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Nice going. I've gone through quite the list of note taking tools from a bunch of unorganized text files, to Microsoft OneNote, to Evernote before it became a t

Nice going. I've gone through quite the list of note taking tools from a bunch of unorganized text files, to Microsoft OneNote, to Evernote before it became a total pile of molten garbage, Logseq, and finally settled on Obsidian. There's a healthy ecosystem of plug-ins, searching is highly performant, all of my files are just structured in folders as markdown files so there's zero vendor lock-in, has a very good mobile app, and I use git for easy sync / versioning. The only downside is that it's not open source.

szszrk 3y ago
What you disliked about Logseq? Are you good at self-organizing (were you before)? While the initial experience is super confusing and I barely knew what that tool is supposed to do, later on it turned out to be the first tool that helped me keep some structure in my notes. I love note taking but I'm horrible at it, chaotic and inconsistent. Daily notes plus the way logseq easily links articles gave me some decent notes. I even left those to my colleagues when I switched jobs and even plain markdown files were useful for them.
- bayindirh 3y ago
  Logseq is "Everything plus the kitchen sink" when compared to Obsidian out of the box. For me, I already have a daily planning and project management tool, and it's called Pagico. What I needed is a note taking application. Simple, down to earth, knowledge base. A successor to Zim wiki, I may say. That thing is Obsidian. I tried to resist to moving it for so long because it's closed source, but it creates value and extracts structure and knowledge from your Markdown files, locally and super-fast, without bogging you down. Also, logseq's webpage is very ambiguous. Tons of promises, no screenshots, you enter the live demo, it looks like a simple web page. In short, Logseq feels too big, feels too hard to start with, and demands too much at the first impression. If failed to get me, and I failed to get it.
  - arbitrandomuser 3y ago
    I hate it that all their explanations are videos and not articles I can read
  - Al-Khwarizmi 3y ago
    In which way does Obsidian "create value and extract structure and knowledge from your Markdown files"? I tried it a few months ago because of all the hype, and from a quick try I didn't see anything useful that my current choice (Joplin) didn't have, but from what you are saying, maybe I didn't try for long enough? I like Joplin, one of its strong points being that it's open source, but I'd be willing to switch if an alternative really adds value.
    - Brajeshwar 3y ago
      I like Obsidian on the Desktop and not much on the phone where I like iA Writer. As I manage the files and synced, I can use anything to access the files. I can use iA Writer on the Mobile and still access my files, while I edit that on Obsidian on the Desktop. Sometimes, I just open the whole folder in Sublime Text and start editing it or use Draw/Excalidraw to work on something. Obsidian being the primary but I'm not limited. My reasoning is to approach contents as data-first with tools on the top. Obsidian happens to be one such brilliant tool for now.
      - bayindirh 3y ago
        iA writer is a great tool for focused writing. I use it for authoring my blog posts, and it's "filler detection" does wonders.
    - bayindirh 3y ago
      > In which way does Obsidian "create value and extract structure and knowledge from your Markdown files"? It's search is extremely fast, plus with a bit of metadata, you can pack tons of information into a standard markdown file. Moreover, when you start to add more and more knowledge, you start to connect notes to each other, which creates a Zettelkasten-like connected notes web. I write gigantic notes generally, but even they have connections, and again the searching for linking is so instant, you can write at the speed of thought. I have a simple tree note organization scheme, and Obsidian can handle it extremely well, plus files are open on the filesystem. I can unleash another tool on top of that file tree, if I want to edit or analyze them. I still use Evernote for some personal notes, and Joplin is just the same thing, and its limitations on file/note organization is very limiting for my needs. Lastly, Obsidian vaults are completely isolated from each other, so the vault which I manage my small digital garden is completely isolated from my work vault. They are on different places, sycned differently, can have different plugins, etc. This is a very nice feature. TL;DR: Obsidian is a pure "knowledge/documentation" management tool and allows for creation at the speed of thought. It's unobtrusive and Markdown metadata is extremely powerful. Also leveraging internote-connections supercharges Obsidian.
  - utybo 3y ago
    Logseq is great, but I definitely agree that everything around it (docs, website, ...) is terrible. They really need to rework their marketing pitch and give proper docs. Right now you have docs scattered across 3 websites, and the only useful one is made in Logseq itself, which isn't a good system for scaling documentation.
    - kirso 3y ago
      The sad part is that the tool is really underrated. You don't need to even think where to put notes. All that overwhelm that all the folks are speaking about, just start writing in your daily page, when you look back -> you have a clear link. It actually kills ambiguity without having folders and having too much un-needed structure (obviously use-case varies). Logseq doesn't need plugins because a lot of it is already in-built (tasks, block-references, in-built queries). It reminds me of the discussion when people praise Next.js for all the packages, and ecosystem but its not a feature, there is a reason people building these.
      - bayindirh 3y ago
        I think an application's usefulness depends on how much you align with its design and mindset it brings to the table. For some people, stuffing pages into a notebook (a-la Evernote/Joplin) is fine. I use Evernote, and it's fine for most things. However when things start to get crowded, this model breaks down. I also don't like shoving things into an application and meta-sort it with tags and whatnot. I like structured work, because I can put clutter aside in the structure and focus on what I'm working on. Also, having the files as plain Markdown files is a plus for me, even if it doesn't have the block references. As I already said, I need Obsidian for document and knowhow management, and glorified text files are what I exactly want.
  - sciurus 3y ago
    > In short, Logseq feels too big, feels too hard to start with, and demands too much at the first impression. If failed to get me, and I failed to get it. This is interesting, because it wasn't my experience at all. I migrated from Roam to Logseq after I realized I didn't use enough of the fancier features to justify the price. Basically I open Logseq, take notes in my daily journal, and tag blocks so that I can easily pull them up by topic/person/etc later. That's all it took for me to get started, and also as far as I've felt the need to go. For better or worse I have no idea what other "kitchen sink" features it has.
    - bayindirh 3y ago
      I think, because the reason is what we want from our tools is different. I already use a much sophisticated tool for my tasks, and project planning (Pagico), and what I want is a bona fide desktop wiki which I want to store my technical research and howto docs (and share them in my digital garden). This is what Obsidian is. If I wanted something to organize my tasks and other things, I'd take a much different route. What I'm aiming to get is akin to these: [0] & [1] [0]: https://nick-black.com/dankwiki/index.php/Hack_on https://nick-black.com/dankwiki/index.php/Hack_on [1]: https://notes.joschua.io/ https://notes.joschua.io/
      - Sander3Utile 3y ago
        Hey I follow that first guy on Goodreads. Good taste in book he has.
- codethief 3y ago
  > What you disliked about Logseq? For me it was the fact that it's a pure outliner and I couldn't write free-form text. Everything had to be list.
Roark66 3y ago
>Evernote I _still_ have some notes in Evernote. Imagine my surprise when I logged in after maybe a year of not using it and now search in text notes is not working unless "you upgrade". WTF? The only good feature of everyone now is that it's easy to export ones notes (I hope that still works). (about Obsidian) >The only downside is that it's not open source Indeed, but a saving grace is that it can just store in a bunch of text files you can use any editor with. Some editors (neovim/emacs I think) have plugins to read/write obsidian's notes properly.
- viddo 3y ago
  FWIW, I exported all my Evernote notebooks just recently from my old free account. Used https://github.com/akosbalasko/yarle https://github.com/akosbalasko/yarle to convert them to Markdown. It also has support for various PKB formats, like Obsidian. Hope that helps!
- rubslopes 3y ago
  It got worse: 3 weeks ago Evernote announced that their free version will be limited to 50 notes https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/29/23981683/evernote-limit-free-plan-notebook https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/29/23981683/evernote-limit-...
Brajeshwar 3y ago
Wow! This is me. I'm not worried about the open-source part because, as you mentioned, we own the files and their organization. I will just walk out and still have everything I need with me. I'm kinda pretty well organized. If you wake me up in the middle of my slumber, I can tell you where I have kept something with a series of steps to make it easy for you to find. Even if not precise at times, I will have a way via a general direction. So, this works for something like Obsidian and will only work for things I know how the underlying things are organized. This is also why I lost Logseg - it was too smart for me and my ways.
gexla 3y ago
Same, and it took some months before the plugin ecosystem got to the point where I found it useful. I don't think I would go through that with another note taking app. And it would be difficult for another app to create such a big ecosystem.
Vingdoloras 3y ago
How does Obsidian's text editing experience compare to VSCode? I'm using VSC for everything at the moment, which includes a workspace roughly structured into GTD categories via subfolders, filled with markdown documents. The only thing that keeps me curious about Obsidian is the note linking/network visualization and features related to that. But I'm so used to having dev tool levels of text editing available in VSC that I can't bring myself to try switching Obsidian.
- jddj 3y ago
  Same here, but other side of the chasm. I use logseq for note keeping but I just want the text editing experience of vs code. I'm not sure why they all roll their own editor. Can't it be a plugin?
  - creesch 3y ago
    Fyi, if you are ever looking for a fun project you might be able to implement this. The vscode editor source is available as a library https://microsoft.github.io/monaco-editor/ https://microsoft.github.io/monaco-editor/
  - ParetoOptimal 3y ago
    Seeing vscode users want their knowledge base in their editor makes me think of the parallel to emacs users.
    - creesch 3y ago
      I think you might be confusing the two different meanings of editor here. 1. Editor as in a complete program that is VScode and everything it entails. 2. Editor as in the actual text editing experience with syntax highlighting, code completion, etc. You are likely thinking about the first type. Where the person you respond to is talking about the second one. The experience of editing markdown in VScode is a very pleasant one so I can see why people would want that editing experience in other markdown based note apps.
  - mratsim 3y ago
adhamsalama 3y ago
Try SiYuan Note. It's free and open source local-first mix of Notion and Obsidian. https://github.com/siyuan-note/siyuan https://github.com/siyuan-note/siyuan
canoebuilder 3y ago
Are you(or anybody) using the Obsidian iOS mobile app with git for sync/versioning? Is that possible?
aiisjustanif 3y ago
Weird that people find Obsidian before Joplin

szszrk 3y ago

What you disliked about Logseq? Are you good at self-organizing (were you before)? While the initial experience is super confusing and I barely knew what that tool is supposed to do, later on it turned out to be the first tool that helped me keep some structure in my notes. I love note taking but I'm horrible at it, chaotic and inconsistent. Daily notes plus the way logseq easily links articles gave me some decent notes. I even left those to my colleagues when I switched jobs and even plain markdown files were useful for them.

bayindirh 3y ago
Logseq is "Everything plus the kitchen sink" when compared to Obsidian out of the box. For me, I already have a daily planning and project management tool, and it's called Pagico. What I needed is a note taking application. Simple, down to earth, knowledge base. A successor to Zim wiki, I may say. That thing is Obsidian. I tried to resist to moving it for so long because it's closed source, but it creates value and extracts structure and knowledge from your Markdown files, locally and super-fast, without bogging you down. Also, logseq's webpage is very ambiguous. Tons of promises, no screenshots, you enter the live demo, it looks like a simple web page. In short, Logseq feels too big, feels too hard to start with, and demands too much at the first impression. If failed to get me, and I failed to get it.
- arbitrandomuser 3y ago
  I hate it that all their explanations are videos and not articles I can read
- Al-Khwarizmi 3y ago
  In which way does Obsidian "create value and extract structure and knowledge from your Markdown files"? I tried it a few months ago because of all the hype, and from a quick try I didn't see anything useful that my current choice (Joplin) didn't have, but from what you are saying, maybe I didn't try for long enough? I like Joplin, one of its strong points being that it's open source, but I'd be willing to switch if an alternative really adds value.
  - Brajeshwar 3y ago
    I like Obsidian on the Desktop and not much on the phone where I like iA Writer. As I manage the files and synced, I can use anything to access the files. I can use iA Writer on the Mobile and still access my files, while I edit that on Obsidian on the Desktop. Sometimes, I just open the whole folder in Sublime Text and start editing it or use Draw/Excalidraw to work on something. Obsidian being the primary but I'm not limited. My reasoning is to approach contents as data-first with tools on the top. Obsidian happens to be one such brilliant tool for now.
    - bayindirh 3y ago
      iA writer is a great tool for focused writing. I use it for authoring my blog posts, and it's "filler detection" does wonders.
  - bayindirh 3y ago
    > In which way does Obsidian "create value and extract structure and knowledge from your Markdown files"? It's search is extremely fast, plus with a bit of metadata, you can pack tons of information into a standard markdown file. Moreover, when you start to add more and more knowledge, you start to connect notes to each other, which creates a Zettelkasten-like connected notes web. I write gigantic notes generally, but even they have connections, and again the searching for linking is so instant, you can write at the speed of thought. I have a simple tree note organization scheme, and Obsidian can handle it extremely well, plus files are open on the filesystem. I can unleash another tool on top of that file tree, if I want to edit or analyze them. I still use Evernote for some personal notes, and Joplin is just the same thing, and its limitations on file/note organization is very limiting for my needs. Lastly, Obsidian vaults are completely isolated from each other, so the vault which I manage my small digital garden is completely isolated from my work vault. They are on different places, sycned differently, can have different plugins, etc. This is a very nice feature. TL;DR: Obsidian is a pure "knowledge/documentation" management tool and allows for creation at the speed of thought. It's unobtrusive and Markdown metadata is extremely powerful. Also leveraging internote-connections supercharges Obsidian.
- utybo 3y ago
  Logseq is great, but I definitely agree that everything around it (docs, website, ...) is terrible. They really need to rework their marketing pitch and give proper docs. Right now you have docs scattered across 3 websites, and the only useful one is made in Logseq itself, which isn't a good system for scaling documentation.
  - kirso 3y ago
    The sad part is that the tool is really underrated. You don't need to even think where to put notes. All that overwhelm that all the folks are speaking about, just start writing in your daily page, when you look back -> you have a clear link. It actually kills ambiguity without having folders and having too much un-needed structure (obviously use-case varies). Logseq doesn't need plugins because a lot of it is already in-built (tasks, block-references, in-built queries). It reminds me of the discussion when people praise Next.js for all the packages, and ecosystem but its not a feature, there is a reason people building these.
    - bayindirh 3y ago
      I think an application's usefulness depends on how much you align with its design and mindset it brings to the table. For some people, stuffing pages into a notebook (a-la Evernote/Joplin) is fine. I use Evernote, and it's fine for most things. However when things start to get crowded, this model breaks down. I also don't like shoving things into an application and meta-sort it with tags and whatnot. I like structured work, because I can put clutter aside in the structure and focus on what I'm working on. Also, having the files as plain Markdown files is a plus for me, even if it doesn't have the block references. As I already said, I need Obsidian for document and knowhow management, and glorified text files are what I exactly want.
- sciurus 3y ago
  > In short, Logseq feels too big, feels too hard to start with, and demands too much at the first impression. If failed to get me, and I failed to get it. This is interesting, because it wasn't my experience at all. I migrated from Roam to Logseq after I realized I didn't use enough of the fancier features to justify the price. Basically I open Logseq, take notes in my daily journal, and tag blocks so that I can easily pull them up by topic/person/etc later. That's all it took for me to get started, and also as far as I've felt the need to go. For better or worse I have no idea what other "kitchen sink" features it has.
  - bayindirh 3y ago
    I think, because the reason is what we want from our tools is different. I already use a much sophisticated tool for my tasks, and project planning (Pagico), and what I want is a bona fide desktop wiki which I want to store my technical research and howto docs (and share them in my digital garden). This is what Obsidian is. If I wanted something to organize my tasks and other things, I'd take a much different route. What I'm aiming to get is akin to these: [0] & [1] [0]: https://nick-black.com/dankwiki/index.php/Hack_on https://nick-black.com/dankwiki/index.php/Hack_on [1]: https://notes.joschua.io/ https://notes.joschua.io/
    - Sander3Utile 3y ago
      Hey I follow that first guy on Goodreads. Good taste in book he has.
codethief 3y ago
> What you disliked about Logseq? For me it was the fact that it's a pure outliner and I couldn't write free-form text. Everything had to be list.

Roark66 3y ago

>Evernote I _still_ have some notes in Evernote. Imagine my surprise when I logged in after maybe a year of not using it and now search in text notes is not working unless "you upgrade". WTF? The only good feature of everyone now is that it's easy to export ones notes (I hope that still works). (about Obsidian) >The only downside is that it's not open source Indeed, but a saving grace is that it can just store in a bunch of text files you can use any editor with. Some editors (neovim/emacs I think) have plugins to read/write obsidian's notes properly.

viddo 3y ago
FWIW, I exported all my Evernote notebooks just recently from my old free account. Used https://github.com/akosbalasko/yarle https://github.com/akosbalasko/yarle to convert them to Markdown. It also has support for various PKB formats, like Obsidian. Hope that helps!
rubslopes 3y ago
It got worse: 3 weeks ago Evernote announced that their free version will be limited to 50 notes https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/29/23981683/evernote-limit-free-plan-notebook https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/29/23981683/evernote-limit-...

Brajeshwar 3y ago

Wow! This is me. I'm not worried about the open-source part because, as you mentioned, we own the files and their organization. I will just walk out and still have everything I need with me. I'm kinda pretty well organized. If you wake me up in the middle of my slumber, I can tell you where I have kept something with a series of steps to make it easy for you to find. Even if not precise at times, I will have a way via a general direction. So, this works for something like Obsidian and will only work for things I know how the underlying things are organized. This is also why I lost Logseg - it was too smart for me and my ways.

gexla 3y ago

Same, and it took some months before the plugin ecosystem got to the point where I found it useful. I don't think I would go through that with another note taking app. And it would be difficult for another app to create such a big ecosystem.

Vingdoloras 3y ago

How does Obsidian's text editing experience compare to VSCode? I'm using VSC for everything at the moment, which includes a workspace roughly structured into GTD categories via subfolders, filled with markdown documents. The only thing that keeps me curious about Obsidian is the note linking/network visualization and features related to that. But I'm so used to having dev tool levels of text editing available in VSC that I can't bring myself to try switching Obsidian.

jddj 3y ago
Same here, but other side of the chasm. I use logseq for note keeping but I just want the text editing experience of vs code. I'm not sure why they all roll their own editor. Can't it be a plugin?
- creesch 3y ago
  Fyi, if you are ever looking for a fun project you might be able to implement this. The vscode editor source is available as a library https://microsoft.github.io/monaco-editor/ https://microsoft.github.io/monaco-editor/
- ParetoOptimal 3y ago
  Seeing vscode users want their knowledge base in their editor makes me think of the parallel to emacs users.
  - creesch 3y ago
    I think you might be confusing the two different meanings of editor here. 1. Editor as in a complete program that is VScode and everything it entails. 2. Editor as in the actual text editing experience with syntax highlighting, code completion, etc. You are likely thinking about the first type. Where the person you respond to is talking about the second one. The experience of editing markdown in VScode is a very pleasant one so I can see why people would want that editing experience in other markdown based note apps.
- mratsim 3y ago

adhamsalama 3y ago

Try SiYuan Note. It's free and open source local-first mix of Notion and Obsidian. https://github.com/siyuan-note/siyuan https://github.com/siyuan-note/siyuan

canoebuilder 3y ago

Are you(or anybody) using the Obsidian iOS mobile app with git for sync/versioning? Is that possible?

aiisjustanif 3y ago

Weird that people find Obsidian before Joplin