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Ditching Obsidian and building my own

amberwilliams.io

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Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#451

Post by tsurba »

vunderba wrote: post #3

Good article but as a heavy user of Obsidian (and previously Evernote), I would offer some counterpoints: > After some mental gymnastics weighing if I should continue with Obsidian, I found solace when asking myself "Can I see myself using this in 20 years?". I couldn't. The thought of cyclically migrating notes from one PKMS to another every 5 years, as I had done from Evernote to Notion to Obsidian, made me feel ti…

Just use Joplin, it’s open source and syncing to many cloud providers you already probably have is free.

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#452

Post by wiether »

hartator wrote: post #15
Sytten wrote: post #5

I really don't want to critisize OP since building stuff for yourself is always a good mentality. But lets be realistic, 1000$ over 10 years is nothing. It will always cost more if you consider your own time for maintenance long term. Obsidian is one of the most consumer friendly business for note taking out of there, they are not VC so the Evernote comparison is unwarranted IMO.

I think the author point still stands though: Obsidian won’t probably be here in 20 years.

One of Obsidian's creators is saying exactly the same actually.

https://stephango.com/file-over-app

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#453

Post by lilerjee »

Note-taking app is very complicated, even bookmark manager is also complicated. They need much time to develop and maintain. If one person develop a himself/herself such app, the possibility is giving up at last.

I think there are two ways:

1. Select an open source app which meet your requirements

2. Select and pay for a commercial app

do not waste your time and resources for it, just use a or some proper tools, and use the time for the most important things.

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#454

Post by tsurba »

surrTurr wrote: post #329

I also tried to build my own Obsidian[^1] a few months ago. However, I stopped using it after some time, since maintaining it would realistically be a full-time job. What I also found super annoying was the feeling that I'm never done with it. Whenever I encountered a rough edge or missing feature, I had to (obviously) implement it myself. All in all, I find Obsidian as good as it gets. Also, Obsidian is probably one…

Or use Joplin which is open source and also creates markdown files, and setting up sync to a cloud provider that you probably already have is free.

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#456

Post by wiether »

montagg wrote: post #241

Wait. Sync is “free” if you want to use some other service other than Obsidian’s. I pay for Obsidian sync partially for slightly more convenience (fewer non-integrated points of failure) and also to support the app itself. I’d gladly pay $1000 over a decade for a crucial tool. If the concern is open source and true longevity, I get it, you don’t get that here. But cost for value? Holy shit. $1000 over a decade is abs…

> If you found something perfect for you that works >5 years, holy crap. You are blessed.

Having been unable to find an out-of-the-box app fitting my needs, I built my own personal finances app in 2012 and I'm using it weekly since then.

I'll probably work again on it one day because the technical stack is old, which makes it harder to host, but otherwise it still does exactly what I want, how I want it.

> That honestly should not be the standard for tools these days—ESPECIALLY in a today’s world.

Maybe I'm not interpreting it correctly, but you make it sound like having a perfect system for more than 5 years is unhealthy.

Whereas, I'd say it's quite the opposite.

Back to my finances app, since I'm using it I've been able to focus on improving/mastering other parts of my life. Not having to get back to find another system to manage my personal finances means that I'm able to focus on other stuff.

I have a hard time seeing how that would be a bad thing?

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#457

Post by erispoe »

> But if it's so obvious, why aren't other developers rolling out their own PKMS? Perhaps I'm the first to discover this or perhaps developers aren't writing about their custom PKMS. My guess is that commercial note-taking apps have larger, more vocal communities that drown out the murmurings of other DIY solutions.

Because we value our time.

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#459

Post by kepano »

billfruit wrote: post #446
kepano wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not anymore. As of Obsidian 1.8.10 you can use app storage which doesn't require additional permissions. It's explained here: https://help.obsidian.md/android

Still they are recommending people to use device storage permissions with "All files" permissions rather than the limited App Storage permissions. They prefer that the users use the less secure option.

The primary reason it's recommended is that it provides more freedom and interoperability. Read this thread and you'll notice that many people sync their notes using Syncthing. You cannot use Syncthing with app storage because the files are sandboxed. Many people enjoy the freedom of being able to read/modify notes using multiple apps.

The secondary reason is related to user expectations and file deletion. The device storage option behaves more like desktop in that if you delete Obsidian your files will not be deleted.

For people who are okay with the tradeoffs, app storage is now an option. That's a good thing, no?

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#460

Post by I_am_tiberius »

wim wrote: post #448
I_am_tiberius wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool. May I ask how you implement the collaborative e2e? Do you encrypt the content multiple times - once for every user?

The workspace data is encrypted with a (symmetric) workspace key. Each user gets hteir own encrypted copy of that key, using the user's public key. By wrapping the data-encryption key for each user the content is only encrypted once but each authorized user can decrypt it.

Ah ok. I guess that means when a user leaves the team, you have to re-encrypt the codebase with a new symetric key (as the user would still know the old symetric key)?
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