Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app • Hacker News Board

Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app

#121

Post by elefantastisch » Thu, Oct 13, 2022, 2:24 PM UTC

matthewaveryusa wrote: post #50

If I use obsidian to take personal work notes, do I need a commercial license? Right now I use a giant append-only markdown file but I'm curious about the linking.

My understanding is yes, and honestly, this was my biggest sticking point with Obsidian. I'm happy to pay for software. I pay for Dynalist pro (same team for anyone who didn't know), but the separate commercial license on top of paying for sync just felt like a lot. Especially with commercial use being defined so broadly.

Fourteen days to trial just isn't enough to see whether it would be worth the cost to use for my own personal use at work. The Dynalist freemium model where I could use a smaller feature set for a longer time and then decide it was worth upgrading was just much easier.

Erica, would you consider a discount on add-on services for commercial subscribers? A 25% discount would put the price a bit closer to Dynalist pro and make it feel like I was actually getting something for the commercial subscription other than just permission to use it for work. Or maybe a discount for existing Dynalist pro subscribers?

I really love the work you all are doing, here and on Dynalist, just a bit hung up on the cost here.

Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app

#122

Post by Cthulhu_ » Thu, Oct 13, 2022, 2:24 PM UTC

I just can't keep up with all the note taking apps; I sometimes go through a Phase of "I need a means to organize my things", but invariably just go back to a folder with text documents. The note taking apps are fine, but they will either have a web/electron based interface that is too indirect, or their data storage is not open (like text documents), or they try and upsell you cloud storage / sync, or they offer no benefit over a plain text editor (with global search).

Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app

#123

Post by leodriesch » Thu, Oct 13, 2022, 2:24 PM UTC

pkulak wrote: post #113

Fun! I just moved over to Obsidian because of the simplicity. I love that I can use the local folder just as easily as the full app. Tip for anyone wondering: if you need encryption, gocryptfs works great. Now I just need to wait for Flathub to update…

Could you expand on how you do encryption with gocryptfs?

Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app

#124

Post by UI_at_80x24 » Thu, Oct 13, 2022, 2:26 PM UTC

Macha wrote: post #79

UI_at_80x24 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it wasn't just you. The best I could understand was that it was a note-taking app that outputs in markup.

Yes, it is a markdown notes application. This is the core, think Notion but local-first (Sync is a paid extra, or you can use Syncthing or Git to DIY sync). You can build much more complicated systems with it (I also have it as my todo app and have it pulling out todos from all my notes and prioritising them), or you can use it as a slightly nicer version of using vs code with a folder of markdown files, which was my…

haha, thank-you for trying to help, but ALL of the examples you used are nothing that I'm familiar with.

So I'm thinking that this is a _ME_ problem and not necessarily a 'Product Description' problem.

After installing it, and typing in a few things I notice that it's similar to ZIM (another desktop wiki app) on the surface.

I also appreciate that you corrected my misuse of "markup" when I should have said markdown without making me feel like an idiot.

Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app

#125

Post by rs_rs_rs_rs_rs » Thu, Oct 13, 2022, 2:27 PM UTC

Tried Obsidian, wanted to save a note that had an url in the title, can't do that, not able to have special characters in titles(am on Linux btw where there's little limitations on what chars you can use in file names).

Delete, good bye, auf wiedersehen!

Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app

#126

Post by QuarterReptile » Thu, Oct 13, 2022, 2:27 PM UTC

I've been wanting to play with your software for a while, and I happened to have a moment this time, so I loaded it on my Android phone.

If the bracket notation is a commonality among note taking systems like this one, then I may just be too much of an outsider to jump in easily to this app. But I, as someone who was interested in using the app enough to press every button I could see, couldn't figure out how to link notes until I exhausted my possibilities in the app, looked at your Web page, scrolled through the comments here and finally found someone linking to the page I needed. I knew that linking is the main feature, but I couldn't find it.

Filtering out dumb users like me may be a design decision, but if not, I would encourage something upon app installation that offers to tell new users how to link notes, even if it's just a link to a YouTube video ("new to Obsidian? Watch this 1 (2?) minute video to get you started.")

Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app

#127

Post by nkrebs13 » Thu, Oct 13, 2022, 2:28 PM UTC

weberer wrote: post #28

toopok4k3 wrote: post #20

I have no idea what Obsidian is and their frontpage does nothing to tell me what it is. All I can see is that it's been updated, but WTF is it? edit: ahh, it wasn't the frontpage...

Markdown editor that lets you add links to other files. You basically have a "project" consisting of a folder with various .md files.

There are plugins and extensibility that can be added as well.

https://github.com/search?q=obsidian

Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app

#128

Post by DMell » Thu, Oct 13, 2022, 2:28 PM UTC

mitchitized wrote: post #116

I see this as "Joplin, just not nearly as free (speech or beer)." Why would I pay monthly for sync and have no control, when I can already sync to my own s3 buckets and only pay for AWS storage and transfer? Is there a compelling reason to switch from Joplin to Obsidian? Honest question.

I'm really struggling to understand how Obsidian isn't free. Maybe I'm simply missing your point.

There is no expectation that you use sync, it's simply an option for those that want it and are likely less tech oriented.

Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app

#129

Post by xcdzvyn » Thu, Oct 13, 2022, 2:28 PM UTC

mitchitized wrote: post #116

I see this as "Joplin, just not nearly as free (speech or beer)." Why would I pay monthly for sync and have no control, when I can already sync to my own s3 buckets and only pay for AWS storage and transfer? Is there a compelling reason to switch from Joplin to Obsidian? Honest question.

Joplin takes a traditional approach to notes: there's notebooks, pages, then notes. Obsidian is more focused on zettelkasten - creating a network of smaller but refined notes that are all tagged and interconnected, which ends up looking somewhat like a bunch of neurons (hence _second brain_). It's also much more extensible. I've seen Obisidian extensions that add kanban and moodboards to notes, for example.

Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app

#130

Post by recroad » Thu, Oct 13, 2022, 2:29 PM UTC

This tool is so expensive. I want to use it but for this to be an alternative to Notion you'd have to pay for Sync and Publish, which would come to $24/month. That is very pricey for many people.