This seems like a solid choice for those of use looking for a obsidian-like replacement. Personally tried all editors out there, but nothing is able to defeat my love for obsidian. However, i look forwards to trying out Haptic when it comes to Linux. Currently it only supports Web and Mac. But state Linux and Windows support is on-the-way.
Kudos to selfh.st that provides consistent updates within this community and who shared this among other cool projects this week -> https://selfh.st/newsletter/2024-09-06/?ref=this-week-in-self-hosted-newsletter
I tried every single proprietary and open source , even self host , markdown notes apps. Obsidian is … just, i always go back to it. I have it with the plugin “Remotely Save”, synced encrypted with OneDrive. It just works, every fucking where with its own app. solid as a petrified dump
I’m early onto my journey with this and tossing between logseq and obsidian. Thoughts?
Logseq and Obsidian are only similar on the first look, but very different usage wise. Both are very open with a plugin system, and you can modify them to turn them into one eachother.
So, if you want only FOSS, then Logseq is the only choices you have.
But Obsidian is, even though it’s proprietary, very sane. Open plug-in system, active community, great devs who don’t have much against FOSS, and more.
Obsidian
- More similar to a classic note taking app, like OneNote, but with a lot of features. Hierarchical structure, and more of an “essay” style, where you store a lot of text in one page.
- Page linking is only done when you think it makes sense
- Has been a bit longer around than Logseq, feels more polished
- Great sync and mobile app, which support plugins from what I’ve heard
Logseq
- Non-linear outliner. Every page is on the same level, but within a text passage, the indentation matters (parent-child-relationship)
- You create a LOT of more pages. Most of my pages are empty. They are mainly there for linking topics. I rarely create pages manually.
- The journal is where you write most stuff. You then link each block to a page.
- Logseq a bit “special”. May not be for everyone. I for example am a bit of a disorganised thinker, who mentally links a lot of knowledge and throws concepts around all the time. Logseq is my second nature, because it’s more flexible. My GF on the other hand is more structured, and prefers something like Apple Notes, or, if she would care about note taking, something like Obsidian.
- The mobile app isn’t great. It’s fine when I’m not at home, but the desktop version is the “proper” one, and mobile/ iPad a second class citizen.
- Sync is only experimental for now. It will soon be officially supported (hopefully) and self hostable, but it worked fine for me.
Obsidian is just sooooo good. I hate that you (technically 😉) have to pay for multi device sync, but the UI and UX are excellent, especially if you’re already proficient in markdown
Haven’t tried logseq before, so I can’t compare
You need to list out your requirements. What do you want to do? Where do you need your data? Do you care about open source? Self-hosting? Do you have an idea how your content will be organized? Will you ever need to tap into it as data? Etc
I have notes fairly sporadically all over the place. Some for work for compartmentalised projects that I won’t need to see again once the project is done. Then for personal creative projects. Then for personal research projects. I like tracking data for sure. I’d prefer to have one central place for everything. I like things organised and get very into organisation but I’d love some kind of AI organisation element. Not sure either of these do that though. I do have my own server and like self hosting. I do care about foss but will sometimes choose a more appropriate tool over a foss one. I need the data on my phone and accessible either on a cloud or syncable or something. I’m currently dipping my toe into Obsidian with syncthing/Dropbox. I won’t pay for any monthly fees but don’t mind paying one off payments.
See me comment above
https://lemmy.ca/comment/11490137
I don’t like that obsidian not fully open source but the plugins can’t be beat if you use them. Check out some youtube videos for top 20 plugins etc. Takes the app to a whole new level.
I don’t see any problems with that. Even I (and probably most others here), who are FOSS advocates, think Obsidian’s model is fine.
The devs surely get why FOSS is important, and try their best to match the pros of open source. They even stated that if the company goes bankrupt or they stop developing the app, they’ll open source it.
One major thing they do absolutely right is how the notes get stored. On other note taking apps, it’s a proprietary database, often “in the cloud”, where your notes get hold hostage. Here, they’re just Markdown files, and the whole thing is pretty open, encouraging a strong community.
It’s similar to Valve/ Steam. Proprietary, but liked by most Linux people.
Any comparisons to SilverBullet.md? It’s my favorite so far
How do you like the newer versions? I liked it in the beginning, but then there were breaking changes and new concepts and it started to feel a bit too complicated. So I am taking a break until things cool down
What issues did you have? I have updated recently and didnt notice any problems so far. Also do you have any suggestion for alternatives? For me personally silverbullet is great for desktop usage, not so much on mobile though.
I am not thinking of the most recent versions.
The query system was updated, around version 0.6 if i remember correctly. I don’t think the updates were bad, but some things broke and I am too old for “bleeding edge”. The template system was also updated at some point
I don’t have a great solution. I use syncthing to keep notes local on all devices and MarkText on desktop and Zettel Notes on android.
what i really liked about silverbullet was that it had offline support. but there were made some changes there as well along the way, and for me it became less stable after it became optional. But I haven’t actively used it for some time. I still got an instance running tho
What mobile issues do you have? I use it both on desktop and mobile with sync mode turned on in the PWA.
I like it, it seems pretty stable to me. I didn’t use it much before the query/template stuff was changed. I think both are fine right now, but don’t really know what it looked like before.
There’s also “space-script” now which is basically like mini javascript plugins you can write inside your notes. It’s what drew me away from trilium in the end.
I don’t blame you for taking a break if you ran into breaking changes though. That’s one benefit to keeping your notes in regular markdown files too.
yes, regular markdown notes has been a good decision 😅
In the beginning, the query results were stored in the markdown files, which could be useful if reading them in another app. But now I just get the query code. I think there were reasons
I’m glad to hear things have cooled down. Does it take much effort to understand and use the templating stuff? I just remember templates got pushed to a different view, and I needed some header tags to get it working
So you like spaces or not? I never got that far with silverbullet. And I haven’t used Trillium. I loved evernote when it came out. But it made me aware of the value of maintaining my own data.
Now I try to have data in a directory structure and not in databases
As soon as one of these Obsidian alternatives has real-time collaboration and a mobile interface, I’m ready to switch.
The real power of obsidian is similar to why Raspberry Pi is so popular, it has such a large community that plugins are amazing and hard to duplicate.
That being said, I use this to live sync between all my devices. It works with almost the same latency as google docs but its not meant for multiple people editing the same file at the same time
Yeah, I need something to collaborate with my partner in realtime. We’ve got a hacky setup in Obsidian using dataview to join separate notes to a read-only one, so we don’t have collisions, but I would love something better.
local-first
web app
I’m confused, which is it?
It’s a web app wrapped in Tauri. So basically a desktop app, but the web app can be hosted too.
