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Ditching Obsidian and building my own

amberwilliams.io

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Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#281

Post by isr »

williamsss wrote: post #33
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t HAVE to be GitHub, git is git is git. You could host your own git server like a self hosted Gitlab if privacy is a concern (which is a totally valid concern! I share the same concern, I don’t necessarily want all of my inner brain workings available to GitHub). You could probably also figure out some clever way to encrypt the files too, I bet there’s a plugin for that. Then you could use anything you want wit…

You have a good point. I don't have experience hosting Git servers personally. Is it easy to run and maintain? I'll have a try on my VPS if it is.

If you're not too wedded to git, have a look at fossil, perhaps. Its a dvcs just like git, but is itself distributed as a single static binary. This binary, in addition to allowing you to init & interact with fossil repo's, also comes with an integrated bug tracker, gui (for logs, etc), wiki, even a web forum with threaded discussions (so kind of a replacement for a mailing list).

And a builtin admin interface to govern permissions on the above. Plus, its its own server. All of this ... is builtin to that single binary.

It has a few of its own quirks as a vcs, but its pretty much equivalent to git, both functionally & conceptually (if you know git, you'll know fossil in 5 minutes)

So, if you want a dvcs for syncing, and don't want to setup git for external access, try fossil?

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#282

Post by nine_k »

At the meta level, my life is already too short to allow closed-source tools for anything on which I may need to depend in the long term. Commercial entities come and go, for reasons important for them but not necessarily for me. Old, ancient code can be made to run, as long as it's available and legal to distribute and run. If it's useful enough, I will be not the only user by far, and there'll be enough collective effort to keep it afloat, or replace adequately.

Locally runnable freeware is the next best thing, but a distant second.

So, no Obsidian for me, no Directus for me, etc, no SaaS; Org mode is good enough so far, and when it becomes inadequate, if ever, I'll start looking.

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#283

Post by tasn »

nine_k wrote: post #282

At the meta level, my life is already too short to allow closed-source tools for anything on which I may need to depend in the long term. Commercial entities come and go, for reasons important for them but not necessarily for me. Old, ancient code can be made to run, as long as it's available and legal to distribute and run. If it's useful enough, I will be not the only user by far, and there'll be enough collective…

I still mostly think like you, but I'm now more open to closed source tools.

The question I ask myself: is the advantage here so significant that it's worth the hypothetical switching cost at some point (and is export even possible?). If the answer is yes to both, I go for it.

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#284

Post by KetoManx64 »

nine_k wrote: post #282

At the meta level, my life is already too short to allow closed-source tools for anything on which I may need to depend in the long term. Commercial entities come and go, for reasons important for them but not necessarily for me. Old, ancient code can be made to run, as long as it's available and legal to distribute and run. If it's useful enough, I will be not the only user by far, and there'll be enough collective…

On the inverse, even as a FOSS advocate, my life is too short to only use open source software all the time and to reinvent the wheel and tools that have been put together into one fantastic product by the combined effort of hundreds of people.

I used Joplin for years, I even self hosted the Joplin Sync server, but Obsidian + Community addons runs literal miles around it from a performance and user cusomizability standpoint. Yes, I could stick to being a die hard FOSS user and spend twice as long doing the same tasks, or not even be able to due to lack of community extensions that do the same thing on Joplin's side. I could spend a 100 hours learning how to write a Joplin extension to do what I want and that would be a waste because that's 100 hours less that I've spent focusing on growing the skills that I get paid for. Life is too short to reinvent the wheel every single time.

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#285

Post by KetoManx64 »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #235

It seems to really be an ad for Directus ( https://directus.io/ ) (?) That he used to replace Obsidian. One of the first image to hit me when I got there is a button "Start For Free". And if I want to run it on my own server in "production" it costs money? or at least you have to fill out a form and "Lets chat". When I go to a page, I click on pricing, and what I get is a form to fill out and "Lets Chat", I am out of…

Yeah, if I wanted to store my data in a database, I'd just go back to using Joplin, a trusted and long term existing FOSS

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#286

Post by KetoManx64 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #255
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…

There's a lot of tools that are very useful but I'm not going to spend that much on. My water bottle is one. And I don't think food is a good comparison. Or renting a physical space, depending on what you get out of being a regular. Still, the basic price of $50 a year for sync is something I wouldn't be very upset with... except my main goal is a collaborative setup with other people and I'm not paying 5x or more to…

It comes down to how much is your time worth. If you're a developer making $100K+ a year, a $1,000 over a decade is nothing if it increases your productivity 2-3X compared to your collegues, which considering the fact that some of my colleagues store their notes in Windows Notepad is a complete underestimation.

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#287

Post by KetoManx64 »

krick wrote: post #275

There are community plugins to self-host the sync-server though. Anyway, I hate the fact I'm using closed-source editor, because it kinda is a sensitive thing, but the more I'm using Obsidian, the more unlikely the switch seems. I was kinda stingy with installing new plugins too, but, well, you cannot just ignore the productivity benefits. It doesn't seem feasible to build something like than on my own (for multiple…

Even if you try to replicate it, you need the community support and enthusiasm and interest in hacking and sharing their work to compete. Joplin is a great alternative, but the community plugins pale in comparison to Obsidian if you're a power user

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#288

Post by KetoManx64 »

OlivOnTech wrote: post #24

OP's main arguments to build their own PKMS are: - cost (feature or maintenance) - migration because it won't exist in the future But their solution is to depend on directus, which can lead to the exact same issues. To my eyes, they just added an extra step...

The guy just created some bullshit excuses in order to advertise his new product.

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#290

Post by blooalien »

vhanda wrote: post #80
rafram wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The downside is that if you’re on a two-week vacation and your home network/server goes down on day two, there’s probably nothing you can do until you get home. If it’s hosted online, you can count on that 99.99…% uptime and SSH access no matter what.

I think what they meant is that if it's hosted online / home-network, only allow access to all services through a VPN. Wireguard is relatively easy to setup, and you can configure all your services to only be available through wireguard. Ever since ssh almost got backdoor-ed, the only thing "exposed" on my servers is Wireguard, which is UDP based and therefore harder to know if it's running. SSH also goes over wiregu…

> ... Wireguard, which is UDP based and therefore harder to know if it's running.

Isn't it basically impossible to know if it's running unless you have an authorize key? I thought it didn't respond at all unless you ping a valid entry key off it.

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