It happens to all of us: we want to do something and we want to do it now. We want to start now. We want to put the pieces together as we have them, or when something comes to mind... and then what happens: what we have is not only different from what we had imagined, but it is also not as optimized as it would have been before. we would have taken some time to organize our thoughts. For reasons like this, there is software like Figma and modeling tools, and also others like Xmind which we are going to talk about here today.
What is Xmind? Its developers define it as “The complete mind mapping and brainstorming app. Like a Swiss army knife, Xmind offers a complete set of tools for thinking and creativity.«. The words of the brainstorm probably tell you more than the words of the mental maps, but they come to be the same. Xmind is a software for that and much more, and with which in the end we can make better decisions or better shape the project we had in mind.
What is a mental map?
Although they also mention brainstorming, this is more about mind mapping. A "mind map" is a graphical tool used to visualize and organize information in a creative and structured way. It consists of a visual representation of ideas, concepts and relationships between them, using keywords, images, symbols and colors.
In a mind map, information is presented in a hierarchical manner, with the central idea or main theme in the middle, and the branches that extend from it represent the secondary ideas or related subthemes. In this way, you can clearly and concisely see how the different pieces of information are related.
Mind maps are often used as a planning tool, decision-making, learning and problem solving, since they allow information to be organized effectively and stimulate creativity and associative thinking.
If you have ever been present in a company that had to work as a team to get a project off the ground, you have probably seen a slate with what had to be done, full of circles, arrows, etc. Xmind is more or less that, but based on software, which has its pros and cons. To say the clearest, the pros are that it looks much better and that it is easier to share it and for others to participate. The cons, or in this case the pros of doing it on paper, would be speed: doing something by hand is faster.
What Xmind offers
Xmind has parts that might be reminiscent of GNOME's Gaphor or KDE's Umbrello, both modeling software. In a way, Xmind is the same, but the modeling tools are more designed with software in mind, class creation, inheritance, etc. On the other hand, Xmind is more like a Paint prepared to make drawings or structured graphics so that we can better understand or see an initial idea. Not surprisingly, "mind" is mind, and what Xmind wants is for us to be able to translate into software what we were thinking about.
Although I have done the screenshot in English, the program is in perfect Spanish (and other languages) and offers tools such as:
- theme creation. With this tool we will create a label that will be a theme, in the header capture “Write about Xmind”.
- subtopics. They are topics that descend from other topics, in the screenshot above "What it is", "What it can do", "How to install it in Ubuntu" and "Eat croquettes". Don't judge me for the latter.
- relationship building tool. This tool, also available in UML modeling tools, is to say that object A is related to object B in some way. If we first select this tool, then an object and finally another, a relationship will be created that we can rename as it suits our idea.
- Summary. We can select an object and create a summary or explain something about it.
- Limit. With this we will draw dashed lines on an object as a sign that it has a limit and cannot go beyond that.
- Bookmarks. Objects can be marked with symbols of different colors with icons of all kinds, such as stars, flags, etc. There are also stickers that will give personality to our sketch, idea or mental image.
On the right we have the Style, Presentation and Map options, and in all three we can change how things look. Of course, there are some things that are exclusive to Xmind Pro.
Zen Mode and Subscription Presentation
Xmind offers almost all of its features for free, but not Zen mode or Presentation. He Zen mode It is like what I only know as "full screen" in Spanish, but in English they refer to it as "kiosko" or "kiosk": almost everything is removed and just what is necessary is left to work or to see something specific, as seen in the following screenshot.
On the other hand we have the presentation mode about which the best thing I can say is that you let your imagination fly. Comparisons are obnoxious, so I'll just mention LibreOffice Impress in passing, a software with which you can create presentations and add some animations. Xmind also allows us this, and instead of seeing a fixed image, what we will see will depend a bit on how we configure it, but it may be that a theme appears before, then a sub-theme, another and so on until all appear, then move on to another window, a key opens that encompasses other topics... A full-fledged presentation.
Of course, as we said this is available in the Pro version that has a price of €6/month or €60/year.
How to install Xmind on Ubuntu
One of the good things about the most popular systems is that if something is for Linux, it is in the native packages of these systems. The most popular is Ubuntu, and almost everything that is for Linux in the form of native packages is as a DEB package, and Xmind is no less. We can install Xmind on Ubuntu in three different ways:
- Your DEB package. We can download it from this link, and we have a complete guide on how to install DEB packages on Ubuntu in this other link. NOTE: it does not add an official repository, so updates have to be done by hand.
- The snap package, for which we will have to open a terminal and type
sudo snap install xmind, or search for "xmind" from Ubuntu Software and install it from there. - The flatpak package, available at this link of Flathub, but to be able to install it on Ubuntu 20.04+ you have to follow what is explained in this guide.
To be honest, I recommend using tools like Xmind, and I do it because I have checked what happens if ideas are not properly ordered before starting any project. If you also work as a team, the need is even greater. In addition, most of the functions are free (it can be used without logging in, an important fact), so with Xmind our ideas will always have the best presentation.