How to Install "The Board" in Ubuntu? (GTK+ written dedicated Digital Diary)

If you frequently use your computer for hours and hours daily... then even after installing cool theme and other stuff to make the desktop look beautiful but as time goes on the desktop itself can get quite booooring ;-). So for a change, whenever you want to take a note or creating "robotic" daily tasks such as taking pic, video, etc wouldn't it be nice if there was dedicated app for creating a bit of a digital diary "work-space".

I'm talking about an application that once launched completely replace your desktop and consume the whole display screen with a "skin" of its own + giving you the ability to completely forget the daily hassle and get-los... you know something beautiful, damn it! :P. If you like the idea then you and me are not certainly along 'cause a developer called Lucas Rocha had been thinking about something similar and he calls it The Board and is for GNU/Linux geeks (Gnomes :D).

As said... although it runs on top of your current desktop, the GUI written in both GTK+ and Clutter and once run, it occupies the whole computer screen thus taking you into a digital-diary "world" of its own. You can change the background, add notes, remove notes (+ text files), add pages or photos or videos with ease.

A Picture loaded into "the board"

You can either use the keyboard shortcuts or use your mouse to add new notes, etc. And the cool thing about it... if you're familiar with the whole "widget" thing, then think of "The Board" as a small virtual desktop space that runs on your actual desktop with Notes, Text, pictures (can even add using you web-cam) and video widgets.

Yes!, it even works on Unity ... but there are few issues such as blurred icons and stuff :/...

I know it's a bit tricky to get the whole idea (even after looking at screenshots). In that case just have a look at the below official introduction video from the developer himself which pretty much explains everything.




You can install The Board 0.1.3 (current upto date version) in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal by using the below command in your GNU/Linux Terminal (we're using the official PPA for that).

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:the-board-team/dev-snapshots
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install the-board

It also works on the never Gnome3 desktop too. But at the moment only supports Ubuntu 11.04 version only and even in the classic Gnome desktop, all I got after installing was a "blank" screen. This is the reason why I couldn't give a "real" screenshot :/.

I guess Compiz also had something to do with that, but again the project itself is still in its early stages thus bugs should be expected. Yep, that's it. Good luck and I hope it works out for you :).