Zeal — The Dash alternative for Linux and Windows

A while ago, I came across Dash, which is a great piece of software which makes browsing the documentation really easy. It is a native application, and unfortunately only for MacOS. I use Ubuntu(16.04 LTS) as my daily driver for developing with Ruby(Ruby on Rails) and PHP(Laravel).

There are plenty of really cool applications on Linux, but I think that MacOS makes the developers’ life easier by abstracting some functionalities and some dependencies. As a result, I have found that many times, it is harder to install an application in Linux when compared to MacOS. As I see it, this comes as a result of the user base of both the OS, Linux being the OS for the more experienced developers, who like to handle all the details themselves, and MacOS, which can be considered as the OS for the hipsters, who do not want to deal with all the nitty-gritty details. And as a Linux user, I can’t blame developers for choosing MacOS, because most of the time, you do not want to ‘waste’ your time handling the dependencies and you just want to get things done.

While working with a new technology, we as developers often find ourselves surfing through the pages of the documentation for that technology. This process can be tedious at times, as not all the documentations are well written. This is where Dash comes handy. It makes it easy for developers to go through the documentation, or just search through it. And while finding out that it is a great application, I also found out that it does not work for me, because I use Linux. Luckily, I came across Zeal, which is a Linux and Windows alternative of Dash. It uses Dash’s Docsets, and we can say that it is based on Dash, providing its service to Linux users as well. FYI, Dash is also a Code Snippet Manager, beside being a documentation browser.

I strongly encourage all developers to check out Dash(if they use MacOS), or Zeal(for the Linux guys). I must say that I find it very useful when I want to quickly check out some detail in the documentation, and I do not have to go to a site, and depend on having an internet connection.

As for Windows, I honestly do not recommend it for developers, unless they are developing applications for the Microsoft technologies. I strongly encourage them to keep Windows for gaming, and use Linux/MacOS for development.

This is just my two cents on this topic, and I would really appreciate your opinion on the matter, so feel free to respond below, or tweet at me.

Feel free to email me if you have any questions, challenging opportunities, or you just want to say hi.

Finally, be sure to follow me so that you do not miss any new stories I publish.