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I like Obsidian, but I really dislike the annoying design-philosophy which restricts my usage. For example, it's not possible to open any random folder with it

I like Obsidian, but I really dislike the annoying design-philosophy which restricts my usage. For example, it's not possible to open any random folder with it, you need to first register the folder as a vault, and then can open the vault. It also doesn't handle file links under Linux correctly. For whatever reason, any link pointing to a file inside the vault, disappears. Probably some flaw in their file system-abstraction, but that made several workflows for me impossible. And then there is the problem with every vault having its own isolated configuration. Basically, every vault has a folder ".obsidian" which contains all installed plugins, configurations and whatever. For any new vault, you need to link this folder, and for whatever reason they are still unable to let obsidian handle this automatically. Overall, Obsidian is designed to have mainly one, or at least just a very low number of vaults. But considering how poor obsidian scales with file numbers, this is not working well for every one. For me, this removed any motivation to use Obsidian for everything.

D13Fd 3y ago
Yeah it's just not meant to do that. That's how these apps have worked for over a decade. Obsidian is far from the first app to work this way. Notational Velocity, nvalt, Bear, Ulysses - they all worked that way IIRC. Having used these apps for a while, your comment sounds like “these fishing poles really suck as tent poles. Sure, I made them work by tying twigs to them, but they really don’t seem designed well for my use case of holding my tent up.”
- PurpleRamen 3y ago
  > That's how these apps have worked for over a decade. No, because Obsidian is not one of "these apps". It's not using a database, nor an organisational layer to abstract away the data. It's directly reflecting the filesystem and changes in it, and they are even advertising it with this. There is no technical reason for those limitations and bugs at all.
  - D13Fd 3y ago
    > It's not using a database, nor an organisational layer to abstract away the data. Neither do the other apps I mentioned. They use folders of text files (sometimes with a proprietary database option). They are not general purpose editors meant to just open whatever random file you want on the drive.
    - PurpleRamen 3y ago
      > Neither do the other apps I mentioned. Not true. I don't know about nvalt, but Notational Velocity Bear and Ulysses are all saving things in a local database and sync them to the cloud. And all have their own special view on the data too. There is no direct filesystem-access. > They are not general purpose editors meant to just open whatever random file I was talking about folders, not files. And not just any random file or folder, but obviously folders with files supported by Obsidian. Which BTW is also not limited to Markdown, thanks to the plugin-system. And Obsidian is even supporting this, but only through the clunky Interface.

D13Fd 3y ago

Yeah it's just not meant to do that. That's how these apps have worked for over a decade. Obsidian is far from the first app to work this way. Notational Velocity, nvalt, Bear, Ulysses - they all worked that way IIRC. Having used these apps for a while, your comment sounds like “these fishing poles really suck as tent poles. Sure, I made them work by tying twigs to them, but they really don’t seem designed well for my use case of holding my tent up.”

PurpleRamen 3y ago
> That's how these apps have worked for over a decade. No, because Obsidian is not one of "these apps". It's not using a database, nor an organisational layer to abstract away the data. It's directly reflecting the filesystem and changes in it, and they are even advertising it with this. There is no technical reason for those limitations and bugs at all.
- D13Fd 3y ago
  > It's not using a database, nor an organisational layer to abstract away the data. Neither do the other apps I mentioned. They use folders of text files (sometimes with a proprietary database option). They are not general purpose editors meant to just open whatever random file you want on the drive.
  - PurpleRamen 3y ago
    > Neither do the other apps I mentioned. Not true. I don't know about nvalt, but Notational Velocity Bear and Ulysses are all saving things in a local database and sync them to the cloud. And all have their own special view on the data too. There is no direct filesystem-access. > They are not general purpose editors meant to just open whatever random file I was talking about folders, not files. And not just any random file or folder, but obviously folders with files supported by Obsidian. Which BTW is also not limited to Markdown, thanks to the plugin-system. And Obsidian is even supporting this, but only through the clunky Interface.