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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

#301

Post by mjayhn »

colinjoy wrote: post #262
ddrdrck_ wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commercial license is 50$ per year. Not even 5 bucks per month. I do not think this qualifies as "expensive", especially if you intend to use it for work related stuff

If you are going to use it as a knowledge base, you are probably looking at a few years of use. Currently the closest match to this software I have installed is Quiver. Let’s compare costs over a period of 5 years: Quiver: $9.99 Obsidian: $250.00 That may not be a lot of money to you personally, but it fits my mental model of “expensive” pretty well.

I got myself stuck in quiver which is a nice tool but has no movement in its project and has horrible exporting. Beware. I still need to move my .qlite notes into markdown.

My problem with Quiver wasn't just no updates, its a good tool how it is, but that plus no web/android/windows. Just figured it was time to finally hop of that sinking ship.

I.. wish someone had told me this 2 years ago when I started using quiver and it was already dead, before I put hundreds of notes in it that are now stuck in .qlite or .. pdf i think?

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

#302

Post by ericax »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #292
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…

Hi Eric(?) I downloaded Obsidian and it looks really nice. I use markdown already to make notes on my side project, but in my brain my thoughts are more diffuse as it's an MVP stage thing with so many ways to extend, so many things to think about. I think this would, at firs glance, help me alot. One small thing I'd recommend would be when you first open it, could it create a default folder like (on Windows for examp…

Thank you so much for the tips, they make a lot of sense! Our onboarding surely needs some re-thinking.

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

#303

Post by komali2 »

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.

This is what attracted me to org-roam

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

#304

Post by ahel »

I tried it today. I already had a directory full of .md and .adoc so it was nice to see those in a new editor. But of course the graph is just a bubble of unlinked dots. I did started to link some but I don't see the benefit.

Took a shower and my enthusiasm got cold: how can I know my data is safe aka not getting uploaded somewhere?

There is an AutoUpdate feature after-all. :(

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

#305

Post by logicprog »

logicprog wrote: post #172

I've been using a Fandom Wiki [1] to hold my world-building notes, since I couldn't really find anything better. It's pretty annoying though, I might have to really think about using this instead. Although, getting my work out of the Wiki might be annoying. [1]: http://ceremony-universe.fandom.com/

Downloaded Obsidian and moved my notes (and plot outline too, since it supports interactive task lists!!) over, and man this thing is wonderful. Good job!

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

#306

Post by komali2 »

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'm making up for a terrible math education in Khan Academy and take notes in org-mode using org-roam. Here's an example file, in .md. If you click this link, a download dialog will launch, fair warning http://calebjay.com/examplenotes.md

To answer your question re: search engine. I can't just google, like, every single elementary math concept up through calculus to magically know it. I need the learning/notetaking process to get Chunks of math knowledge in my brain and begin forming neurological patterns between those chunks. This is so I can later apply these chunks during my self-teaching of computer science (another thing I'm very elementary in despite my profession). The notes help me do things like create anki decks and etc as well.

I don't want to know all math, just the very good curriculum that Khan Academy has set out.

Please don't make fun of how elementary my math level is lol. I'm trying.

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

#307

Post by ubercow13 »

emmanueloga_ wrote: post #293
colinjoy wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are going to use it as a knowledge base, you are probably looking at a few years of use. Currently the closest match to this software I have installed is Quiver. Let’s compare costs over a period of 5 years: Quiver: $9.99 Obsidian: $250.00 That may not be a lot of money to you personally, but it fits my mental model of “expensive” pretty well.

wow $4 bucks a month fits your mental model of "expensive", you must live a very frugal life :-)

If every piece of software I use day-to-day cost $4/mo, I'm not sure I would even use computers.

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

#308

Post by ranieuwe »

emmanueloga_ wrote: post #293
colinjoy wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are going to use it as a knowledge base, you are probably looking at a few years of use. Currently the closest match to this software I have installed is Quiver. Let’s compare costs over a period of 5 years: Quiver: $9.99 Obsidian: $250.00 That may not be a lot of money to you personally, but it fits my mental model of “expensive” pretty well.

wow $4 bucks a month fits your mental model of "expensive", you must live a very frugal life :-)

Not all people are living in an environment where they have an income that allows one to afford this. For some $4 is a lot, for some it is peanuts. Context matters.

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

#309

Post by logicprog »

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…

Downloaded this a few hours ago, and ported all my notes about my novel over to it, and I have to say: this is a really great piece of software. The interface is intelligent, ergonomic and fast, and it does a lot of things automatically which I really like. It cuts down on the boring book keeping.

I was also able to move my plot outline into this, which was a godsend for me because previously it was in a word document, meaning I couldn't check things off. Now I have an interactive task list for it! And everything is all in one place!

One small suggestion: I would really like some place where it lists all the key commands (for instance, are there key commands for making headings? what about the key command for Replace, which I couldn't find?). Also, it would be nice if tags weren't necessarily represented inside the document from a viewing perspective. Maybe as a bar along the bottom, which is then copied into the markdown document transparently?

Thanks for making this!

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

#310

Post by cxr »

_frkl wrote: post #275
ericax wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi there! Sorry it's our first time doing a license like this. If I understand correctly, licenses are usually written more strictly for legal purposes, but in my opinion your use case sounds like it should belong to personal use. If anyone has pointers for us to make the license text more clear, please let me know!

I would not write my own license. I'd really recommend you get a lawyer look over the text you have (that shouldn't be too expensive, it's a one time cost), or look at existing ones that are actually written by lawyers. For a public license (to restrict commercial use), I'd recommend both LicenseZero Prosperity ( https://prosperitylicense.com/versions/3.0.0 ) and the Polyform licenses ( https://polyformproject.org/ )…

Obsidian folks: please don't use any of the aforementioned licenses. The reality is that they're _not_ a good fit (although the author would probably love to get you as a client to handle your EULA and convince you to use one of the others for your eventually-open-source plans, and that would be an even worse idea).
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