For an opensource alternative to Obsidian checkout Logseq (1). I spent a while thinking obsidian was opensource out of my own ignorance and was disappointed when I learned it was not. I mistook the extensive github presence for the actual product being open.<p>1: <a href="https://logseq.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://logseq.com/</a>
Shout out to Obsidian, my most-used desktop and mobile app of the year. Absolute game changer. Hacker News showed me this and the book “How to Take Smart Notes” and it’s been an immense aid for difficult technical work, and plenty of other things as well.
I recently switched my note taking to Obsidian. I’d floated amongst apps, including Notion, Bear, Simplenote, and most recently Craft. When Craft started acting up, I decided it was time to redo my setup.<p>The standard advice for Obsidian is either to not touch the plugins, or install 100 of them after watching 50 hours of YouTube videos. It is possible to easily get into an obsidian rabbit hole for sure, but I did find a happy medium and I’m thrilled with my current setup. It’s not perfect but it’s quite workable.<p>Some of the quirks are tables - and it looks like that’s getting fixed. Thrilled about that. The mobile app is pretty wonky too but that’s not a huge priority.<p>Despite the quirks I’m more organized with my daily notes and project setup using obsidian than any app prior.<p>Great to see the team is continually updating an already great app.
I see that the recent releases have focused on tables and properties. The logical next step could be to integrate the two : creating a unified system of tables designed to handle properties — essentially, Notion-style databases. I'm aware of some existing plugins that tackle this, with a particularly ambitious one gestating for quite some time now [1], but I feel this could be a core plugin.<p>[1] <a href="https://github.com/blacksmithgu/datacore">https://github.com/blacksmithgu/datacore</a>
No mention of Foam? <a href="https://foambubble.github.io/foam/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://foambubble.github.io/foam/</a><p>Fine, I uhh, I'll speak for it.<p>Foam is to VSCode, what Org (and Org-Roam) are to Emacs.<p>As a former org-roam user, I ended up preferring it because my end goal was to convert my notes to HTML and blog posts, and org is poor at that as HTML is not valid org code whereas it is in Markdown. There's just a whole host of markdown-it plugins [1] out there to add footnotes and all sorts of things to Markdown, and Foam also understands Jekyll frontmatter YAML, which is perfect for blog post tags/categories.<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.npmjs.com/search?q=keywords:markdown-it-plugin" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.npmjs.com/search?q=keywords:markdown-it-plugin</a><p>And because it's just an extension to VSCode, it works with every other extension: <a href="https://foambubble.github.io/foam/user/getting-started/recommended-extensions" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://foambubble.github.io/foam/user/getting-started/recom...</a><p>This gives it similar power and flexibility to Org-Roam, as you can extend the model to improve the <i>editing</i> experience.<p>So why don't I use Obsidian, Logseq, and others? Because they're dedicated apps, and now I have to bring various half-baked plugins into them to give me the power my editor already affords me. With notes, half your time is spent editing, so why wouldn't you want your editing to be as close as possible?<p>Secondarily, nothing stops me from using everything altogether, since it's all Markdown, I <i>can</i> load up my note repo in Obsidian or Logseq and others, and continue editing in VSCode and Emacs!
Finally proper table editing! Why has it taken so long? That was my biggest gripe with Obsidian, so glad they've fixed it. The new table editing UI looks great. I guess I won't need the advanced tables plugin anymore.
<a href="https://www.zettlr.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.zettlr.com/</a> is a really close Open alternative.
I used to hop from one application to another then I realized almost all of them suited my needs so I settled with Joplin because I like the way the web clipper works.
SiYuan Note is a fantastic open source alternative to Obsidian and Notion, as it's like a mix of both, but open source and local-first.<p><a href="https://github.com/siyuan-note/siyuan">https://github.com/siyuan-note/siyuan</a>
I tried many, many note taking apps and the one that finally stuck was VS Code. I had been using VSC as my code editor daily for years so when it released "Profiles" I just created a "markdown" profile that contained all the markdown extensions, settings, customisations etc. that I needed and that's it. I realised this is perfect because there are no new keyboard shortcuts, UI or apps I have to learn. I sync all my notes to a private GitHub repo. It's fantastic.<p>Once I figure how to export my ad-hoc notes I've accumulated in my iPhone Notes app and sync it to the repo I will never need anything else.
The android app wants full access to the file system? With the "trust us, we'll only really access the folder you tell us to..."?<p>Am I reading that right?
I've been looking for a way to host my notes like a website locally. When I'm not writing but only want to refer to my notes, I'd much rather have something clean like that without the editor UI. Like a docusaurus instance.<p>Suggestions?
just in time for new year resolutioners. If only I could get back all the time I've wasted trying to build my "second brain", goofing around building some kind of connected graph nonsese. I cringe at all the time spent doing that nonsense deluding myself that it the way I am going to get organized and finally turn my life of procrastination and ennui around .<p>Now I spend most of my day chatting with chatgpt for work and personal life. If it could remember and build my second brain for me that would be amazing.<p>I really dont think any of these tools like notion, obsidian are really practical or aligned to way our brain works.
I am looking to move off simplenote. I rely to heavily on it, it is really good, very simple and great. But something this important needs to be self hosted in my opinion.
> As of 1.5.0, the Legacy editor has been completely removed from Obsidian.<p>This seems to be one of (the only?) notable change in 1.5.0, especially for legacy plugin devs. Also tags can’t end in a ‘/‘ now.
It looks like reinventing the wheel which is the world-wide-web: Documents of different kinds with links between them. I guess the graph view is semi-novel - the idea is not new, but you usually don't see browsers or website editors presenting these graphs.<p>Perhaps I'm missing something?