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I need a free of charge software to create simple mind maps. Something free, fast, reliable, simple.

I have tried a lot, and I like these two:

  • Scapple. - It's not free (I used it as trial), and there are very few features. However, I like its speed, simplicity, reliability.
  • Vue. - it's free, and there are more features. However, the kerning is horrible, and undo/redo is buggy (the size and placement of the blocks will be changed to somewhat arbitrary). Also, it starts not very quickly (it's Java).

Some things I like about them:

  • Each block can have as many connections as you want. (It's not limited to 4 or 8.).
  • The blocks are supporting word wrapping.
  • You can have text on your connections (e.g. yes/no). Vue only.

(Both of them works on all three main systems: Windows, macOS, and Linux. However, I'm a Windows user currently.)

What tools would you suggest?

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The best FOSS Mind Mapping tools I know of are VYM and Freemind. Both are excelent.

I personally prefer VYM, but if you're not a Linuxer it has the drawback of not having a recent Win/Mac compilation.

Freemind has versions for all major OSs.

Edit

As for the argument that these softwares doesn't have word wrapping and the connections are limited... nothing farther from truth. These are 2 of the most complete and full featured softwares in the market. They don't have only word-wrapping. They have a complete support for text and attachments, among MANY other features. And the number of connections is limited by your machine's memory. There's no pratical limit.

Have you even installed them ?

Here some examples of what Freemind can do (flash needed):

http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/extensions/freemind/flashwindow.php?initLoadFile=/wiki/images/a/a5/Pub_Sub.mm&startCollapsedToLevel=5&mm_title=Pub_Sub.mm

http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/extensions/freemind/flashwindow.php?startCollapsedToLevel=4&initLoadFile=/wiki/images/1/1a/Python_WebLinks.mm&mm_title=Python%202.5%20Computer%20Language%20-%20Contents

http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/extensions/freemind/flashwindow.php?initLoadFile=/wiki/images/7/7f/CProgramming.mm&startCollapsedToLevel=5&mm_title=C%20Programming

Here's an example with word-wrapping:

http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/extensions/freemind/flashwindow.php?initLoadFile=/wiki/images/e/eb/Anonymity_on_the_Edge2.mm&startCollapsedToLevel=5&mm_title=Anonymity%20on%20the%20Edge2.mm

In case you don't have flash, here's the image of this last example:

Word-wrapping mindmap example

Also please note that the example you commented it's not a mind map. Here's a guide on how to create mind maps:

https://blog.iqmatrix.com/how-to-mind-map

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  • Thanks, but no, they are definitely not something what I'm searching for.
    – john c. j.
    Commented Jun 24, 2019 at 4:04
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    Ok. Can you explain why?
    – Nelson Teixeira
    Commented Jun 24, 2019 at 10:55
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    Please update your question to say why they are no good for you
    – Mawg
    Commented Jun 24, 2019 at 11:30
  • As I understand, they dont' have word wrapping, and also the number of connections between blocks is limited to 4 or 8 (you can't have e.g. 20 connections from the single block).
    – john c. j.
    Commented Jun 24, 2019 at 14:01
  • please see my edit
    – Nelson Teixeira
    Commented Jun 24, 2019 at 15:36

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