Galaxy A7 also supports the intuitive features and services offered by the Galaxy A5 and A3, with an advanced 5 Megapixel front-facing camera and advanced selfie features including ‘Ultra Wide Shot’ and ‘Auto Selfie’ modes, which make it possible to take a photograph using only a voice command or even a simple wave of the hand. The device also features ‘Always Clear Voice Auto Control’ to reduce noise from the surrounding environment, as well as LTE Category 4 support for quick and easy photo and video uploads on any social network. In addition to these features, the Galaxy A7 offers a Private Mode, which adds an extra layer of security for important files and documents. The A7 also has Multi Screen app function capability. More at Samsung Mobile Press Redditors had some thoughts to share about the Galaxy A7: RadiantSun: “This is a midrange device. What I’m concerned about is 5.5 inches at 720p. What’s up with that? I’m sure it’ll help the battery life but I don’t think that’s worth the loss in resolution from 1080p for a device with an efficient processor, SAMOLED display and 2800 MAh battery.” Listsave: “I feel like I’m the only one around here that thinks 2 GB ram and 16 GB storage is enough. I never have more than 3 apps running and my music is saved as 100 kbps eAAC+ files so 1000 songs only take about 3 GB of space.” MalevolentFerret: “…there are millions of people out there for whom Samsung phones work for just fine, thank you very much. They don’t care about bootloaders or having 4GB of RAM, they want a phone they can text, call, take nice pictures and play Candy Crush on. That’s it. And Samsung has the budget to say “you want to do these things without splashing out on an iPhone? We’re your guys.” DroidMasterX: “And I thought Samsung is supposed to come out with less phones in 2015. But, this does look amazingly nice. Great design.” More at Reddit DistroWatch reviews Linux Mint 17.1 Cinnamon Linux Mint 17.1 Cinnamon has been out for a little while, and DistroWatch now has a full review of it. Jesse Smith at DistroWatch on Linux Mint 17.1 Cinnamon: I generally have good experiences with the Linux Mint distribution. The project puts together a solid desktop operating system, complete with popular open source applications, multimedia support, a friendly system installer and configuration tools which are easy to navigate. Mint makes tasks such as installing third-party drivers, popular software (both proprietary and open source) and alternative kernels easy. Most users will probably be able to sit down and simply start using Mint and its small collection of desktop software with a minimal amount of work. Going into this review I was mostly interested in Cinnamon. I was curious to see how it would perform (especially in a virtual machine). I wondered how Cinnamon would compare with MATE and with GNOME 3. I was happy to find Cinnamon has become a polished desktop environment. It has the modern features and extensions of GNOME 3 combined with the classic desktop layout of MATE/GNOME 2. Cinnamon, as it is presented in Mint, has a nice set of defaults. It has a minimum amount of visual effects, it stays out of the way and performs quickly. People who like to tweak their desktop environments will be able to experiment with themes, different icons sets, extensions and widgets. Of the various desktop environments related to GNOME (MATE, GNOME Classic, GNOME Shell and Cinnamon) I think Cinnamon may present the best balance of features, performance and familiarity. Mint 17.1 is an incremental evolution from previous versions. The distribution was stable for me, the distribution performed well, offered a lot of functionality out of the box and was beautifully easy to use. I would feel quite comfortable introducing novice users to Mint. I think the distribution has a very gentle learning curve, but enough flexibility to appeal to more advanced users. More at DistroWatch There were also some other recent reviews of Linux Mint 17.1. I did my own on Desktop Linux Reviews and also included MATE in the review: I was very impressed with Linux Mint 17.1. The common feature upgrades and bug fixes add real value to this distribution. The changes in Update Manager, the Login Screen, Language Settings, Kernel Menu, and artwork should please almost all Linux Mint users. And the huge range of background wallpapers, along with the slideshow feature make it a great choice for those who want frequent changes to the look of their Linux Mint systems. Cinnamon and MATE have both improved significantly in this release as well. Compiz brings MATE up to par with Cinnamon in terms of desktop glitz, and the changes in Cinnamon have made it even better than it was in previous versions of Linux Mint. I had fun futzing around with Compiz on MATE, and there’s no doubt that it adds some serious desktop bling to an otherwise rather sedate, traditional desktop environment. And Cinnamon’s colored folders and emblems make it much simpler to visually identify your important and most used folders. I really liked having that option even though I initially didn’t think it would matter too much. More at Desktop Linux Reviews Ars Technica also did a review of Linux Mint 17.1 and liked what it saw: The Linux Mint team recently released Linux Mint 17.1—a somewhat minor but still welcome upgrade to the Ubuntu-based ecosystem. And while Linux Mint 17.1 arrives as it usually does (a few weeks after the release of a new version of Ubuntu), version 17.1 is not based on Ubuntu’s latest effort, 14.10. Instead, this edition of Mint remains tied to the last Long Term Support (LTS) release, Ubuntu 14.04. Mint 17.1 is well worth the upgrade…The only problem we’ve encountered so far in use is the known bug involving problems with Skype on 64-bit versions of Mint 17.1. Fortunately, there’s already an easy fix. More at Ars Technica Did you miss a roundup? Check the Eye On Open home page to get caught up with the latest news about open source and Linux. Open Source