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Unpopular opinion: I dislike obsidian. I came to the realization that any reasonably large collection of notes requires structure, which goes by the definition

by ezst 3y ago

Unpopular opinion: I dislike obsidian. I came to the realization that any reasonably large collection of notes requires structure, which goes by the definition of types (for people, places, organizations, ...). Obsidian is very rudimentary in this regard: it offers properties, folders and templates. Those are workable at first but fall apart soon enough: you can derive many instances of a type from a certain template, but obsidian will happily let you change the template later on without offering the means to propagate the changes to existing instances, leaving your notes in an inconsistent state with no way to tell. Anytype, SiYuan, LogSeq have the same problem. Notion is a bit better considering its "databases" help finding and patching such discrepancies, but is also limited in that it doesn't let you extend types (polymorphism). None of them support cardinality (should there be one or multiple references) nor defining forward and backwards relationships when the property is relational. As I was about to give up, I found out about Trilium which checks all the good marks when it comes to data modeling and consistency, in a super simple and straightforward manner. And on top of that, it's opensource, local first, self hostable, syncable, has a web UI so you don't have to install anything if you can't, and lends itself to emacs levels of hackability. IMO, anyone claiming to be managing a large collection of notes should give it a serious look.

eternityforest 3y ago
Looks really cool, aside from the lack of Android support or a managed cloud option. My big issue with Obsidian is just performance. Android likes to kill the background process and you're waiting 10 seconds or more just to be able to write a 5 word shopping list entry. I eventually switched to Google Keep, with always listening assistant turned on.
- ezst 3y ago
  > Looks really cool, aside from the lack of Android support or a managed cloud option. For Android, you can use trilium as a PWA currently, I do that and it's not bad at all, but offline isn't supported yet. I would say that the UX through the PWA isn't worse than that of Obsidian. If offline on your phone is a requirement, you should be able to run trilium server there (haven't tried): https://github.com/Nriver/awesome-trilium#-android https://github.com/Nriver/awesome-trilium#-android There is managed hosting too, at a very fair price I'd say (compared to the alternatives): https://trilium.cc/ https://trilium.cc/
  - eternityforest 3y ago
    That is a really good price for sure! Android Server+Hosted Cloud Server+PWA seems a bit hacky though. And it's hard to beat free when you're on a low budget. Keep also has some fairly unmatched deep integrations with Assistant and Wear OS. It looks really nice for people who already mostly take notes on the computer and don't use any Google spy features anyway.
    - ezst 3y ago
      > Android Server+Hosted Cloud Server+PWA seems a bit hacky though. And it's hard to beat free when you're on a low budget. I self-host, so for me the practical free, sustainable option with all features included is Trilium. I'm generally wary of the freemium core + (no so) optional paid features + early access plans paid towards companies which haven't turned a profit yet. After all, that's how many people are now discovering Obsidian, while escaping an ever enshitifying Evernote. > Keep also has some fairly unmatched deep integrations with Assistant and Wear OS. Absolutely, if I want reminders and things showing up in GMail, Google makes sure that I can't adventure very far away from its walled garden. The type of notes I take in Trilium are personal thoughts, family matters, logs of memorable activities (meetings, meals, outings, …), work notes, summaries, elements to later compose in deliverables or emails, that kind of stuff. And because this is all relational and "typed" in nature ("meetings" implies "places" and "persons", "deliverables" implies "projects" or even "milestones"), Obsidian just doesn't cut it. Apparently, SiYuan, which is very much a competitor of Obsidian with an opensource core is in the process of implementing a basic version of Notion's "databases" [0]. It still falls short for my needs (no polymorphism to extend types, no cardinality to specify the type and directionality of relations), but it might be a big step forward for many people here having started on Obsidian and bumped into its limitations. [0] https://liuyun.io/article/1697859885503 https://liuyun.io/article/1697859885503

by ezst 3y ago

eternityforest 3y ago

Looks really cool, aside from the lack of Android support or a managed cloud option. My big issue with Obsidian is just performance. Android likes to kill the background process and you're waiting 10 seconds or more just to be able to write a 5 word shopping list entry. I eventually switched to Google Keep, with always listening assistant turned on.

ezst 3y ago
> Looks really cool, aside from the lack of Android support or a managed cloud option. For Android, you can use trilium as a PWA currently, I do that and it's not bad at all, but offline isn't supported yet. I would say that the UX through the PWA isn't worse than that of Obsidian. If offline on your phone is a requirement, you should be able to run trilium server there (haven't tried): https://github.com/Nriver/awesome-trilium#-android https://github.com/Nriver/awesome-trilium#-android There is managed hosting too, at a very fair price I'd say (compared to the alternatives): https://trilium.cc/ https://trilium.cc/
- eternityforest 3y ago
  That is a really good price for sure! Android Server+Hosted Cloud Server+PWA seems a bit hacky though. And it's hard to beat free when you're on a low budget. Keep also has some fairly unmatched deep integrations with Assistant and Wear OS. It looks really nice for people who already mostly take notes on the computer and don't use any Google spy features anyway.
  - ezst 3y ago
    > Android Server+Hosted Cloud Server+PWA seems a bit hacky though. And it's hard to beat free when you're on a low budget. I self-host, so for me the practical free, sustainable option with all features included is Trilium. I'm generally wary of the freemium core + (no so) optional paid features + early access plans paid towards companies which haven't turned a profit yet. After all, that's how many people are now discovering Obsidian, while escaping an ever enshitifying Evernote. > Keep also has some fairly unmatched deep integrations with Assistant and Wear OS. Absolutely, if I want reminders and things showing up in GMail, Google makes sure that I can't adventure very far away from its walled garden. The type of notes I take in Trilium are personal thoughts, family matters, logs of memorable activities (meetings, meals, outings, …), work notes, summaries, elements to later compose in deliverables or emails, that kind of stuff. And because this is all relational and "typed" in nature ("meetings" implies "places" and "persons", "deliverables" implies "projects" or even "milestones"), Obsidian just doesn't cut it. Apparently, SiYuan, which is very much a competitor of Obsidian with an opensource core is in the process of implementing a basic version of Notion's "databases" [0]. It still falls short for my needs (no polymorphism to extend types, no cardinality to specify the type and directionality of relations), but it might be a big step forward for many people here having started on Obsidian and bumped into its limitations. [0] https://liuyun.io/article/1697859885503 https://liuyun.io/article/1697859885503