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How has no one mentioned Rnote ?
It has good drawing, selection and other stuff with an infinite canvas while being pretty configurable.
Yeah Rnote definitely comes closest to OneNote, in the Linux/FOSS space.
Obsidian is a great alternative. A plugin called obsidian_ink is actively attempting to replicate the OneNote experience (and is quite successful in my opinion).
The other plugin I've found very useful is called Hamdwriting and has a lot of online support (including videos by its dev).
I like rnote. It's not super feature-complete, but it's still really nice to use. Has an infinite canvas to write on, pretty clean UI/UX, has no problems taking my wacom tablet as input.
Joplin, I also self host my server and sync between my devices.
Joplin's hand drawing is horrible.
Aside from basic stuff like a ruler and backgrounds missing, it's force recognition is made so it makes the whole line thicker, and once its thick it does not become thin once I don't press on it anymore
Also, PDF imports are missing, and the integration of handwriting into the note itself is very poor (just a link with a PNG render)
Joplin's hand drawing is horrible.
Aside from basic stuff like a ruler and backgrounds missing, it's force recognition is made so it makes the whole line thicker, and once its thick it does not become thin once I don't press on it anymore
Fair enough, though there are plugins with other drawing editors. Maybe one of them fits the bill?
Also, PDF imports are missing
What kind of PDF imports are you talking about?
and the integration of handwriting into the note itself is very poor (just a link with a PNG render)
That’s probably a real limitation since it’s primary function is a markdown note taking app. It’s not as flexible as handwritten notes.
Obs: maybe Affine is of interest, they also have a comparison table with other note taking apps.
Affine is a bit weird, and not quite FOSS (source available and you can self-host it following their terms). But it fits a gap no one else quite fills, and I've been hosting it for a few people for a while.
So it’s the same as Joplin, the self hosted server is source available.
I'm trying to self-host but there's something wrong with my nginx config and I'm too exhausted after work to troubleshoot.
Ach, the joys of working in the IT industry.
Ach, the joys of working in the IT industry
Lol.
I’m assuming you’re using it as a reverse proxy? Funnily enough I never learned how to setup nginx, went straight to Traefik/Caddy. I can’t recommend Caddy enough, most services boil down to a 3-line config.
Yep, reverse proxy. I've got plenty of other reverse proxies set up, this one just won't work. Maybe it's my docker setup...
I have been desperately wanting a OneNote clone for years. Back in the early 2010s I used it for a massive project and it was absolute perfection. I’m talking about seriously heavy project with several users and many hundreds of pages, sections etc.
I’ve yet to find anything even approaching being close to as easy and well-organized and well-presented. I looked a little at Obsidian and I’ll try some more to learn it. OneNote took like a minute to learn and everything followed a standard intuitive design as most desktop applications of the day. I’ve been advised to look at Joplin, Obsidian and a few more, and I’ve given them a quick review but none even hold a candle to OneNote. It’s so sad because I’ve moved away from anything MS, and especially because it absolutely refuses to play well with any storage other than OneDrive, so I ended it when MS took away most of everyone’s included storage capacity. That was it for me.
I really wish we could just get an exact clone but one that let the data be on a local server. I would love to be able to use it on Linux and Android, and if possible, iOS. There’s just nothing that is as polished. One of MS’s best products ever. :-(
Huh, interesting. I had the opposite experience.
I mean the tabs are nice, but then everything is just a clusterfuck of randomly made pages, no tags, bad search, and pretty much only a filesystem of organization (especially in a team). Liked the hand-written to OCR feature though.
I only found obsidian a bit ago, but getting into wikilinks with every association to another note makes everything very findable, which is the most important if you are looking for a note you made 6 months ago but only know tertiary info about it.
To each their own!
I can totally see what you mean. I guess the thing is maybe due to my age, but coming from a good portion of my life during which organization and pattern-keeping was crucial to accessing your information, I became accustomed to very precise categorization and filing. Therefore I rarely use or need any kind of search mechanism due to not remembering where something is. Indeed, even my entire file system on clients and servers alike is very heirarachical and I only need to search when I need massive quantities of data that will invariably come from many sources.
I think searchability these days has rendered a sense of organization seem unnecessary by younger people. Even the idea of knowing what a file is and where it is, to many is a foreign concept.
But I get your point because depending on the size and scope of the project, especially with multiple participants, the idea of a single-minded structure is a joke.
Maybe I should dedicate some time to learning Obsidian. What I'd really like, to be honest, probably would be better with a personal wiki. I want a complete knowledgebase of everything I document, and that screams wiki. I could segregate stuff into their own projects but what's the benefit? None really. I realize that now. And I can alwyas have access restrictions based on authentication, so that's not a concern.
Thank you for sharing your insight. 😀
Logseq has whiteboards and in-note drawings
I switched to obsidian and haven't looked back. It doesn't appear to have stylus input in the core application (I don't need that), but it does look like there are a couple of community plugins that enable the support. Not sure how good they are though.
I personally use the Excalidraw plugin on my iPad and it works pretty good.
Have you tried saber?
https://github.com/saber-notes/saber/wiki/install
I only use it on Android so I'm not sure if Linux has the same capabilities, but it's similar to xournal++ but with more of a focus on building up a library of notes rather than marking up PDFs.
Nice. I had not seen saber. Just installed it on my laptop and phone, and got it connected to my next cloud instance.
Like others have said Joplin's drawing is terrible, and xournal has been the best so far but is difficult to manage and review as a notebook.
Too bad I can't do a big sweep my xopp file to convert to saber to get a feeling with existing notes. https://github.com/saber-notes/saber/issues/677
Used it, until their pen input stopped working for half a year until it got fixed
So, yeah, I'll pass
Etherpad https://etherpad.org/
I was deeeep in the OneNote eco-system. I forced myself out of it and spent a lot of time finding the best alternative so I can save you some time: The answer is Obsidian.
But to get to even 60% of what OneNote does, you need a fair amount of plugins, which lowers stability somewhat and, having tried the three biggest sync systems, you might as well go straight to paying for their sync. The self-hosted sync options do not work reliably.
Logseq?
I don't use pen input, so I don't know if that works well or not, but it has drawing capability, can import PDFs to allow for highlighting and linking to contents
It's now split into the (original) markdown version and a DB version intended for realtime colaboration... so might meet some of your needs?
i use Joplin hosted in NextCloud for multi devices. Not sure of it drawing ability though?
No. I've been looking for ages. I use self-hosted Affine now, but this is not a direct replacement for all features of OneNote.
Short answer: no
Long answer: noooooooooo
this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2026
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