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The commercial tools are changing out of necessity. If they stop changing they die. I won't go deeper into this. The open source power tools are rock solid for

The commercial tools are changing out of necessity. If they stop changing they die. I won't go deeper into this. The open source power tools are rock solid for years and years. I have a setup 100% cli based that hasn't changed much in 10 years: mutt, offline-imap, notmuch-main, vim with plugins for what you need (wiki, calendar, todo, etc), git, python, etc. Everything in i3 in Linux. I think I spent hundreds of hours refining this setup. I am sure somebody will give me the comic strip from xkcd for this BUT: I am happy with my setup, I love tinkering with it and optimizing it. And my results at work reflect this, I never have to search for a file, an email, etc during a presentation or anything like that. While other people have their Windows desktop covered with folders and then some and sweat a lot fumbling on their work flows. Meaning they have failed by their standards. It's the result that matters, remember that. If you're not happy with the outcome you must be doing something wrong.

criddell 5y ago
> The commercial tools are changing out of necessity. If they stop changing they die. Change by itself is neither good nor bad. But change for the sake of change is rarely good. Evernote is a classic example for me. Sometime around 2014, it was perfect for me. The Windows application was small, fast, and easy to use. The web clipper solved a real problem for me and the mobile applications were good enough. I was on the $35 / year plan (and still am) which felt like a decent value. I loved hearing Phil Libin talk about building a company that will be around in 100 years. It made me believe they would be conservative and value stability and it was exactly what I wanted to hear. Today I'm working out how to move everything from Evernote to either Apple Notes or Obsidian. Evernote's Windows client got fat and slow and feels terrible to use. It's a bummer for me because I used to love the product.

criddell 5y ago

> The commercial tools are changing out of necessity. If they stop changing they die. Change by itself is neither good nor bad. But change for the sake of change is rarely good. Evernote is a classic example for me. Sometime around 2014, it was perfect for me. The Windows application was small, fast, and easy to use. The web clipper solved a real problem for me and the mobile applications were good enough. I was on the $35 / year plan (and still am) which felt like a decent value. I loved hearing Phil Libin talk about building a company that will be around in 100 years. It made me believe they would be conservative and value stability and it was exactly what I wanted to hear. Today I'm working out how to move everything from Evernote to either Apple Notes or Obsidian. Evernote's Windows client got fat and slow and feels terrible to use. It's a bummer for me because I used to love the product.