How is Gnote different from Tomboy?

Solution 1:

Gnote is a port of Tomboy to C++.

Pros: Faster, smaller memory footprint.
Cons: (Still) No synchronization support (e.g. Ubuntu one), which is a dealbreaker for most people.

You can read about the author's motives here.

It is the same note taking application, including most of the add-ins (more are to come). Synchronization support is being worked on.

Tomboy is not going to be installed by default in Ubuntu 12.04 - I suppose Gnote may take its place some day.