Hey everyone,

I am looking for an alternative for OneNote for Linux. A clone would be perfect, the interface of it and the ability to paste pictures into a very wide notes field is great. Please help me!

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[–] 23 points 3 years ago (14 children)

Check out Obsidian! The canvas feature is very similar to onenote snd obsidian in general is the best notwtaking app/ personal knowledge management system in existence

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  • [–] 8 points 3 years ago (4 children)

    Obsidians great! I do wish it was open-source though :(

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  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    I switched to Obsidian not too long ago.

    For my needs, Joplin was a good open source alternative.

    Between the two I went with Obsidian because, while the apps are closed-source, the data is accessible. All your notes are just stored in plaintext (with markdown) as simple files in a directory structure.

    Joplin, in contrast, uses a SQLite database which adds a layer of complexity.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago

    This was one of the main selling features for me (before I tried it and experienced all the other killer features). I've experienced a bad case of vendor-lock before where it was hell to export my data. So having it all available in plain text at all times is really reassuring.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago

    Yep, Joplin is great too, that's what I use currently! I also like that it has built-in syncing with nextcloud and dropbox; as far as I know, obsidian only has their own paid-for syncing (unless you sync externally like the person below using syncthing)

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  • [–] 7 points 3 years ago (4 children)

    Obsidian is what I use mostly, it syncs great with syncthing across all my devices. It doesn't have drawing support, so whenever I need to doodle something I end up in samsung notes again.

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    [–] 15 points 3 years ago (9 children)

    As your description is rather short and does not really restrict the "recommendation space", I'll start the round of recommendations with Joplin

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  • [–] 5 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    Joplin also has a great web-clipper through a companion addon in Firefox (and I assume also Chromium)

    Joplin is great in many ways, and I do use it to some degree, but there's a few things that irks me.

    • Notes and attachments being stored in a database and referenced by a cryptic UID instead of plain files with human readable names makes integration with other apps impossible. And it's bad for data portability
    • On Android I've never been able to get it to background sync. I need to keep Joplin in the foreground. The second I switch to another app it stops syncing
    • On sync conflicts it'll just use the newest note as master and overwrite older changes. Luckily if you realise it happened you can use the history feature to get back lost changes. Typical scenario for me is to add much more stuff to a shopping list while on desktop. 30minutes later open the app on Android while shopping to tick off an item. Realize all the recently added items from desktop are gone to the ether (stored in history on the desktop and other synced devices)

    Hopefully these sync issues are some rare bug for me. I've tried all the usual "battery saving" tricks in android, but still Joplin will not background sync. Other apps like DavX5 sync fine. Are anybody else here having luck with Joplin on mobile?

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago

    As far as I know it's a known limitation. Joplin just does not have background sync. It's ok for my use case but the initial sync can take a long time depending on your database size. Other than that, I'm happy with Joplin.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago (4 children)

    Do you use Joplin? I've heard about it a ton but I can't figure out when I'd ever use it. I use Bookstack for a Wiki and then I have an empty (besides myself) Matrix room that I use for quick notes or something I need to send from my phone to a different device. And then I also have Nextcloud and could just use docs there. I love self hosting open source apps but I struggle to see how often I'd use Joplin (or any note app) over other options. I'm hoping you or somebody can finally make something click for me.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    I use Joplin and sync the notes between devices (including Android) with Syncthing. There's lots of other options for syncing, but I already had Syncthing set up and liked it

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    [–] 7 points 3 years ago (4 children)

    I selfhost my Joplin server and use the clients on my Linux desktop, my windows laptop, iphone and Android. It is definitely one of my favorite selfhosted apps. To prevent any issues with sync, the first thing I do when I open the app is to click the Sync button and do the same when I close the app at the end of the day. This way I ensure that I am always working with the latest version. It has not failed me so far, considering I am a very heavy user and have quite a few notes running at any given day.

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    [–] 6 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    Standard Notes is the downright best notes software, highly recommend it as a OneNote alt!

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    [–] 6 points 3 years ago (5 children)

    Meanwhile here's me still using Google Keep...

    Hopefully we get some warning signs before it ends up in the Google Graveyard.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Hopefully we get some warning signs before it ends up in the Google Graveyard.

    The probability of that happening just barely hovers above zero.

    Over a decade later, I'm still bitter about how they unceremoniously dumped Google Reader's corpse into the ground with effectively no notice.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago

    I switched to OneNote a few years ago and was going crazy trying to find a bunch of notes I took .. turns out they were all in Keep happily noting away.

    Keep was great but I find the OneNote structure and flexibility a bit more useful.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago

    Oh same, I use Google keep for personal organisation and one note for actual note taking on my tablet. Google keep has an unofficial API that you can use to script it. I wish there was an open source alternative to it though tbf. I honestly don't understand where Google derives profit from it is it's just short incongruous scraps of text

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  • [–] 5 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    I would suggest Logseq. It's excellent and a step up from One Note IMHO.

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    [–] 5 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    Joplin is great but Obsidian is definitely worth checking out. You can find both as flatpaks.

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    [–] 4 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    I can say I've never heard of any of these recommended.

    Standard Notes: https://standardnotes.com

    Obsidian: https://obsidian.md/

    Xournal++: https://xournalpp.github.io/

    They all look great! Checking these out later!

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    [–] 4 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Because nobody mentioned it already I want to bring Notesnook in.

    It is very privacy friendly, OpenSource and cross platform. Just if you want to sync there is no self hosted solution yet.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago

    I've been using Notesnook for nearly a year and I'm really happy with it as well. Very feature-rich and easy to use despite a focus on security. I had a scare recently with an important note seemingly disappearing, and I was saved thanks to a really nicely implemented note history functionality that I didn't even know existed.

    I will say that some of the design decisions can be a bit confusing, so it's worth testing it out before buying. Even a year in I find myself a bit thrown off by how exactly the relationships between notebooks, topics, tags, etc are expected to work.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago

    @IuseArchbtw I switched to Zettlr a few years ago and never looked back https://zettlr.com/ there are tons of markdown apps in other platforms that can give you the cross-platform feel but for desktop this is it for me

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    If you use vscode, the foam extension is great!

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    [–] 3 points 3 years ago (2 children)
  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago

    Notesnook is a pretty good service. More of a less clunky Evernote. It's free by default but has paid for options and also very privacy focused.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago

    Not a great direct alternative, but rnote is pretty good

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago

    I use qownnotes in combination with nextcloud. Supports mark down, git like history and syncing with the nextcloud notes app, which you can also use on your phone.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    If you are looking for a handwritten notes app that syncs across devices you could give Saber a try.

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