Currently I’m using Joplin with Syncthing-backed file system synchronization. I’m pretty pleased with it, as I do like tagging- and Markdown-based systems.
I plan to upgrade to server-based synchronization, but before doing that, however, I wanted to see what other people are using.
Edit: So far I see a slight favor towards Joplin and Logseq, but I totally didn’t expect (and appreciate) getting so many different answers.
I’ve tried lot of different apps, but I think I’ve settled on Trilium for now.
It doesn’t have a great mobile experience, but the web app works fine on mobile. The app in general is super customizable and way easier to write scripts / plugins for.
I was a fan too, but lost the portable version I was using when my usb died. The version I pulled off git now freezes every 10 seconds and closes itself down a lot. Not sure how they made it worse but it’s worse now.
Were you downloading master or the latest release? If you’re interested in using it, post the issue you have on their GitHub. The main dev is super helpful
i heard about this a while back. unparallelled support for syntax, doesnt rely on a cloud service, incredible backwards-compatibility, and quick start-up time
Not being open source is the great… sin for me. Note taking is an investment in the future, and betting on a closed source platform is a big no no—for me, that is.
I know the content is safe in Obsidian, since it’s just Markdown files. But the workflow? Not so much.
And I know the developers behind Obsidian have their reasons to close source it. Nothing against that. But since that’s their way, it’s not my way.
Notesnook makes that claim. Why wouldn’t you consider that relevant when it’s the first thing you’re presented with on their website? And don’t even mention self hosting, that’s not only the last item on their roadmap but it’s also been there for a very long time with no updates.
Not sure why you’re getting defensive, this has nothing to do with you.
Not defensive at all, just didn’t know where your comment came from. Do you have a link I can check out regarding that? Happy to read up on it. As far as self host, Dev team stated in their discord channel that they are still planning on it but want to get it buttoned up because once it’s launched they can’t take it back, paraphrasing what he actually said.
That’s fine, I was just trying to add the the conversation.
There’s this page that actually explains the encryption as it is: https://vericrypt.notesnook.com/
Zero knowledge is mentioned here and in a few other places. They’re misusing the term as a marketing device, knowingly or not I couldn’t say.
As for how I know? It’s easy enough to check zero knowledge by logging into the service. If a password is enough to display your notes, the service is not zero knowledge. There should be a second set of credentials known only to the user that gets entered with each new login to actually decrypt the contents of your notes. If you’ve ever used matrix chat you would either enter in the private key yourself or match some emojis on an already authenticated client that would then pass that private key in a peer-to-peer fashion.
I haven’t verified this myself but I can clearly see from the website how the encryption is described vs the marketing terms being used.
I see. Admittedly it’s been a minute since I’ve logged into a new session of Notesnook. But accessing the web portal prompts for my login name, password, and then a 2FA code sent to my email address. Within the app (at least on Android) there is an option for no privacy, some privacy, and max privacy. Which have various behaviors when you navigate away from the app or close and reopen. I’m no expert, but do these sound like zero knowledge in this context?
I’ve still not decided whether I’ll stick with them, but I do like the app and was able to get a year of their pro membership for less than half off, so I figured I’d give it a try and at the very least support the devs to some degree.
Yep just swapped over from a self hosted solution with gitlab and sublime… But that was to restrictive and the overall experience wasnt really good…
I then found a post somewhere on lemmy a post abotu PKMS and what people are using… One was obsidian… So I tried it and I’m really happy
Edit: I saw some comments about some missing self hosting. Since the notes are saved as standard md files you easily ca sync them with whatever you want… I set it up with my synology NAS and DS Drive, but any tool which can sync two-ways should be fine
Joplin. Obsidian is not open source, doesn’t have native self hosting and it gets complicated. Joplin is very simple and just works. Although, it stores the notes in a hashed database, so you can’t edit raw files without Joplin client
Trillium was originally created to be an open source replacement for Roam Research. Trilium came out in 2017, and had Roam-like features before Roam even existed. It’s similarities to Obsidian are purely coincidental, probably because Obsidian is designed to be a cross between Roam and Evernote.
I started using Trilium in early 2020, with version 0.40.2. Roam had released in 2019 and was growing in popularity quickly, I heard a lot about Roam, it looked cool, so I googled for an open-source self-hosted knowledge base note taking app with similar features to Roam, like notes arranged in a knowledge graph, and a backlinks explorer for each note. The only one that was available then was trilium. Looks like you’re right, the development of trilium was started in 2017, before Roam existed. This is a great interview with the creator, answers a lot of the questions I had. https://console.substack.com/p/console-169
Obsidian didn’t come out until a few months later (and remained under the radar until 2021), all my colleagues and friends use Obsidian now, but I prefer trilium. I had never heard of logseq before I read this thread. Just a quick glance, I see the first 0.1.0 version logseq was in April 2021, just before the first obsidian release.
That’s not even the bigger problem. I found the desktop ui very clunky. There were too many papercuts for me to keep using joplin. However, its TUI and mobile app are excellent.
Logseq, it’s a lot like Obsidian as it also has knowledge graphs, tags, is markdown-based and self-hostable but, in contrast to Obsidian, it’s fully open source
However, for a quick, transitory note, I use Kate or, more recently, Xpad. Only then I transcribe the content to Logseq. Why?
Because while Logseq is great as an outliner and for network thinking, it’s as graceful and agile as an elephant.
The gist of what I’m saying is: for now, and for me (hardware might be playing a role here, but I don’t think so) Logseq is a good note database. For quick typing, I have to use something else.
Checking out Logseq now. I switched to Obsidian a few months ago and have been really liking it. Was time to switch it up from org-mode after YEARS of using it
I used to use Joplin, and its great, but the Electron client isn’t great on Linux mobile, so now I am using GNOME Paper on all devices, synced via Nextcloud.
It’s much simpler than Joplin but I need exactly 0 of the missng features.
Ooh, I like the look of that. I’ve been using Iotas on Linux for my Nextcloud synced notes, Quillpad on Android, and Nextcloud Notebook on MacOS. I’ll have to check this out!
That thing looks really interesting, I’ve only two problems from a first glance:
I’m not informed on mobile CPUs, the thing looks fine, but aren’t 3 GB RAM not way too less these days? I mean my cheap ass 150€ wiko phone has six
I get it that companys like that one have smaller margins than big tech, but 1000 $ for that phone? Why does not a single of these FOSS/privacy/degoogle companies offer a budget phone around 300 bucks? I don’t need a device that runs crysis in 4K, I just want to communicate, browse the web, answer mails, and take okayish photos on something different than big tech spyware.
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Notesnook
I like this one too but haven’t fully committed yet. I think once they open self hosting up I’ll give it an honest try .
I’ve tried lot of different apps, but I think I’ve settled on Trilium for now.
It doesn’t have a great mobile experience, but the web app works fine on mobile. The app in general is super customizable and way easier to write scripts / plugins for.
Trillium although I wish it has multiple users on the same instance, other than that it’s amazing and suits my needs.
I was a fan too, but lost the portable version I was using when my usb died. The version I pulled off git now freezes every 10 seconds and closes itself down a lot. Not sure how they made it worse but it’s worse now.
Were you downloading master or the latest release? If you’re interested in using it, post the issue you have on their GitHub. The main dev is super helpful
cant you download the earlier version instead?
Notable. Cross platform (no mobile app), sync with cloud drive of your choice, markdown support, easy interface.
Notepad
On Paper not the computer
i heard about this a while back. unparallelled support for syntax, doesnt rely on a cloud service, incredible backwards-compatibility, and quick start-up time
Logseq
Obsidian. I know it’s not open source, but it just felt right.
Not being open source is the great… sin for me. Note taking is an investment in the future, and betting on a closed source platform is a big no no—for me, that is.
I know the content is safe in Obsidian, since it’s just Markdown files. But the workflow? Not so much.
And I know the developers behind Obsidian have their reasons to close source it. Nothing against that. But since that’s their way, it’s not my way.
Yep, same. Though if Acreom ever goes local only on mobile OR when Notesnook opens up self hosting, I will take another look.
Just fyi notesnook is not really “zero knowledge”. They’re misusing that term.
I didn’t make that claim though. Regardless, that wouldn’t matter in a self-host situation.
Notesnook makes that claim. Why wouldn’t you consider that relevant when it’s the first thing you’re presented with on their website? And don’t even mention self hosting, that’s not only the last item on their roadmap but it’s also been there for a very long time with no updates.
Not sure why you’re getting defensive, this has nothing to do with you.
Not defensive at all, just didn’t know where your comment came from. Do you have a link I can check out regarding that? Happy to read up on it. As far as self host, Dev team stated in their discord channel that they are still planning on it but want to get it buttoned up because once it’s launched they can’t take it back, paraphrasing what he actually said.
That’s fine, I was just trying to add the the conversation.
There’s this page that actually explains the encryption as it is: https://vericrypt.notesnook.com/ Zero knowledge is mentioned here and in a few other places. They’re misusing the term as a marketing device, knowingly or not I couldn’t say.
As for how I know? It’s easy enough to check zero knowledge by logging into the service. If a password is enough to display your notes, the service is not zero knowledge. There should be a second set of credentials known only to the user that gets entered with each new login to actually decrypt the contents of your notes. If you’ve ever used matrix chat you would either enter in the private key yourself or match some emojis on an already authenticated client that would then pass that private key in a peer-to-peer fashion.
I haven’t verified this myself but I can clearly see from the website how the encryption is described vs the marketing terms being used.
I see. Admittedly it’s been a minute since I’ve logged into a new session of Notesnook. But accessing the web portal prompts for my login name, password, and then a 2FA code sent to my email address. Within the app (at least on Android) there is an option for no privacy, some privacy, and max privacy. Which have various behaviors when you navigate away from the app or close and reopen. I’m no expert, but do these sound like zero knowledge in this context?
I’ve still not decided whether I’ll stick with them, but I do like the app and was able to get a year of their pro membership for less than half off, so I figured I’d give it a try and at the very least support the devs to some degree.
Yep just swapped over from a self hosted solution with gitlab and sublime… But that was to restrictive and the overall experience wasnt really good…
I then found a post somewhere on lemmy a post abotu PKMS and what people are using… One was obsidian… So I tried it and I’m really happy
Edit: I saw some comments about some missing self hosting. Since the notes are saved as standard md files you easily ca sync them with whatever you want… I set it up with my synology NAS and DS Drive, but any tool which can sync two-ways should be fine
Joplin. Obsidian is not open source, doesn’t have native self hosting and it gets complicated. Joplin is very simple and just works. Although, it stores the notes in a hashed database, so you can’t edit raw files without Joplin client
Trilium for the same reasons, but the featureset of Trilium is more like Obsidian.
Trillium was originally created to be an open source replacement for Roam Research.Trilium came out in 2017, and had Roam-like features before Roam even existed. It’s similarities to Obsidian are purely coincidental, probably because Obsidian is designed to be a cross between Roam and Evernote.Please, I don’t want to be rude, so don’t take me wrong.
I think that’s not accurate. Trillium is not even an outliner, let alone a block note taking app. I think you’re mixing trillium with Logseq.
My memory may be failing me, but I think trillium has been around longer than Roam Research.
And yes, it’s a great open source note taking app!
I started using Trilium in early 2020, with version 0.40.2. Roam had released in 2019 and was growing in popularity quickly, I heard a lot about Roam, it looked cool, so I googled for an open-source self-hosted knowledge base note taking app with similar features to Roam, like notes arranged in a knowledge graph, and a backlinks explorer for each note. The only one that was available then was trilium. Looks like you’re right, the development of trilium was started in 2017, before Roam existed. This is a great interview with the creator, answers a lot of the questions I had. https://console.substack.com/p/console-169
Obsidian didn’t come out until a few months later (and remained under the radar until 2021), all my colleagues and friends use Obsidian now, but I prefer trilium. I had never heard of logseq before I read this thread. Just a quick glance, I see the first 0.1.0 version logseq was in April 2021, just before the first obsidian release.
Good call on Obsidian not being FOSS! I don’t know that.
Problem with Joplin: The raw files are randomly named so you can’t easily find a specific note
That’s not even the bigger problem. I found the desktop ui very clunky. There were too many papercuts for me to keep using joplin. However, its TUI and mobile app are excellent.
Logseq
Logseq, it’s a lot like Obsidian as it also has knowledge graphs, tags, is markdown-based and self-hostable but, in contrast to Obsidian, it’s fully open source
Logseq user here too.
However, for a quick, transitory note, I use Kate or, more recently, Xpad. Only then I transcribe the content to Logseq. Why?
Because while Logseq is great as an outliner and for network thinking, it’s as graceful and agile as an elephant.
The gist of what I’m saying is: for now, and for me (hardware might be playing a role here, but I don’t think so) Logseq is a good note database. For quick typing, I have to use something else.
Much prefer Logseq as well.
Checking out Logseq now. I switched to Obsidian a few months ago and have been really liking it. Was time to switch it up from org-mode after YEARS of using it
I tried so many, eventually landed on trilium. It’s not perfect by any means, but it ticks the most boxes for my needs
neovim + git with gitea/forgejo
I used to use Joplin, and its great, but the Electron client isn’t great on Linux mobile, so now I am using GNOME Paper on all devices, synced via Nextcloud. It’s much simpler than Joplin but I need exactly 0 of the missng features.
Ooh, I like the look of that. I’ve been using Iotas on Linux for my Nextcloud synced notes, Quillpad on Android, and Nextcloud Notebook on MacOS. I’ll have to check this out!
I’m curious about changing to a Linux smartphone, on which device are you using Linux mobile?
Librem 5. I absolutely love it but also recognize it isn’t for everyone, yet.
That thing looks really interesting, I’ve only two problems from a first glance:
I’m not informed on mobile CPUs, the thing looks fine, but aren’t 3 GB RAM not way too less these days? I mean my cheap ass 150€ wiko phone has six
I get it that companys like that one have smaller margins than big tech, but 1000 $ for that phone? Why does not a single of these FOSS/privacy/degoogle companies offer a budget phone around 300 bucks? I don’t need a device that runs crysis in 4K, I just want to communicate, browse the web, answer mails, and take okayish photos on something different than big tech spyware.
The first point probably comes down to time. When they designed the phone, RAM was more expensive and phones came with 1-2-4 gigs.
The second one is manufacturing cost. If they could sell at least a few million units, it would be way cheaper.
I use silverbullet, it is great for tasks and notes! https://silverbullet.md/ - the manual itself uses it, so it is both a manual and a demo page
Flatnotes for me. I haven’t tried many others, but it was perfect for what I needed. Markdown, writes plain text files so no database/easy to backup
I loved how easy it is to setup. Just was too minimal for my purpose though.