FOSSPicks
FOSSPicks

This month Graham looks at Penpot, ProcMon, diskgraph, Shaarli, Music Radar and more!
UX designer
Penpot
Penpot is a tool that helps designers create and prototype a user interface (UI). A little different from the desktop and command-line utilities that typically fill these pages, Penpot is a web application, designed to run in your web browser and, most usefully, online. Like WordPress, Nextcloud, and Home Assistant, the online element in Penpot is an essential feature that performs such an important role that the application is worth investigating, regardless of how it presents itself. And like those other brilliant web apps, it has a huge Linux bias and a commitment to open source.
Over the past few years, if you worked on any project that required a designer, it's likely the designer will have used a prototyping tool like Penpot. They're used to sketch up various UI designs, present them to the team, make changes, and eventually fix those changes so that developers can start adding whatever functionality is required. This is why similar prototyping tools work best when they're hosted online: It allows a project's various "stakeholders" to access the designs, make their own suggestions, and leave feedback. Penpot can do all of this and a lot more.
While Penpot is a web app and its developers offer their own portal, which is currently free to use, the open source version can be easily downloaded and self-deployed via a Docker image. This also happens to be the default development environment for anyone who wants to tinker with the code. Despite loading via a web browser, the application itself operates much like Inkscape or Scribus, only with additional social and prototyping features. There are shape drawing tools, a freehand mode, paths, curves, images, and text boxes. All are tightly bound to a grid, object boundaries, many alignment modes, and accessible data values for every element. These can then be grouped into reusable objects.
The UI is remarkably quick and responsive. As you might expect from a tool for designers, it really has been beautifully designed. From the icons and expandable menus to the comprehensive example documents that are used to onboard you to the workflow and functionality, you soon forget you're using a web application. In common with other user experience (UX) tools, when you're done with design, it's also possible to build some skeleton functionality into your creations to see how it feels to interact with your proposed interface. This is the prototyping element, and it lets you link one element to another so that transitions can be made with a click. It's simple but likely to be developed further in the future, considering that Penpot is still alpha software.
When it comes to sharing your ideas, you can create teams to allow other users to access specific projects, and projects are chosen from a dashboard before being loaded into a workspace, which is where the creating and editing happens. The open source element in Penpot is obviously important too, not just because one of the first panels you're presented with invites you to get involved with the code development, but also because Penpot makes fantastic use of the SVG format. Penpot uses it for import and export, along with wide browser compatibility and performance. Using SVG means you're never going to be locked into a single application.
Project Website

System monitor
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you've found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
The GNU Project Celebrates Its 40th Birthday
September 27 marks the 40th anniversary of the GNU Project, and it was celebrated with a hacker meeting in Biel/Bienne, Switzerland.
-
Linux Kernel Reducing Long-Term Support
LTS support for the Linux kernel is about to undergo some serious changes that will have a considerable impact on the future.
-
Fedora 39 Beta Now Available for Testing
For fans and users of Fedora Linux, the first beta of release 39 is now available, which is a minor upgrade but does include GNOME 45.
-
Fedora Linux 40 to Drop X11 for KDE Plasma
When Fedora 40 arrives in 2024, there will be a few big changes coming, especially for the KDE Plasma option.
-
Real-Time Ubuntu Available in AWS Marketplace
Anyone looking for a Linux distribution for real-time processing could do a whole lot worse than Real-Time Ubuntu.
-
KSMBD Finally Reaches a Stable State
For those who've been looking forward to the first release of KSMBD, after two years it's no longer considered experimental.
-
Nitrux 3.0.0 Has Been Released
The latest version of Nitrux brings plenty of innovation and fresh apps to the table.
-
Linux From Scratch 12.0 Now Available
If you're looking to roll your own Linux distribution, the latest version of Linux From Scratch is now available with plenty of updates.
-
Linux Kernel 6.5 Has Been Released
The newest Linux kernel, version 6.5, now includes initial support for two very exciting features.
-
UbuntuDDE 23.04 Now Available
A new version of the UbuntuDDE remix has finally arrived with all the updates from the Deepin desktop and everything that comes with the Ubuntu 23.04 base.