FocusWriter

Distraction free writing is a topic that has made its own category of programs possible. Creative minds don’t need word processing behemoths with x menus and button bars. They don’t want to see anything when writing – except their text.

Under Linux, FocusWriter has set out to satisfy this need to concentrate on the essentials. You only see a menu bar when pushing the mouse to the top of the screen. Only then does the application display menus and icons for file, editing and formatting functions.

A special feature of FocusWriter is the timer function: diligent text manufacturers can configure working times, use “Daily Goals” to set how many words they want to create in this time and, thanks to “Daily Progress”, check how far they have come in the last few days.

If this sounds too much like a Protestant work ethic, simply ignore these functions. Thomas Mann might have enjoyed it.

FocusWriter uses the QT toolkit and Hunspell for spelling correction.

Installation

The developer keeps this and other useful apps up to date in his Gott-Code PPA. But there is also a version in Ubuntu’s official Universe repository.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gottcode/gcppa
sudo apt update
sudo apt-get install focuswriter

Alternativen

Typora is a beautiful, free, but not open source editor with markdown support.