I’ve no problem with using LibreOffice for most of my document needs, but i haven’t found a good substitute for microsoft’s OneNote yet. I mainly use it to plan my RPG games and it helps a lot. What alternatives are there for organizing notes on linux, with similar features to those that OneNote provides?
I am surprised that no one has mentioned Rnote yet.
It is my favourite newly-created program for Linux. It is a relatively new app which supports annotating files and taking handwritten notes. You can import PDFs, set the page size to infinite or a fixed size (something OneNote can’t do), adjust the background to display grids or lines or dots or nothing with any spacing you like, input text with your keyboard, … It is available on Flathub for easy installation.
The only major downside is the following: Disclaimer: The file format is still unstable. It might change and break compatibility between versions.
For text-based notes I use Obsidian.
It isn’t open source, but it writes standard markdown files to disk, so I can switch programs whenever I like and I am not locked into the Obsidian ecosystem with my notes. That was the main reason why I decided against using Joplin, especially after my experience with converting recipes from Nextcloud Cookbook to markdown …
In general I am always trying to find a simple file-based solution for whatever I need to do. I want to be able to sync it with Syncthing instead of something fancier that requires a centralised web server or even relies on a cloud service.
For me the issue is “importing and exporting”. I just don’t want to have a note-taking software anymore where I can’t just read or edit plain text files with any text editor I happen to have.
I know I can export my notes from Joplin into markdown, but when I last tried it, I wasn’t satisfied with the result. I don’t remember it anymore, but exporting either didn’t preserve the file hierarchy, caused issues with linked images or I had to do something else with the markdown files.
I also didn’t like that Joplin had to sync with a local folder instead of just using the files directly. Overall it was just too complex for what I need (i. e. a glorified text editor).
But I don’t want to discourage anyone from using Joplin. Different people simply have different needs and Joplin is free to use so one should try it out and see for themselves. ;)
Synching works but if you have a server, Obsidian live sync is fantastic and seamless.
Actually that’s one of the main reasons I use Syncthing: It doesn’t need a server, as it is a peer-to-peer architecture. Unlike a centralised solution (cloud storage, Nextcloud, etc.) devices sync directly with each other. If they are on the same local network, you get to enjoy the full bandwidth of your local network. If they need to sync over a long distance over the internet, you are limited by the upload and download speeds of your internet provider, just like with centralised storage.
I have a server that serves as an introducer, so I don’t have to connect each device with every other device manually. But the server doesn’t need to be available once all devices are connected with each other.
Syncing continues to work without it for as long as I don’t reinstall any of the other devices. And even if I’d reinstall a device, I could delegate any other device to be the introducer or connect the devices manually with each other. It really is quite robust and fail-safe.
oh my god, this looks like the note app i’ve wanted for so long on linux!!
it’s still missing some text formatting features imo, but maybe i could hack those in a submit a patch… definitely keeping on my radar! thank you!
I was asking a similar question a few months ago, and my search turned up Joplin. It’s a free, open source app that works across multiple platforms and can sync data through a cloud service, either through Joplin’s own cloud storage or through a third-party cloud storage like Dropbox.
I use and enjoy Joplin. It’s much less feature-rich than OneNote, but if you’re predominantly using it to make text-based notes it does that with aplomb. I enjoy the cloud syncing, which is very useful combined with the fact that there’s an Android app (so I can access my notes on the go).
You might want to explain the features of OneNote, particularly the exact ones that you want. I get the impression that most people don’t know its organization structure.
My short input: it’s not just note taking. It’s has a tiered level of organization for the notes to categorize and quickly move about. The example I read was like it’s set up like you have multiple binders, with dividers in each, and pages (notes) within those. The page is very open ended, you can add text boxes in any spot, mixed with pics in any spot.
Your input is very accurate. Being able to write notes freely anywhere on the page, draw on it, attach images, links, etc is a big part of it, but one of the most important things to me is organizing different pages into dividers/binders like you said.
I set up various sections for quests, locations, npcs, etc, for my rpg worlds, and need it to be well organized and be able to link to different sections within the same binder. I also like to color code everything.
You should check out Affine.pro then. It’s FOSS and you can draw anywhere, it’s one of their selling points.
Thank you.
We are encouraged to use the Microsoft office suite if tools at work, and I still haven’t figured out how to use OneNote to improve my life.
I use onenote at work for all my notes. tabs and individual pages let me organize things so nothing is too long to scroll and find what I need. I can put text, screenshot, and hyperlink (to another part of one note or outside link), and a link to a pdf or excel file. I can add check boxes to whichever line items.
once I’ve got a nice set of notes, I can share either the entire notebook, the section, or just that page with the next person. or if they’re a bit of a luddite, I can print it out and maintain format (mostly). the most recent version broke emailing a page, but if you’re still running an older version of one note, it embeds it, with formatting, without being a pdf.
got something you need to paste in all the time? I’ve got one page where each text box is one copy/paste comment. clicking the header automatically selects all the text in just that box.
like OP, I tend to use one note at home for D&D, but if I can find something just as good I’m happy to try it. work leaves me with MS Office.
I looked at Joplin and Obsidian for the kind of notetaking I do and settled on Obsidian. To be honest, both have more features than I use. I like Obsidian because it’s based on Markdown, so you’re not tied to some oddball file format. But you should try them out and see which one fits your work style.
Joplin also uses markdown, and it has the advantage of being open source.
…in a database file. That and the awful android app had me look elsewhere. Too bad really, FOSS and self host options with it are great.
I recently settled on Obsidian too. It’s proprietary software, but the text files themselves are in simple markdown and readable in a text editor. Additionally, you can sync across multiple devices using their paid service (which works flawlessly for everything) or set up sync yourself for free if you know how to host a couchdb instance yourself (works perfectly for everything except iOS, apparently).
The plugin support was baked in from the start so it’s extremely flexible.
I wasn’t worried about it being proprietary until I saw the founder reasoning for not having the source be open under a nonpermissive licence.
https://obsidian.rocks/why-isnt-obsidian-open-source/
I decided to go with logseq because of it.
It also syncs with all my devices using my own servers, instead of needing to trust obsidian/logseq.
That’s fair, the privacy concerns are not ultimately addressable with a closed-source application. I can encrypt communication and the db itself since I am self-hosting it, but ultimately I’m using the obsidian app on desktop and mobile so I don’t know where the data is going unless I specifically manage it’s network usage etc which is a ton of extra work.
I haven’t actually started taking notes with obsidian yet, I just got it setup. But the plugin support is…massive. IDK.
Yes I probably should have implemented that, but the Obsidian plugin implementation (“Self-hosted Live sync”) appears to work almost shockingly well. I was amazed by how easy it was to setup . Setting up a couchdb instance took more time than getting sync going across all my devices, and couchdb wasn’t that hard either.
I’m not sure what features of OneNote you are talking about, but maybe logseq will suit your needs.
I switched from OneNote to Logseq. Its feature set is pretty much completely different, but in the end I realized it’s fine with me and resulted in my notes being more useful.
The main downside that I see now is that it’s kind of slow - much faster than the Electron version of OneNote was last time I used it, but slower than old native OneNote app or Obsidian. Otherwise its main differences from Obsidian are that in Obsidian the basic building unit is a page, whereas in Logseq it’s a paragraph (and, usually, its sub-paragraphs - it’s an outliner), which Obsidian can only do with plug-ins and not as seamlessly, and that with Obsidian you pretty much need to use community plug-ins, whereas with Logseq a lot of the functionality is built-in.
It’s open-source and uses markdown, not completely standard, but close enough for the files to be entirely usable if Logseq ever dies. Its community is smaller than with Obsidian, which is a downside, but it’s not exactly obscure either.
Really probably the most important thing about Obsidian and Logseq is to read an article or watch a video about how automatic backlinking works. It’s especially useful for something like Zettelkasten, but it also works for more “normal” approaches as well as concepts like Getting Things Done.
Both are OK tools and are similar in many ways, but they’re quite different from OneNote. Downside of both is that synchronization between devices sometimes creates issues unless you use their paid service.
