I'm trying out Obsidian for taking notes, and this made me laugh.
this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2023
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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?
Exactly, that and the mobile app. Having simple markdown files and ability to sync them with Syncthing are just too good.
I don’t know about Zettlr, but last I looked at Logseq it worked off markdown files similar to Obsidian.
That said, I felt Logseq wasn’t quite ready for prime time when I was doing my research a year or so ago. So I went with Obsidian and have been very happy with it.
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.
https://obsidian.rocks/why-isnt-obsidian-open-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".
This one is debatable. Without expert eyes, open source code doesn’t do much to guarantee safety. Expert eyes aren’t necessarily expensive, but for non-super-popular projects, they are hard to entice. Can you spot a cross site request forgery attack vector at a glance? Have you used open source software without checking for this specific attack vector in all relevant code? So, as stated, this is basically true.
This is true. You need those experts from point one to check if contributed code introduces security vulnerabilities. Code is work^2. Work to write and work to review. (Also work to maintain, so work^3, but whatever.)
This seems false, but is phrased super oddly. I mean, nothing lasts forever, so sure, but open source code is essentially available for as long as someone is interested in it enough to preserve it, so I would generally disagree.
This is unambiguously true. I maintain several fairly popular open source libraries, and they take work. I also see the benefit in maintaining them as open source projects, but that is my own discretion, as a fan of open source software. If I were more worried about profit, I could definitely see this as a barrier to releasing my code as open source, considering I need to pay those engineers for the work they do just maintaining the project as an open source project.
This is also not to be confused with a source-available project, where the source code is freely available, but not necessarily under an open source license, which can be much easier to maintain.
I was about to comment that their website also claims "legitimate interest" to create a personalised ad profile on me, before I realised that that is not the official Obsidian website. But yeah, the stated reasons are dumb.
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...
Even if you don't accept PRs, you'll get people who want you to. Having the source open will generate a good amount of support email that is about modifications to your code. People can't help it.
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.
Open source does not mean open license.
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.
The Android app is horrible btw. If I had to guess it's just a desktop web page scaled down and packaged in an app.
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.
I tumbled across Zettlr when I was looking at maybe replacing Zim for my homebrew TTRPG games at the table. I use DokuWiki online. I ran my Star Wars game through it. Pretty impressive.
Zettlr is a great program, but to recommend it while bashing Obsidians table editing seems interesting. I've never used Obsidian so I can't say how good their implementation is, but I know I've struggled alot with the Zettlr tables...
There's a table edit plug in that makes it easy. The gripe I have with it is not being able to right-justify numbers (or maybe I haven't looked close enough)
I would in theory prefer FOSS. But what is the situation with plugins and themes? Can I use obsidian plugins with any of those? If not, I'm probably not gonna switch.
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.
It's just markdown. You should know how to use git, use it.
No.
there's a git plugin which can sync with any git server
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 set it to automatically commit and push every x minutes and pull every time you start the app.
just saw after you replied :) but unfortunately that is only available on desktop.
I've got it running on Android as well if that's what you're looking for
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.