Linux in the Kitchen | Life Enhancement Blathering

There are so many ways Linux can be used. Most commonly, we see it used to run the Internet in servers and cloud thingies and such. If you are a desktop user, you might use it for office tasks in your home or work, maybe you are a content creator and you do video or audio editing, maybe you game or do 3D design, such as in parametric modeling, such as using Fusion 360 on Linux. There is another place that Linux fits quite nicely, that place is your Kitchen. At this stage, I would, in no way, give up Linux in the kitchen or trade it for a poor substitute like ChromeOS (which I have before). General Purpose Linux, the real thing, belongs in the kitchen as much as a coffee pot microwave oven or a toaster. I am not talking shoe-horning it into the life-center of your home, it is a perfect fit.

It is almost an automatic fit with using Linux for “traditional productivity” but it is not often thought about in the kitchen. Linux is something that makes domestic life a bit easier. Here are a couple of ways Linux just makes my life a bit easier and makes you look like a renaissance man or woman. I personally don’t have natural talent in the kitchen but out of necessity, I have to perform these functions better, more efficiently with improvements in my measure of performance as well as my measure of effect. As in, my kids enjoy what I make.

I am going to break down the applications that I use in the Kitchen to help organize my life just a little bit better. I will admit, that I am a work in progress on this. I am continually tweaking this but I am at a point now where I feel like it is a satisfactory solution and not just a novelty. I am running this on openSUSE Tumbleweed but I can’t see why you couldn’t use any other distribution… like openSUSE Leap.

The Hardware

This was an important choice for me. To forgo the droning details of the unimpressive hardware specifications, you can view that here. In short, my minimum requirements was at least something that would take a forth generation (Socket LGA1150) CPU. What I have in there now is not great but it does the job. I wanted a touch screen system, it had to be an all-in-one and it had to have a VESA mount. Since my kitchen is rather small, it was absolutely vital to not lose any counter space.

This is one of those acquisitions that has been worth far more in time savings and convenience than what it has cost me. I also want to add that this particular system has rather underwhelming set of built in speakers. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice that they are but I have it connected via Bluetooth to a Coolvox that is part of my refrigerator. Those speakers are pretty great.

Time Management

Use Kontact module Korganizer to perform meal planning. There are many other calendar options out there so feel free to swap this out for something that is to your liking. Since I am a heavy Plasma user, I haven’t actually installed explicitly installed it as it has always been done for me.

sudo zypper install korganizer

Truthfully, if you aren’t using Plasma or LXQt, I don’t know how much I would recommend this particular application.

Evolution is an alternative that my interest you.

sudo zypper install evolution

or for Debian based distributions

sudo apt install evolution

With whatever calendaring system you use, KOrganizer or Evolution, the idea here is to plan out your days, weeks, or even month if you have that sort of inclination. I have a lot of moving parts going on in my life so it is imperative that I keep my kids’ school activities, appointments and such readily available. I also use this for meal planning and I am making a point this year specify blocks of time for those activities that fall through the cracks, like reading to my kids or even “game time” so that we are not always just focused on work.

There is almost a sense of excitement knowing that family game time is scheduled and the kids appreciate seeing this too. It is another way to keep them all onboard.

Recipe Management

Gnome Recipes for storing my various recipes. There are a few issues with the is application, but it is minor and the mitigation I use is to not use the designated ingredients listing as it will change the units to undesirable quantities.

sudo zypper install gnome-recipes

or for Debian based distributions

sudo apt install gnome-recipes

What would be great is if there was an easier way to exchange your recipes with an external repository, of some kind. There is a way to import and export recipes but I haven’t used that function. I synchronize my data around my network.

File Synchronization

Syncthing-GTK is what i use to synchronize my recipes database between the machines in my house so when I find a recipe I like, I can enter it on another machine that I may take to the dining room, my couch or my SuperCubicle

sudo zypper install syncthing-gtk

or…

sudo apt install syncthing-gtk

I synchronize the data between multiple machines and since it is a peer-to-peer system, it has high fault tolerance, as in, I don’t have a central point of failure. The kitchen computer, my main laptop and my main workstation/server share a large section of my data. The nice feature is, I can work on something and save it on my kitchen and it will very quickly be available on my other computes so I have a very seamless kind of integration. Whether I am knocking out a LibreOffice document or updating a recipe, I will have it ready for me to use at whatever workstation I use in my house.

Lists

For list, grocery lists, quick notes, I use SimpleNote. It is just as the name states, a simple note taking application I had previously used the Google Keep but Chrome keeps using up more and more resources so I have backed off from Google services. There are many other note taking applications but SimpleNote is what I use most often. I install the Snap package.

sudo snap install simplenote

There may be other sources for SimpleNote, but this is what I can count on to work in openSUSE. The last time I checked, there wasn’t a Flatpak and I am more than happy to use any packaging system in openSUSE, because they all work well. Other distribution experiences may vary.

What makes SimpleNotes special is the simplicity of it. It is just a note taking application that works simply and well. I have SimpleNote on my mobile device as well so when I go to the store, I have my list there and ready to go. Bonus, it has a dark mode too.

I use the checklist function so that I can check off the items from my list as I go. If I notice a deficiency or a pending deficiency, I can very quickly make a not of it on any computer, most often the kitchen computer and it is ready for me later.

Web browsing

Since the system I am using is an all in one touch screen, I like to use a touch friendly browser and currently, I am using the Falkon web browser.

sudo zypper install falkon

Since I don’t have all the recipes in my kitchen computer, I will often find new recipes and browse through them which is why it is important to have the easy touch to scroll that Falkon provides. I prefer Firefox in nearly every other application and I won’t use Chrome but for your Kitchen setup, you use what you want to use.

Final Thoughts

I have no metrics to tell you how much more efficient this set up is over using a more normal method, like having cook books and the like taking up cupboard space but what I can tell you is that there is a lot more satisfaction and enjoyment when I am in the kitchen. Not only can I be more productive but I am also more easily entertained as well.

References

Dell Inspiron 20 3048 All-in-One Details
Gnome-Recipes
Syncthing-GTK