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Comment by vunderba | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

I hate it that all their explanations are videos and not articles I can read

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.

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.

iA writer is a great tool for focused writing. I use it for authoring my blog posts, and it's "filler detection" does wonders.

> 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.

> Zettelkasten-like connected notes web

ZK isn't a notes web or anything like that. Just because it can replicate some of the ZK 'methodology' doesn't mean it's Zettelkasten-like.

It's a wiki-like connected notes application.

I have neither said it replicates ZK nor I use it as a ZK tool. It's wiki-like, yes, and ZK is not a simple "web of notes". However Obsidian's management of notes and links make it more advanced than a simple Wiki-Like application.

It's less linear than a Zim Wiki like desktop wiki, but more linear than a "cloud of floating notes" approach of TiddlyWiki.

I tried logseq and obsidian and I'd argue the opposite, obsidian does everything while logseq is good at structuring your text and querying it.

The thing i missed the most is the outline style, where every block can be queried and nested bloxks inherit tags from parent blocks. Huge for note taking

I think that's a fair take, and I believe everybody's brain works a little differently.

This is why I'm a big believer of horses for courses approach about everything in life. If logseq works better for you, more power to you. I believe and love huge text files with tons information, so Obsidian and similar tools works better for me.

Sorry I shouldn't have come through as "obsidian is worse", that's not the intent, my point was mostly about "obsidian does everything because it has plugins".

I do have a reason for avoiding obsidian, which is the one I outlined, but your case is totally legit AND a good reason for choosing obsidian over logseq.

The outline vs non-outline is really the big difference between the two. I'm not sure if it's possible to have both approaches in a single editor given the huge difference in behavior

Hey, I didn’t read your comment as “obsidian is worse”, but “logseq’s way of operation/thinking fits me better”.

Yes, Obsidian has tons of plugins, but I use exactly none of them. The features they add is immense, but I need none of them, because I just write tons of long text files, not dissimilar to old, long text files ubiquitous on the web in the early days (think https://computer.rip style writings, but as technical docs).

The difference between the two is very fundamental as you say, one has an internal database while the other runs on simple Markdown files with minimal extra data on top (except search and index Obsidian keeps internally per vault).

Again, there’s no hard feelings, just a hat tip to the diversity of our brains, way of thinking and creativity of people for devising these different ideas regarding knowledge management. :)

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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

[1]: https://notes.joschua.io/

Hey I follow that first guy on Goodreads. Good taste in book he has.

> 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.

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.

>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.

FWIW, I exported all my Evernote notebooks just recently from my old free account. Used https://github.com/akosbalasko/yarle to convert them to Markdown. It also has support for various PKB formats, like Obsidian. Hope that helps!

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-...

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.

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?

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/

Seeing vscode users want their knowledge base in their editor makes me think of the parallel to emacs users.

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.

I tried Dendron, and I preferred to have a fully separate editor.

This way I context switch completely away from code.

Also it annoying to swap workspaces and keep the up.

Thanks for this, I'll give it a go.

I can see how having the environment be at least cosmetically different might help though. I feel like there must be a good enough solution to that, I'll have a poke around

> I'm not sure why they all roll their own editor. Can't it be a plugin?

There are multiple reason, like editors having too much of their own baggage, or not being meant to be used as a foundation for a mature app. But I guess mainly it's a matter of licensing, and building your own editing-experience.

VS Code is for plaintext, while obsidian has deep rich-text-handling. It's probably not that easy to combine both flawless and still supporting all the plaintext-editing.

In Logseq, you can open the current note in the default system editor - I do this for long form note taking (in my case in emacs) but everything is back in the Logseq graph for connection and search and all its syncing goodies.

There is a Vim plugin for Obsidian, so for me the editing is pretty similar. And I guess it's a good indicator that a plugin for your taste may also exist.

For actual coffee editing, there is also https://github.com/sunxvming/obsidian-vscode-editor

You should have a look at Foam: https://github.com/foambubble/foam

That’s actually one of the main reasons I like Obsidian - that I can easily use vscode with it. Obsidian’s backend is just markdown files on the file system which you’re free to edit with another editor at the same time as you have Obsidian open (it’ll notice file system changes and update any open documents near instantly). I even have a plugin setup that when I hit a keyboard shortcut it executes the necessary vscode command line tool to open whatever I’m viewing in obsidian in vscode.

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.

Try SiYuan Note. It's free and open source local-first mix of Notion and Obsidian.

https://github.com/siyuan-note/siyuan

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

Weird that people find Obsidian before Joplin

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