Let me start by telling you a bit about Evernote, in case you’ve never heard of it (which is weird, because this is a quite popular application). Evernote is an application for note-taking, organizing, task management, and archiving. Using it you can create notes using text, drawings, add photographs, audio, or web content. Each note can be tagged, annotated, edited, searched, given attachments, and exported. The application is free to use (but not free, open source software) with monthly usage limits, or you can use a paid plan. Up until recently, Evernote was available for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Android and iOS.
Did you know Evernote has a private beta application for Linux desktops? I didn’t, and I didn’t see an announcement about this anywhere, but today I stumbled upon it. From what I could find, this appears to have been released for at least 1 month.
So what does ‘private’ mean? I’m only guessing here, but I think that only some users have received an invitation to download this Evernote beta application for Linux. That’s because I was able to login without any issues using my free Evernote account. Also, there are no Linux downloads linked anywhere on the Evernote website, other than the download page for the Evernote private Linux beta.
Right now, the official Evernote for Linux application seems to only be available as a DEB package (for Debian / Ubuntu / Linux Mint / Pop!_OS and other Linux distributions based on Debian and Ubuntu). That’s because I’ve tried downloading it on Fedora as well, and I was offered a DEB for download, just like on Ubuntu. On other Linux distributions I guess you’ll need to unpack this and install the files manually; also look in the debian/control file for a list of dependencies and make sure you have those installed.
Looking for a free and open source, encrypted alternative to Evernote? Check out Joplin.
Just like the Windows and macOS v10 applications, the Linux Evernote application is built using Electron. Besides the Evernote-specific options, Evernote for Linux offers options to toggle the sidebar, use light / dark mode, and there’s also an Evernote tray icon that only allows you to open a quick note (even though the entry is called Open Evernote), without the ability to minimize Evernote to the tray, or any other options.
That’s all I can tell you right now, because, like I already said, there’s no information about this. Wait, there’s one more thing I need to tell you. The download link. You can download Evernote for Linux private beta by using the button below (DEB packages only, at least right now). Or, if you’re an Arch Linux / Manjaro user, get it from AUR.
