Obsidian is really good. Very feature-rich and customizable.
I personally prefer Joplin for a couple of reasons. It’s fully open source and while it has less features and customizability, I also feel it keeps out of my way more to allow me to focus purely on taking notes and not messing around with other features. Obsidian encourages me to play with its extra features more, which for my case usually just reduces the productivity of my note-taking.
Probably just a me-thing. I tend to gravitate to more straightforward and minimalist solutions generally.
I’m sort of the opposite. I liked Joplin but found myself needing the features of Obsidian. I do know what you mean about Obsidian getting in the way. While it’s easy to start using it, there is a bit of a learning curve to using it well. And it can be a little quirky-annoying at times.
I think that’s one reason there are so many software offerings in this space. There’s a wide range of preferences when it comes to features vs simplicity.
For me, Obsidian is just about perfect without any extensions, but I’m also glad it is extensible if you need them. The configurability and customization, while using standard markup, and keeping the vault storage sizes small were the major pros for me.
Some other products I’ve tried in this space were just too much for me. Huge save files, overdone UXs, and proprietary formats. Joplin and Obsidian were both a breath of fresh air when I found them.
I switched to Joplin after dumping the fully enshittified Evernote earlier this year. Joplin’s entry and reading interface is straight up terrible, and I sorely miss the auto-ocr search from Evernote, but it’s overall layout basic enough to be usable.
Obsidian is great; I was a happy user for a couple years. But I recently switched to Logseq and I think I’m already liking it more, and it’s because of something Logseq doesn’t do.
Obsidian lets you write a full markdown file, so step one is deciding how to write something down. Is it a nested list? Or a table? Or headings and subheadings with paragraphs?
In Logseq, everything is a nested list. This feels like a limitation, but I’ve been preferring it. The decision is made for you: you’re going to jot this information down as a list. So then you just start writing it.
People often tout that Logseq is open source, and while that is great, IMO there is also a design consideration that makes it better. Pretty much any kind of information you want to write down can be represented as a nested list. Doing it that way keeps everything simple, consistent, and more searchable. (Logseq’s built-in querying feature seems to be more powerful than Obsidian’s Dataview plugin, although I can’t say much about it since I haven’t really played with it yet.)
Both Obsidian and Logseq save (kinda) standard markdown files, so if you spend a lot of time in a plain text editor, you can still use that. You don’t lose anything by editing a file in a separate editor – they will both parse and re-index the file next time you view it in the respective app.
Logseq is the only note taking system that has clicked with me, by lowering the mental overhead at the time of adding notes. I just throw it in there without any considerations while still feeling like it’s not going to get lost. Later I may revisit the day’s journal and add tags or connect other information, move a block into its own page, etc.
In Logseq, everything is a nested list. This feels like a limitation, but I’ve been preferring it. The decision is made for you: you’re going to jot this information down as a list. So then you just start writing it.
I really appreciate you posting this. I’m a long-time Obsidian user, and an Evernote user before that, and I never “got” Logseq. I just couldn’t understand what people saw in an app that didn’t let you “write” anything. I’ve tried to start using Logseq so many times and just given up because the interface made no sense.
Thanks to your comment I finally get it! I prefer to be using something open-source, so I’m going to give Logseq another go, now that I finally understand it, and see how that approach feels.
Do you know cherryTree and if yes, how it compares to the two?
I have not heard of cherrytree before, I’ll check it out.
CherryTree is way clunkier, IMO, and has too many irrelevant options that get in the way, particularly around formatting. Obsidian is just markdown, so you don’t have the option of spending 15 minutes trying to figure out why code blocks are showing up as dark text on light background even though you’re in dark mode, which was my last experience in CherryTree. Looking and cross referencing documents is also super easy; I’m not sure if CherryTree even does that.
Kinda surprised I had to scroll this far down to find logseq. I’ve started using it in university and it’s been a life saver. I love the idea that everything is in these nested blocks, so I can just hammer down notes about whatever super quick with no setup or thinking about it. I just plunk my laptop down, open it up and go to town.
LogSeq also supports Org (which is what it was originally designed for), which is phenomenal for an Emacs user like me.
They make some great RPGs ;P
I love it, but I wish it were open source. I have since switched to LogSeq, and now I’m even trying out TiddlyWiki.
Oh boy. Weve all been there.
Stay hydrated.
I’m just switching from TiddlyWiki to Obsidian lol. Have not looked at Logseq though.
I downloaded obsidian, but I haven’t used it yet because I’m intimidated and don’t know where to start. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Nice app, like the idea of it being just plain text, but will stick to one note myself. The synch service is a must for me, and don’t want to pay for another service, when onenote and onedrive synch all that I need.
An interesting app nevertheless and am sure will suit many users.
There’s lots of alternate, free and open source syncing solutions. I use syncthing myself.
Like another person said, many ways to sync. I use Resilio personally and love it.
Try Notion. I changed from OneNote to it and don’t regret it.
100% agree that Notion is fantastic compared to OneNote. I also switched back in 2018.
Unfortunately, their mobile app is still fairly sub-par, their data format is proprietary and not markdown, and it is only slightly cheaper than Obsidian Sync. Also, their integration system has basically gone nowhere. Which sucks because it could be good. I also have lost data on numerous occasions due to their sync system and their official policy is “oops”. In that respect, OneNote is better.
I used Notion for about 5 years before switching to Obsidian recently. Notion was far better than anything id used and generally it is a good tool, but i also was never able to make notion work as well for me as Obsidian, esp. in a way that i optimistically keep information in it. Notion often was just enough effort (esp when on the go with mobile) that i just simply could never use it to its full potential.
However, obsidian, imo, does require some plugins to meet my needs. But i think this is a good thing. Projects basically does everything i like about Notions databases. Dataview takes care of database views.
Joplin user here. What does obsidian have that I might want? I remember briefly trying it years ago and disliking it.
Joplin stores its files inside a database. Obsidian stores all notes as individual plaintext Markdown files.
In the first instance, that’s clearly more future-proof and robust - your notes are immediately available in any application without a layer of abstraction. You can’t have a single file corrupt and destroy all your notes.
I vastly prefer it for that reason. I want to know these notes are still going to work fine in 10 years, and be easily accessible.
I use Joplin for a simple notes app mostly for my phone but I do have it on my desktop and sync. What I do not use it for is my desktop notes collection which ia several thousand notes pages some quite big. I use Zim for that. It is a desktop Wiki.
I do not use Obdidian but it seems like knowledge base and linking is what people rave about. These are the ways in which I use Zim for example.
Write 4000 notes
Get a new device
Sync
Die waiting
I do miss joplin, but not cuz it looked good or cuz it was good at syncing
Looks like Obsidian’s sync is $8/mo and is a bit messy to sync otherwise, if sharing between Android and Windows. Not a fan of that at all. Joplin sync just works.
Therns an addon that lets you use dropbox, oneD, aws3, or custom
Been on a Notesnook kick myself
I enjoy using Obsidian, mostly because it’s faster than Notion, and it’s one of the few Notion alternatives that has good and fast table editing support.
Better table editing than many other markdown editors, but I wouldn’t call it very good for a note taking app.
May I offer that it really depends on your note-taking style? I’ve been using it since July having come from linear note-taking on Cornell NTS. It’s way faster and much more interlocked once you get past the slight learning curve.
I use foam for vscode. Works great, is codium compatible, and is open source
This. Foam is awesome and it’s what I use.
Also I really like how it’s just a folder full of documents so if I need something that foam can’t do (like a proper spreadsheet with formulas) I can just use another product for that and save the file in the same folder alongside my Foam notes.
The only thing is it’s not a complete package. You do need to combine it with other VSCode extensions and a sync platform. Also VSCode doesn’t run (well) on a phone.
Commenting to remind myself to check this out. Thanks.
On the topic of note taking programms.
Is there anything like onenote that is linux compatible, especially for handwritten notes? The closest in regards to decent handwriting support I could find was xournal++ but that felt kind of limiting to me especially without the infinite canvas and the ability to switch notes within the program (think onenote sidebar)
There really isn’t. I hunted for a while before I gave up and bought an android tablet for hand writing notes.
What do you use on android? The main thing I want linux compatibility for is for reading my notes on my computer, not for actually creating them. I thought about just annotating PDFs directly but I’m not sure how good that will work
I used Flexcil because of its ability to import and export pdfs. The files it makes aren’t really portable but they can be shared by exporting.
If you’re using Android then just use Onenote on Android and use the web version of Onenote to read them on Linux
That’s basically what I’m doing right now but the web version sucks in my opinion. Embedded content takes forever to load since and it’s not cached across sessions which makes quickly switching between multiple pages annoying
I’d love to get into using Obsidian but it overwhelms me and freaks me out and also I just don’t know how to best utilize it for my personal work cases…I.e, how to blend professional/personal/creative uses into one all in app experience with Obsidian.
Check out this plugin for it!
It’s goal is to lower the barrier to entry for obsidian substantially.
As for different use cases, you can create different “vaults” for different applications. For example, I have a vault for work, and a vault for personal. They’re basically just different folders on your computer, but it helps keep differentiation.
I love the idea of it, but it hasn’t clicked yet. It never occurs to me to even tag things in order to leverage my notes as a mind map/second brain.
The absence of a clean means of using it from multiple devices and syncing between them without their cloud service is kind of disappointing. The git community plugin is godawful to set up on mobile/tablet, something native that handles git behind the scenes would be excellent.
Ultimately, what I’d like is obsidian but with the interface of confluence.
I’ve been meaning to try it, maybe this will push me to stop using Samsung awful note app.
Tried it, felt it was too limited with just markdown. Feature wise i prefer Notion, but i don’t like it’s ongoing feature creep with AI implementation or it’s pricing model.
So if there’s any note taking apps out there with a database page type or proper tables, do let me know.
Check out Anytype it’s pretty much just an open source Notion, I like it a lot
I’m a happy Notesnook user, here. And they have tables.
@TheLastOfHisName @stagen Ditto.
O use, and self hosted synching for joplin.
I have also looked into logseq which has some of the additional features that people like, but the app was too slow and ubstabled.
