Every time you think Linear has reached peak landing page design, they step it up. This page is beautiful, and this functionality is so exciting to see coming to Linear. Why would anyone use Jira any more?!
We’ve been using Linear for several months now instead of Jira and no regrets. The product is fast (very fast!), easy to use, lightweight and has a neat UI.
It fits well for small startup teams but gets messy when roadmap grows just a little. Has the freedom to define projects and tags but it works well IMO only for a single team with one or two boards only (there is no "board" definition).
There is no board or flight level views, you have to make your own filters and setup your organisation which may or may not be your best time spending idea. The swim lanes that are so interesting on the competitors (Jira, kanbanize etc) are not present here. There is only one lane per team and tickets belongs only to projects so you have to manage your organisation with a single hierarchy of tasks.
If I have to choose it will not be my first option.
Linear is a good app to run a team using scrum. It is much simpler to use and doesn't require a lot of configuration and set-up.
It also integrates with GIthub, so that your tasks get updated automatically when you perform actions like, opening a PR, assigning reviewers and merging or closing a PR.
It also provides helpful charts.
However, it does have a confusing structure, in which you have two competing views: the active sprint (called "cycle") and all the active tasks (called "active"), regardless if they are a part of the sprint or not.
Linear defaults to opening the "active" view, so if you don't pay attention, you may think you are in the sprint ("cycle") view and may end up taking tasks that are outside the sprint.
Of course I use Figma, Canva and something app you always use, but what I consider most important when designing is what the intention is and for what purpose. There are many things that need to be done first, such as researching competitors' designs, deciding on color scheme patterns, and so on, but I believe the first step is to task such things. I chose the Linear app because it is now essential for me to do so.
As someone who has worked at multiple corporations and tried various project management tools, I must say Linear is the "dream" app I've always wanted. From the shortcuts to its seamless UI design, it turns checking progress and ticking off to-dos into enjoyable tasks rather than a burden. I would say this app indirectly boosts our team's productivity by at least 20%.
The cleanest task management product out there. Great to start out with, for both personal & work. Only downside is that it doesn't feel as robust as something like Asana with custom fields & multiple project assignments.
When Jira and Trello are dying an long painful death - Linear will probably take over more and more of my project management tooling. At the moment I'm just too lazy to switch everything - and a few automations are missing I'd need.
