this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2023
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I looked at Joplin and Obsidian for the kind of notetaking I do and settled on Obsidian. To be honest, both have more features than I use. I like Obsidian because it's based on Markdown, so you're not tied to some oddball file format. But you should try them out and see which one fits your work style.
Joplin also uses markdown, and it has the advantage of being open source.
...in a database file. That and the awful android app had me look elsewhere. Too bad really, FOSS and self host options with it are great.
What's wrong with the android app? I haven't had any issues with it
I use checklists/task lists a lot. The way the app handles those are completely backwards. Checkbox is auto put in the title of the list but when you tap in the body of the list, it doesn't. And the rendered view of your Todo list is very small with no way to change the font size. You can change the editor font size, but not on the rendered output.
I also don't like to be required to put a title in at the start of any document. Other apps either name it 'untitled' or date/time it was created. This causes friction and if I can't get my thought down quick, I may lose it.
That plus the whole markdown in a db file killed it for me.
Are you sure you are talking about Obsidian here? I can change the font size for both the editor and reader views, the default note name is 'Untitled' and markdown files are stored in plaintext.
I assumed you were asking what was wrong with the Joplin app, since that is what I was referring to in my post about awful android app. I use and love Obsidian on Linux, MacOS, and Android (tablet and phone). The only thing I don't like about it along the lines of my original reply to you is that task lists and to-dos aren't very easy or intuitive from Android. It's doable, but kinda clunky. So for that type of scenario I'm using Quillpad.
But no, Obsidian app on Android is great. Joplin....nope. :)
Oh sorry, I misread that. Thanks for the clarification!
And can sync to webDAV
I recently settled on Obsidian too. It's proprietary software, but the text files themselves are in simple markdown and readable in a text editor. Additionally, you can sync across multiple devices using their paid service (which works flawlessly for everything) or set up sync yourself for free if you know how to host a couchdb instance yourself (works perfectly for everything except iOS, apparently).
The plugin support was baked in from the start so it's extremely flexible.
I wasn't worried about it being proprietary until I saw the founder reasoning for not having the source be open under a nonpermissive licence.
https://obsidian.rocks/why-isnt-obsidian-open-source/
I decided to go with logseq because of it.
It also syncs with all my devices using my own servers, instead of needing to trust obsidian/logseq.
That's fair, the privacy concerns are not ultimately addressable with a closed-source application. I can encrypt communication and the db itself since I am self-hosting it, but ultimately I'm using the obsidian app on desktop and mobile so I don't know where the data is going unless I specifically manage it's network usage etc which is a ton of extra work.
I haven't actually started taking notes with obsidian yet, I just got it setup. But the plugin support is...massive. IDK.
You can also use SyncThing, works great.
Yes I probably should have implemented that, but the Obsidian plugin implementation ("Self-hosted Live sync") appears to work almost shockingly well. I was amazed by how easy it was to setup . Setting up a couchdb instance took more time than getting sync going across all my devices, and couchdb wasn't that hard either.
I think that's the part I had a hard time w. The db setup. I'm only good at postgres and sqllite.
Obsidian is my go to for D&D.
They still sprinkle a bit of their own stuff into the markdown but it's generally usable outside.
Thanks for the suggestions! I'll see which one works best for me.