Technology

I jumped over to logseq. It takes some getting used to, but overall logseq is working fine overall.

I like Silverbullet, but I could never get the file tree to work well. Any tips? Or is that not a feature you use?

Its a staggeringly powerful app. Utilizing the markdown format and the Dataview plugin to create queries with metadata in your notes allows you to build INSANE knowledge management systems.

Example of some set ups here: https://forum.obsidian.md/t/14-example-vaults-from-around-the-web-kepano-nick-milo-the-sweet-setup-and-more/81788

Note-taking app. Each note is a markdown file, so you can add formatting.

It's like trillium, but not open source Here is an enthusiastic person talking about the state of the art of one year ago for 20 minute. https://youtu.be/XRpHIa-2XCE

Someone develops logseq which is completely foss and like obsidian. Now I can choose to donate to FOSS or buy closed source. How do you decide?

We just need to establish paying for open source software more.

https://github.com/logseq/logseq/

Thanks for the rare, rational comment regarding Obsidian. Many people here seem to think releasing software as closed source automatically means you have something to hide; seemingly forgetting we live in a capitalist system in which you must constantly sell your services to survive. (I am saying this as someone who adores FOSS and donates to most of my homelab software on a regular basis).

I think a more productive way to look at is: is the closed source dev friendly (or at least non-hostile) to the open source community? In the case of Obsidian, they haven't done anything egregious, and regularly contribute to open source plugins. Furthermore, the notes are stored as markdown files. This gives the user strong resistance against potential enshittification, so even if they did go rogue you can just move to some other text editor lol. Granted, you would miss out on plugins but otherwise that's a good reason to keep your plugin usage light and plan your Obsidian vault accordingly.

I just paid for the sync 🤷🏻‍♂️

It’s $4 a month, I drink one beer less a month and I actually save 3€ 😀

Take a look a SyncThing! It's a free FOSS app for syncing files and is available on all devices, and it's all self hosted. I initially used it for Obsidian syncing, but it's proved incredibly useful beyond that

The biggest issue I had was with folder permissions on Android. I also ended up paying for the sync functionality and have zero regrets.

It stores your data in plaintext, and simply uses the program to parse special formatting characters. There are no attempts at obfuscation or encryption, and it doesn’t lock you into a walled garden that refuses to play nice with other programs. The program itself is closed-source, but anyone could write an open source version to parse the same info… There just hasn’t been a good reason to do so. Even if Obsidian as a company and program ceases to exist overnight, your data is still safe on your machine and can be read by anyone who cares enough to dig into the file. Hell, you can even open it as the plaintext file and dig through it manually.

I just cant wrap my head around why they're willing to go so far to gain good will from people by having such a generous free tier, but somehow licensing the code under a FOSS license is out of the question??

Why not just go all the way and make sure everyone who cares about reading the souce could also give you free contributions?

I think the big difference is that you can use it for free without any account needed, and all your data is stored locally in a format that remains accessible to alternative apps.

So the moment they start doing questionable stuff you are not a hostage to their app. There are alternatives, they are just not as nice as this currently.

Daily notes. I have a template that prompts me to fill out a number details I might otherwise forget.

A wiki of people that helps me remember details about people I meet or have worked with. Makes it much easier to keep in touch and to remember important dates in their lives.

Sortable todo lists, with due date and urgency information. I can add to the lists directly from any other note using a Dataview formula with the Tasks extension.

Career plans. Project plans. Gardening plans. Recipes (there's an awesome extension that imports recipes from the web).

Any random writing I might want to do, from short stories to rough drafts of letters to stream of consciousness mind spew that I want to review later.

I use the Auto Note Mover and Dataview extensions, along with backlinks and tags, to keep all of my notes organized automatically. I use the Linter extension to make sure things are formatted nicely. When I started using Obsidian, I used the Importer extension yo easily pull in all of my existing notes and lists from Evernote and Google Keep.

Honestly, that barely scratches the surface.

Daily journal Task list / project management Note taking Mind mapping Resource archive

I've got my vault automated pretty well at this point. I honestly don't know what I would do without it.

For those of you that are wondering, everything is markdown independent, all of my plugins address UI or vault automation processes that leave all of my information entirely portable.

here's a bunch of possible applications:

1. simple note taking. like notepad except you have your notes at a place where you can search through them and even link one from another.
2. second brain. you can watch a video about it but basically to organize your thoughts, record things you learn, make connections between things to have a digital brain you can search or browse through.
3. work or school. notes, to do lists, reminders, links to sources, etc all in one place with references via links
4. journal. pretty straightforward, but you can imagine things you could do if you could link from your journal entry to a website, or another entry, or something from your movie collection.
5. database. eg maybe you have a movie collection and want to document all the details, including which ones you watched, which ones you liked, and what you think about them. you can have a file for each movie but also files for directors, actors, etc that you can link to and from, in which you have info on those, including images, tags for easy search.

so you watched a movie and wonder what other movies you own have the same starring actor: search movie, click link to the star page, check backlinks.

obviously not the best use case because imdb exists but this is personal and could be extrapolated to any collection you have, maybe even all of them. why not have the movie adaptation link to the original book?

TLDR

you can think about it like: imagine if you could make a bunch of wiki pages. the formatting isn't quite as nice but essentially that's what you're doing. a bunch of pages with text, images, links and tags, that you can browse through. what would you use it for?

I use Obsidian as a tool to help my shitty memory.

I want to have one single place where I can go search for a thing I know I saw somewhere but can't remember where or what it was exactly

"Did I watch movie X" -> Obsidian -> Watchlist -> Movies and there it'll be.

Same for tv-series, anime, books, games. Yes there are services that do it like Trakt, Imdb, Letterboxd, TVMaze and god knows how many for games. They all get enshittified eventually requiring you to pay for basic functionality (looking at you trakt...)

I'm building a tool for getting my data out from all those services into Obsidian markdown format, maybe It'll get finished some day :D (IMDB and Goodreads work, but you need to do a manual csv export)

"How did I install that finicky piece of software last time" -> Obsidian, I wrote something down because I knew I couldn't remember it. Then I'll improve the guide + refresh with new data.

Now I have a pretty good step-by step guide on how to set up a computer, no matter the OS, just how I like it - all in Obsidian. Mostly just commands I copy-paste and some manual steps that I can't be arsed to automate.

Same with my daily notes, I just write down what I did maybe with some tags so I can find them when I start wondering when did I visit X or put up the curtains in the bedroom.

It says it's free, but then there's a pricing and plans page?

A lot of alarm bells ringing for me about that app.