Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

obsidian.md

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 501 posts

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#131

Post by goodsignal »

christiansakai wrote: post #56

Nothing is forever. Especially if it is not free. Especially if it is not open source. If personal use is free forever but not open source, how am I supposed to believe that it will be free forever? Color me skeptical.

Healthy skepticism is great! But every post of yours is perfectly fitting the troll recipe. But just in case you're being genuine, here's my take.

The software is already nice and very usable, even at this early beta stage. There's going to be a million users within a couple years. One thing I've noticed about the PKM community, is that there are a lot of really smart and ambitious people here. You know what that means? Community capital. Guarantee or not, if Obsidian ceases to exist, you possess your data in an open format structure in an open standard, and the latest software you had downloaded will work until a handful of those million users create an open source equivalent.

There's nothing proprietary about backlinking. It's not rocket science. Obsidian is just leading the way with a very enjoyable UX for it.

And I hope they succeed. It seems like they are genuinely seeking a nice balance between creating value for themselves and the community.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#133

Post by drcongo »

OK, I love this already. I have a couple of feature requests though. 1. Allow scrolling past the bottom of the document - see the way Sublime Text and a lot of code editors do this. I find it _really_ uncomfortable writing with my current line anchored to the bottom of the screen. 2. Allow some (all?) of these markdown extensions [1] - our current knowledge base docs make heavy use of them, and a few are pretty critical for technical docs.

[1] https://facelessuser.github.io/pymdown-extensions/

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#134

Post by Gollapalli »

benrbray wrote: post #47

This looks great! Good timing too, since Roam has recently closed its doors to new signups. I've been looking for a new notetaking / PKM / Markdown app recently, but unfortunately all apps out there fall short in at least one of the following criteria: * bidirectional [[wiki links]] * support for both inline and display math * customizable themes / CSS * rich formatting beyond markdown (e.g. wrap content in tags with…

I'm pretty sure org-mode can do just about all of those (except maybe for the custom formatting bit). Inline LaTEX was something I found super nice to have in org-mode.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#135

Post by wh-uws »

ericax wrote: post #7

Maker here, excited to be on Hacker News. Obsidian is going into public beta today! (We're also on Product Hunt, come check us out!) We made Obsidian to be your long-term second brain and personal knowledge base. As you put in more notes and make more connections, the knowledge base gets more valuable, so we think it's important that you can 100% own your data and not rely on any cloud services. We believe you second…

Ive been using Trello Card's markdown notes and the connecting cards feature to approximate obsidian's main features for years now. Really love it.

Very interested in the graph and multiplexer features...

A Trello integration would be nice.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#136

Post by ericax »

Veen wrote: post #79
itsspring wrote: post #50

I was about to spend $25 for a one-time/lifetime license, until I read your license. No commercial or professional use? I'm not paying $50/yr for that sorry. A yearly fee for this is unrealistic and is way more expensive than other products like Quiver or SimpleMind which offers a lifetime product

It is quite an odd choice. It makes sense to tier based on features, but tiers based on how or when people use an app is bizarre. Am I supposed to monitor myself so I don't read a note in Obsidian while I'm doing commercial writing work? (Also, their license page could do with some proofreading)

Found and fix the mistakes, thanks for the heads-up!

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#137

Post by loughnane »

m-p-3 wrote: post #108
loughnane wrote: post #36

I will never again build any kind of workflow for my knowledge on top of anything that isn’t open source. 5y is a long time and 10y is an eternity for these sorts of products but its just a fraction of my working life. My own personal setup is a bunch of markdown files and it’s great, so I like that approach, but I’m very cautious about investing time for something so important in a product i don’t control.

You could build a knowledge base in https://joplinapp.org/ and store/sync it the way you want. I don't see any restrictions regarding corporate usage.

I was actually using Joplin for the past year after migrating to evernote. I really liked it but am now migrating to something with a little more flexibility around structuring.

Thinking to structure it around hugo.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#138

Post by loughnane »

ericax wrote: post #57
loughnane wrote: post #36

I will never again build any kind of workflow for my knowledge on top of anything that isn’t open source. 5y is a long time and 10y is an eternity for these sorts of products but its just a fraction of my working life. My own personal setup is a bunch of markdown files and it’s great, so I like that approach, but I’m very cautious about investing time for something so important in a product i don’t control.

We'll likely make a formal guarantee to open source in the case of us shutting down. Didn't realize that was a possibility, thanks for the suggestion!

that sounds good in principle but I still wouldn't feel comfortable with it unless I was aware of similar setups that worked out well for the users.

Not saying such examples aren't out there. I just am unaware of any.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#140

Post by rodneyzeng »

Some comments after testing it for the first time:

I am looking for alternatives of Typora since it is not open sourced. Obsidian is new and close to it (same feature to paste image from system clipboard) but still needs more work -

1. Font size and equation font size are not easily configured. 2. Inline Latex is not supported yet. 3. Equation numbering are not supported yet

And it is not open sourced either. Good work and keep going!

Post reply on HN