Brief: Artha is a feature rich thesaurus application available for all major Linux distributions.
In today’s connected life, I depend heavily on search engines. Even when I have to look for the meaning of a word, I search it online.
But one cannot always be connected to the internet and this is where offline apps come handy. The other day, an It’s FOSS reader Avinash Pandey recommended Artha thesaurus application. I found the application quite useful and thus thought of sharing it with you.
Artha: Offline English Thesaurus App for Linux
Artha is an offline English thesaurus based on WordNet. It is a free and open source application available for Linux as well as Windows. When you are struggling to find the meaning of a word or its synonym or antonym but you cannot connect to the internet, Artha has got your back.
Artha also packs a few features which make it an excellent Thesaurus app:
- Once launched, it runs in the background
- Hot-key support: Just select the word and use the hot key (Ctrl+Alt+W) to look for the selected word
- Support for regular expressions based search which means you can search using wildcards like *,? etc.
- Passive desktop notifications of word definitions for uninterrupted workflow
- Spelling suggestions help you when the exact spelling is vague or not known
- Keeps a history of recently searched words
Here’s a little demo of Artha in action:
Installing Artha in Ubuntu based Linux distributions
Artha is available in official Ubuntu repository which means that you can install Artha thesaurus app in Ubuntu, Linux Mint, elementary OS and other Ubuntu based Linux distributions from the Software Center:
Install Artha in Ubuntu based Linux distros
Alternatively, you can use apt command to install it:
sudo apt-get install arthaYou can read this article to read how to uninstall software in Ubuntu based distributions.
Installing Artha in other Linux distributions
Artha should be available from the Software Center in Fedora and Arch as well. You can always use the command line option of course.
For Fedora based Linux distributions, use this command:
sudo dnf install arthaArch users can install it from AUR. For those who want to compile it from the source code can use the tarball from the link below:
I hope that you find Artha useful in improving your English vocabulary. If you have similar app suggestions, do let me know so that I could share it with others.
