I’m trying out Obsidian for taking notes, and this made me laugh.
I don’t mean to be all “BuT iT’s cLOseD SoURce” but you should give Logseq or Zettlr a try. They’re similar WYSIWYG markdown editors, but also FOSS. Zettlr also has vim keys.
Plus Obsidian is horrible at editing tables.
Also not a fan about the closed source thing, but I like about Obsidian that it’s all just markdown. If I ever need to ditch it, I can keep and use my existing files as they are.
Would this also be possible with Zettlr or Logseq?
Been using Logseq for six months, and yes. It’s all just .md and media files referenced by relative links.
This was an important factor the choice to use it. Having used several note taking applications / systems, getting your data ‘out’ in a painless fashion is the #1 concern.
Thanks for the suggestions, I’m actually checking a couple new editors out as i’m looking for an alternative to OneNote. Just started messing with this one, but i’m not sure if i’ll settle for it yet.
I’ve heard good things about anytype.io, but I havent had the chance to use it personally.
I just commented this elsewhere, but I personally feel that their reasons for being closed source are worse than actually just being closed source.
There’s nothing there that really strikes me as disingenuous or bad. If they wanna be closed source, they can be, for whatever reason(s) they want. Does it mean a number of people (me included) are less likely to use it? Yes. But outside of our bubble here, most people don’t care about open vs closed source software.
There’s nothing disingenuous about that? Did we read the same things?
Being closed source doesn’t fix any of the issues they noted.
I’d rather they just say “I’m ashamed of my code”.
It’s extra work they don’t totally see the value in and they want to be able to sell their product? Those seem like pretty normal reasons not to maintain an open source project.
It is 5 minutes of work to use your source control tool, and have a read only view for other people.
Being open source doesn’t mean you have to accept PRs or pay for audits. It just means your source is… Open…
They also want to be able to support their families by making money through the Obsidian application, which could be more difficult in an open source environment.
This is the only one that seems really legit to me. That and the other commenter that said open source is more work, which is probably true, and if you’re not getting benefit it could be a net loss.
Logseq has an Android app. Zettlr doesn’t.
Edit: I tested Logseq. It has the basic functionality down, so for many it might be great. For me, though, it doesn’t come close to what is possible with the plugins of Obsidian. So for now I’ll stick with Obsidian.
Coming here to recommend Joplin, been using it for years and it’s a great note app, markdown + external editing supported, open source, CLI & GUI clients, encrypted… Does everything right!
Firstly Joplin is great note taking app and if that is all you want you really should go for it. I used it for years and was really happy.
But Obsidian is far more than just a note app. It like a Wikipedia page, you can add links within the text of your notes to another note. But they are also bi-directional, meaning you can see the incoming and outgoing links.
Making easy to use the related notes instead of just link to it. Sometimes you did not even think this note could use that note information and it shows you can connect them.
Not only that Dataview lets you live index and query your data. Letting me build a template and query that data dynamics.
Would love to but I’m not going to pay a subscription for sync (one time would be ok), or have my data on a random aws instance. And last time I checked there is no plugin for your own self defined sync storage like Nextcloud. Once there is, I’m having a go.
Thanks for the heads-up. I see that it has an auto-commit feature, that may be interesting, if it also works on iOS.
You can use FolderSync to sync your .md dir to nextcloud. It suited me well because I use foldersync for other purposes, too
I may need to add, that I use Obsidian across Win/Linux/iOS/macOS via remotely save. the sync solution needs to be able to work on all platforms. Logseq doesn’t have mobile plugins yet and iOS makes filesystem access a pain.
