Ghostwriter is an open-source writing tool developed by KDE, which is directed toward professional Book/Article writers. It is available on all the major Linux distributions. You could ask why is it much different from the default GNOME Text editor, because it supports tons of features such as text markdown, highlighting, different heading levels and much more.
In this tutorial, we will look at some of its features and try to install this application on our Linux distribution.
Features of Ghostwriter
Some of the features of this application include:
- A full-screen mode so that you have no distractions while writing.
- The user interface is clean.
- A toggle for Dark and light modes, so you can switch easily when going to a dark/light theme.
- You can also customize your own theme according to your preference.
- Session and document statistics can be shown, such as the number of sentences, words, paragraphs, and characters.
- Markdown is supported to make formatting easy.
- Documents can be exported to Pandoc, MultiMarkdown and Commonmark.
- You can drag and drop images directly in the file.
- Autosave is also supported, so you will never accidentally lose your work.
- A cheat sheet is available for you, which will make formatting things much easier even if you don’t remember.
- You can also check your typing speed in this application.
- A ‘Hemingway’ mode is available, which disallows you to edit documents, making it faster for you to complete the first draft of the document.
- The bottom status bar can also be customized as per your preferences.
Installing Ghostwriter
On Debian and Ubuntu-based distributions, you can install this application by adding a third-party PPA repository, just open a Terminal and type the following command :
# Add repository
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:wereturtle/ppa
# Update your existing repositories
sudo apt update
# Install the application
sudo apt install ghostwriter
On Fedora Workstation, you have to enable the COPR repository to install this application, you can do that by typing the dnf commands in the Terminal :
sudo dnf copr enable wereturtle/stable
sudo dnf install ghostwriter
If you are using any other Linux distribution, then you can easily install it from Flathub by typing the following commands, if you have Flatpak enabled on your PC :
flatpak install io.github.wereturtle.ghostwriter
Summary
This application is clean and minimalistic, there is nothing much to distract your creative mind and all you can do is write what you are passionate about. It can export to multiple formats which are supported by all standard writing applications, which is a bonus point for you as you can send the file to your editor without worrying about any issues.
And because it is developed by the KDE community, you can trust this application to be safe and future-proof.