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

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

#251

Post by usr1106 »

allenleee wrote: post #103
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…

Early user here. Obsidian is literally the best app in 2020 so far IMO. - Blazingly fast - Clean UI - Free - Sync with Dropbox, Github, iCloud... - Great community I have never looked back to Notion and Bear since I found it. Btw, the Obs team is moving so fast.

> Free

Not really. The license says you are not allowed to take notes about work you get compensated for. So free only for 100% hobby projects.

Working in a start-up I don't have big 100% hobby projects that would require a lot of note keeping. YMMV

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

#252

Post by marchenko »

justtocomment wrote: post #22

Can't comment on the merits of the product itself. That in the first five minutes of this post being online, several users more or less claim that this has changed their lives in their first-ever comment on HN strikes me as a little odd however. (Yes I'm aware that this is also my first-ever comment on HN.)

I've been using Obsidian for about a week, and it may be the first time I've ever felt compelled to comment in an app's user forum. I even installed Discord so that I could subscribe to the Obsidian channel and watch its (rapid) progress. I am quite excited by this tool.

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

#253

Post by slightwinder »

Why is it that most of this apps are all following the same road feature-road? Some markup-language and a preview or a low richtext-mode and some simple filesystem-like organisation or even worse. The better ones have sometimes ability for internal linking or nowadays alternate views like graphs. More and more comes some basic plugin-support, mostly for editing or simple stuff, but hardly more.

How is it that none of them are offering advanced feature for automation? Or mature levels of organisations? Or some serious interface-ability?

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

#254

Post by rollinDyno »

Eugeleo wrote: post #148
rrherr wrote: post #52

What I'm looking for: 1st priority: macOS & iOS apps that always sync, open FAST, and look clean, to enter new notes with no friction. Like Bear (which I currently use) and Simplenote (which I used to use). 2nd priority: Bi-directional links. Like Roam and Obsidian. Transclusion. Like Roam (and Obsidian?) I'm willing to pay up to $15/month. Like Roam. Are there any solutions that give all of the above?

Ad 1: You’d have to try it yourself, but to me, Obsidian works flawlessly on Mac. As another commeter said, it has a certain VS Code feel to it. No iOS app yet, but I think it’ll come sooner or later — you should keep an eye out. 2nd: Obsidian can transclude whole files or whole sections (afaik). No block-level transclusion, as there isn’t any concept of blocks in Markdown, but that shouldn’t matter much.

It matters enough for me to stay with Roam.

I like how Obsidian is doing PR better than Roam, yet I can’t switch without block transclusion.

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

#255

Post by cecja »

milofeynman wrote: post #204
alexmingoia wrote: post #116

For the people complaining it’s not open source: Why does that matter ? It’s not like your markdown disappears if they do. You would just have to write software or purchase another software with the same conventions.

Joplin is open source and basically the same application minus the linked graph. For people complaining, use that. I do.

It's not joplin uses md but the generated random filenames are such turn off I really can't recommend it because of it.

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

#256

Post by iliekcomputers »

karakanb wrote: post #205

Genuine question: what exactly are you taking notes of? I have tried using tools like this before, but in all of my attempts I have found that I actually don't have much to take notes for; for example, I have never felt like "I wish I had taken notes of this", because I feel like any kind of search engine is doing this on a much larger scale, practically for combined notes of millions of people in a much efficient wa…

I have found taking notes to be very helpful for a sort of spaced repetition. It helps me retain more from the books / articles I read.

The main benefit that I'm trying to get is well explained in one of Andy Matuschak's notes. [0]

[0]: https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z6UDDkom8Aifg6mLdjT1sPtbMBwe...

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

#257

Post by ubercow13 »

elric wrote: post #64

I'm sure it's intended to look nice, but that website is so dark I can barely read it. I hope the application ships with a readable theme? From what I can make out, it seems to draw some inspiration from zettelkasten tools, which looks promising at least.

It seems to support custom CSS and there are a few user-submitted themes you can choose from

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

#259

Post by bnlxbnlx »

I wonder how this could be connected to some flash card system. I've been using anki for some months now to help me rememer things better (apps on linux, iOS and OSX and syncing via ankiweb). My notes are not linked so far as I have been looking for a solution that allows me keep all my notes in plain markdown files while linking them.

I'm syncing the md files across all my devices via a self-hosted rpi-nextcloud and I want to be able to add new notes through my mobile. So obsidian.md looks like a good fit for me, I will definitely give it a try. Thanks for putting this together, erica & shida!

However, I want to transfer as much of my second brain into my first brain, by actually memorizing linked notes. So the plugin 'open a random note' (https://youtu.be/cFYaWC_86W0?t=547) goes a bit this way, but to optimize memorization it would need some system that makes use of spaced repetition and active recall like anki.

Anyone, ideas? Or do you actually have plans that go that direction, erica?

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

#260

Post by marchenko »

sdedovic wrote: post #44

My two biggest issues, skimming the website: - this does not seem to be open source or free-as-in-speech. That worries me - especially when it comes to longevity. It's the reason I wouldn't use this product if it was by Google. - i don't see an easy way to export my data in case I would like to migrate to a different service. That being said I am definitely going to try it out and see what it does for me! There is de…

What convinced me to give Obsidian a twirl is that there's essentially no danger of sunk costs: I already store my notes as markdown files in a local folder synced via cloud service between browsers and mobile, and accessed via IDEs/plaintext editors. Obsidian merely replaces the IDE as an access/manipulation point.

The only 'cost', so to speak, is adding bidirectional link syntax, which I suspect is soon to become a common standard. I am curious to see what happens when they open up their developer API, as the Obsidian PKM community is quite active.

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