It says right in the post…
hmmm. sorry about that. i must have replied to the wrong post.
Where are you getting this information from?
And why does it seem that your purpose is to trash either application?
What alternative do you currently use?
For Tolaria the information is available on their git hub page https://github.com/refactoringhq/tolaria#linux-system-dependencies.
Screenshot given below
For Helix Notes
I am not trashing any of the applications. I am merely drawing attention to the obvious.
Okay. Good. So you’re using the correct sources.
Now, what is webkit2gtk?
And what is GTK?
Oh, and what is Tauri?
Is GTK a dependency on Android, Windows, Mac, or iOS?
Basically, there is a difference between GTK and WebKitGTK, though they are related. Think of WebKitGTK in the same way people think of Steam’s Proton. It’s not the actual thing, but it helps to “communicate” with it.
GTK, on the other hand, is the whole shebang as far as UI is concerned, and would do most of the visuals. But if you look at (or use) HelixNotes or Tolaria, they barely feel or look GTK, because technically, they are not.
Lastly, In the thread I made about HelixNotes, I outline what I did to ensure it can NOT phone home, regardless of it being open-source.
I did the same exact process with Tolaria.
PS: I still have Obsidian installed on Linux and Android, though I’ve stopped using it. I’m basically keeping it around just in case at this point, though. All my note links work. I’ll be visiting Kate more often until either HelixNotes or Tolaria can do all the things I needed Obsidian for.
There is a subtle difference between this claim:
to what is actually stated on the site:
The bundled MCP server still spawns the system node binary
Does it run with MCP server always on and waiting for connections?
I bet so, as Tolaria is marketed as A second brain for the AI era to organize markdown files. Which are heavily used by LLMs and such.
Also stated here, a local MCP server to connect your external tools to. Which you will have to configure / include in the foreign programs explicitly. No clue in which way it exposes an endpoint but as long as you don’t expose any ports for remote access, the mcp server shouldn’t be an issue. As long as nobody is aware that it is listening.
Edit: But more importantly, just based on the context. That tolaria creates and uses a node.js server process in the background and the MCP server by itself, those are unrelated. Tolaria is written in TypeScript / JavaScript and a little Rust. Node.js 20+ and pnpm 8+ are required as libraries the software is based upon. MCP is only there so that (local) AI tools could access the software.
I bit the bullet and installed HelixNotes. Not the AppImage, not comfortable with that. But rather the HelixNotes-bin package.
It runs 4 and possible 6 processes. Please see the attached screenshot for more details.
There is a parent binary
helixnotes, which spawns 3 child processes. One of which is the WebKitNetworkProcess. Now I have not enabled any AI nor any GIT nor any NextCloud/Private cloud integration. But this process still starts. So I will have to use firejail or AppArmour for package.
Also not visible in the screenshot but there is a child process of helixnotes binary too that is typically started,
/usr/lib/glycin-loaders/2+/glycin-svg.
Do not know what is the purpose of this.
Then there are 2 sockets that are opened up. I am not 100% sure that they are because of Helix Notes, will update this later on with my findings.
The Editor is good. The Focus mode is good. Needs a bit polishing but for what it offers this is a pretty good offering. Just run it in a firejail or a container. And if you are on KDE, its visual integration with KDE is not great.
Other notable observations about HelixNotes.
- On KDE systems the title displayed is Tauri App. And not Helix Notes. Not a deal killer but app needs some polishing.
- Again on KDE systems the close button does not work properly. Have to maximize the window first and then the close button works. I can live with this, but for some it might get annoying.
- App changes all the markdown code block start i.e. “```” to “```text”, which is not 100% markdown accurate. This will cause problems if the markdown file is opened up in another markdown editor. There are a few other items like that, where the app adds excess tags or not 100% markdown compatible stuff.
- App has a plethora of themes and styling. But only very few light themes, predominantly, I say 70% themes are dark/black. Need to create a new theme for my choice.
- App does not allow to pick and choose the font. There are only 8 fonts to choose from. So if the user wants to use custom fonts like
Liberation SansorNoto Sansthat does not work. Only way is to set these as system fonts and then the application starts to use them. - App puts unwanted stuff like given below at the top even with GIT disabled. My markdown note file and the title header are typically the same.
# Document Title
## --- id: XXXXXX-YYYY-ZZZZZ-AAAA-BBBBBBBCCCCCC title: Document Title tags: [] pinned: false created: 2026-10-01T12:35:14.539094756+00:00 modified: 2026-10-01T12:38:18.233915996+00:00
# Document Title
## --- id: XXXXX1-YYY1-ZZZZ1-AAA1-BBBBBBBCCCCCC1 title: Document Title tags: [] pinned: false created: 2026-10-01T16:17:09.201103234+00:00 modified: 2026-10-01T12:12:18.260017342+00:00
So this ought to be put in a yaml header or in a different text file. This is strictly speaking not part of the markdown file nor markdown format. Looks more like some versioning setup
- There is a delay in the AUR. The AppImage package is 1.3.6 as on today but the
-binpackage is older 1.3.5.
The HelixNotes-bin package takes the debian package file and then installs it as a pacman package.
Just came across PhotoSuite while looking through alternativeto’s news.
Link: https://github.com/eolix/photosuite
It’s a new raster graphics editor (photo editor). And by new, I mean 5 days old. 
It’s currently only available in RPM and DEB formats, so I extracted the DEB version and (since it’s so new) I ran its binary directly with Firejail.
It can do all the basics a photo editor is expected to, inlcudes layers, layer styles, layer blending, and even painting/drawing and a pen tool for precise illustration graphics.
As I edit images every day in GIMP, I will test out PhotoSuite a bit more over the next few days, but so far, it is “unfortunately” a lot more intuitive than GIMP.
I say “unfortunately” because this might mean a lot more people may be willing to switch to Linux if this gets big. But it also means GIMP might have funding issues (worse than now) in the future, if another open source app in the same category gets very popular. This is, of course, not really a bad thing.
Oh, and like the two recent apps I added to this list, it also uses Tauri. 
Tauri seems to be the “cool” rust kids playground, never heard of it until a couple of months ago.
My recent discovery:
Been running for a week, simple, wayland only display manager, dev is super helpful.
Uses cage as the backend, but can use any wayland compositor. I am currently using labwc to get tap-to-click.
Seems like it. It also seems it makes it easier to write apps for Linux. Or maybe Linux is a part of many of the apps because Windows gets worse with every update and/or due to WSL.
Moko - https://moko.art
So, there’s yet another Photoshop alternative and ClipStudio Paint as well… But…
I will keep my suspicions to myself… 
Apart from that, I can tell this is yet another Tauri app… 
There’s even a Linux version too. Definitely Tauri.
HelixNotes, Photosuite, Tolaria and many more are bypassing Arch package manager. They only provide RPM or DEB or AppImage packages. No arch packages.
Is Arch and its derivatives getting bypassed? Are we being pushed to the fringe?
Arch isn’t being bypassed, and for the most part, this is why the AUR exists.
Remember, Steam OS is Arch. KDE Linux is Arch adjacent. The two most important things in terms of getting people to switch to Linux both rely on Arch.
Also, with DEB packages, you have the option of extracting the actual binary from the file and running it directly. Unless it’s a very old version, it will likely work just fine. And unlike AppImages, pretty much any file extractor (engrampa, ark, etc.) can do this. This is exactly what the -bin packages for HelixNotes do.
Blasmusikradio mit Bernd is a top station i believe, right? 
Thanks for mention it 
Finally a nice little RadioPlayer in my systray. I am On AIR Yaho!
Just discovered NEO, a writing tool made by novelist Hugh Howey. Still very much under development, but the concept is great: Distraction-free writing, easy rearranging stuff, direct export to Markdown, Word, PDF, EPUB.
Multi-platform (.AppImage for Linux), open source, and focuses on what a writer does best: Writing.
There is a version in the AUR, but it is created from the AppImage and lags behind several versions, since the author currently updates a lot. The AppImage is self-updating (Help → Check for updates).
Alternative that I’ve tried in past https://github.com/Darkrock-Studios/hammer-editor multi-platform client. Available on F-Droid as well.
My daughter has been an avid user of Scrivener (on Windows) for years, but when she moved to Fedora we had to jump through a dozen flaming hoops to get it running in WINE (no linux variant). I’ve sent her that info on Neo, thanks!
You’re welcome! (Had to smile, my daughter is also a writer.)
If coming from Scrivener and loving extra features—not only basic streamlined writing—, she might also want to check out two others I tried (but found to be too over-featured for my needs):
Of these two, NovelWriter was my favourite until I discovered NEO.
Happy writing!