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Any good open-source self-hosted evernote alternatives?

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Re: Any good open-source self-hosted evernote alternatives?

#71

Post by artlogic »

Ixiaus wrote: post #38

Amazed no one has mentioned Emacs' org-mode yet. Nothing I've ever tried comes close to the flexibility and usefulness of org-mode in Emacs. Combined w/ MobileOrg sync and the MobileOrg app, it serves all of my note-taking needs quite well. It's much more than dumb text, too, like Evernote. Structured documents with headers, markdown-like formatting, links, fast-capture templates for stray thoughts, an Agenda system…

I've been using the Orgzly (http://www.orgzly.com/) beta for a couple of weeks and quite liking it in comparison to MobileOrg. You may want to give it a try. I found it to be a bit easier to get started with.

Re: Any good open-source self-hosted evernote alternatives?

#72

Post by Surio »

ilurk wrote: post #50
Surio wrote: post #31

I like to store my data locally, so that influences the choice of my note taking software. I use cintanotes portable myself... http://portableapps.com/apps/office/cintanotes-portable It is not "opensource", but it has been most useful for keeping notes, tagging, and categorising I also use http://portableapps.com/apps/office/keepnote-portable ( http://keepnote.org/ ) which is FOSS and also http://portableapps.com/app…

You mentioned keepnote. How does it compare to Zim [0]? [0] http://zim-wiki.org/

I came across it after I started using keepnote. Since I was already invested in the above three, I didn't bother too much with it. So, sorry that I am not too much of a help in this matter.

Re: Any good open-source self-hosted evernote alternatives?

#73

Post by Surio »

Ixiaus wrote: post #38

Amazed no one has mentioned Emacs' org-mode yet. Nothing I've ever tried comes close to the flexibility and usefulness of org-mode in Emacs. Combined w/ MobileOrg sync and the MobileOrg app, it serves all of my note-taking needs quite well. It's much more than dumb text, too, like Evernote. Structured documents with headers, markdown-like formatting, links, fast-capture templates for stray thoughts, an Agenda system…

I had mentioned that I do use orgmode, along with few others. But, my comment was further below yours, and was more of a "postscript". I definitely use it for most of my technical note taking, as it is part of my emacs workflow. For casual note taking I ended up using the other apps, to vary my workflow pattern and tool usage.

Re: Any good open-source self-hosted evernote alternatives?

#74

Post by rainmaking »

jimktrains2 wrote: post #29
rainmaking wrote: post #5

I use a git repository with text files and Terminal IDE to git on android.

Have you used evernote? My use cases involve saving pictures and documents to it (and having them be searchable), as well as being able to share specific things with specific people. Additionally, having everything available on my phone is extremely useful. A simple git repo doesn't suffice for that.

I use text for documents and grep/find to search them. I do have them on my phone, Terminal IDE is a full git/grep/yada suite for android.

Sharing with other geeks is easy, share a repository with them. Sharing with non geeks is a different story, of course, that is not covered by this approach.

Re: Any good open-source self-hosted evernote alternatives?

#75

Post by luxpir »

unknownian wrote: post #40
lfam wrote: post #39

I use http://syncthing.net/ to sync my notes (and whatever other files I want) across my devices, including Android. It's like a FOSS Bittorrent Sync clone, although it doesn't actually use the Bittorrent protocol. It works very well!

Syncthing is great, but the devs say they can't develop a mechanism for sync between operating systems on the same computer, which is something I really need.

Then the devs aren't being creative enough!

You could do as I do: Syncthing on laptop Raspberry Pi phone.

Now all changes made on either the phone (OS #1, in your case) or laptop (OS #2) will be synced to the Pi (or VPS) ready to be picked up by the other device when switched on/synced. Placing a device between the two others ensures that all files are up to date.

Without it you can run into situations where you've updated a file on the laptop that is also open on the phone, accidentally saving the phone changes over the laptop changes, then saving the laptop changes back over the phone changes. Syncthing has versioning, but this setup negates the need for most rollbacks.

I use it to keep notes in simple text files with Vim and Notepad++. No need for markdown or images here, so I just use basic formatting, timestamps and hashtags to help with searching and browsing.

Including an encrypted filesystem, alongside Syncthing's encrypted syncing, can keep data that bit more secure.

All open source, all encrypted, all self-hosted. Give yourself 30 minutes to set it up, if that.

Notes:

The Pi is the Pi2, but until a recent upgrade it worked fine on the Pi1. The phone is an n900, still doing a great job 5 years on... but in need of a replacement, preferably another phone that can install arbitrary Linux software and is not walled into an 'apps' ecosystem.

The OP was interested in Android support. I don't think there's an app for Syncthing, but you could SSH to your VPS, with notes synced to your laptop? You're just missing that middle device in that case.

Re: Any good open-source self-hosted evernote alternatives?

#76

Post by 3riverdev »

One option that wasn't originally intended for this use, but works really well, is Artificer (http://artificer.jboss.org). It's an open source project that started out as a metadata and software artifact repository. However, it's expanded to include any type of logical information. It supports hierarchical classifiers, custom/ad-hoc properties, relationships between nodes, etc. I'm in the middle of working it into a demo that implements the "Getting Things Done" structure.

It's self-hosted on Wildfly or JBoss EAP, but we're almost finished supporting Docker (ie, you'd be able to run it on OpenShift).

Disclaimer: I'm the technical lead for the project.

Re: Any good open-source self-hosted evernote alternatives?

#77

Post by unknownian »

luxpir wrote: post #75
unknownian wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Syncthing is great, but the devs say they can't develop a mechanism for sync between operating systems on the same computer, which is something I really need.

Then the devs aren't being creative enough! You could do as I do: Syncthing on laptop Raspberry Pi phone. Now all changes made on either the phone (OS #1, in your case) or laptop (OS #2) will be synced to the Pi (or VPS) ready to be picked up by the other device when switched on/synced. Placing a device between the two others ensures that all files are up to date. Without it you can run into situations where you've u…

>I don't think there's an app for Syncthing

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nutomic.sy...

Yeah, I knew about the middle device thing, but it seemed like a hassle when the Android app is a bit alpha-ish.

Re: Any good open-source self-hosted evernote alternatives?

#78

Post by jimktrains2 »

rainmaking wrote: post #74
jimktrains2 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you used evernote? My use cases involve saving pictures and documents to it (and having them be searchable), as well as being able to share specific things with specific people. Additionally, having everything available on my phone is extremely useful. A simple git repo doesn't suffice for that.

I use text for documents and grep/find to search them. I do have them on my phone, Terminal IDE is a full git/grep/yada suite for android. Sharing with other geeks is easy, share a repository with them. Sharing with non geeks is a different story, of course, that is not covered by this approach.

> I use text for documents and grep/find to search them.

That's wonderful, now what about a picture of a business card or flier I took quickly? What about PDFs I've been sent or have found online? Not everything is generated in a text editor, and as much as I love text and default to it as much as possible, it's not always possible.

This is maybe my 3rd biggest usecase.

> Sharing with non geeks is a different story, of course, that is not covered by this approach.

Which may be my second largest use case for evernote.

I would not call a method that cannot perform more than 2/3rds of the main functions I use daily a replacement, let a lone an adequate one.

Re: Any good open-source self-hosted evernote alternatives?

#79

Post by npaquin »

driverdan wrote: post #27
npaquin wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't. Use. OwnCloud. We tried rolling it out at a small (80) employee company and it ended up being a nightmare.

Can you go into more depth? Was it because of the number of users?

Major syncing issues that will lead to a ton of support requests. The number of users using the application didn't seem to make a difference - our user count slowly increased, then decreased at the end. Various people had sync issues the whole time.

I'd like to see something like this redone in a lower level language - it seems like PHP isn't well suited for this task.

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