I used git to sync a work related repo, but now use remotely-save with WebDAV (nextcloud, with base set to /Notes). No cost for sync and still access to the ecosystem of Obsidian.
Ditching Obsidian and building my own
31–40 of 570 posts
Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own
#32I 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.
FWIW, I’d be more concerned about the implications of the company having my notes in lieu of the pure cost perspective. But the thing is, you can avoid that entirely too by implementing your own sync
And implementing local sync for obsidian is just running on docker container
Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep fair point. I'm doing the project in chucks and writing about it. his written part notably unlocks the ability to use my phone. Currently vetting a way to sync my database files with my markdown files on my laptop as I enjoy using Vim. Funny enough I had downloaded a-shell and experimented with it and going git based. But ultimately didn't want my notes stored through Github. If that way works for you, cool!
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.
Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own
#34I wrote my own CLI tool for notes a few months ago ( https://github.com/ollien/quicknotes ). A web interface with proper rendering is something I thought about, but didn't pursue because I just know my UI skills aren't up to the task. Directus is a really interesting compromise!
You can do it so easily with AI coding tools. I'm not a frontend dev, but now I can whip up something decent looking in 10 minutes.
Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own
#35fwiw, on mac/ios you can put your obsidian vault inside icloud directory and have a “free” cross-device sync feature.
Hell, you don't even need obsidian. Just create a bash function
notes()
{
if [ ! -z "$1" ]; then
mkdir -m 00750 -p /Users/User/iCloud/Documents/notes
Now=$(date '+%B %d %Y %H:%M')
echo -en "\n$Now\t$@\n" >> /Users/User/iCloud/Documents/notes/notes.txt
else
echo "${Now}"
cat /Users/User/iCloud/Documents/notes/notes.txt 2>/dev/null
fi
}Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep fair point. I'm doing the project in chucks and writing about it. his written part notably unlocks the ability to use my phone. Currently vetting a way to sync my database files with my markdown files on my laptop as I enjoy using Vim. Funny enough I had downloaded a-shell and experimented with it and going git based. But ultimately didn't want my notes stored through Github. If that way works for you, cool!
I do agree with the author and others that I also wouldn't feel comfortable storing personal notes on Github. As I mentioned in a previous comment - you can use "git" without Github by hosting an instance of the open-source Gitea service. https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea
Thanks for sharing. I'll have a play with Gitea
My concern with this approach would be I've read through Directus' codebase and can understand it. With a self-hosted Git server like this I'd be worried if shit hit the fan and corrupted my Git files or stopped being maintained I'd be a duck out of water
Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own
#37Interesting that storing images is not something solved yet. If you watch the animated gif, he is still using a third party service to store that graph. I also think people to tend to like Markdown mostly because it’s plain text. The added benefits of that preview view is minimal. Like my gut feeling Markdown is popular 90% because of it’s in an accepted way to do plaintext and only 10% for the added formatting.
With plaintext, it's very trivial to add a script that put images in some location and build the link to that.
Markdown is great because you can easily add structure while typing compared to other format which have a more extensive markup format. I prefer org-mode because what Markdown can do, but also more extensive capabilities if you need so, but there's not a lot of editors for it especially on mobile.
Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own
#38I just don’t have any of these worries with Obsidian. I pay for it because it’s great software and needs support. The sync is amazing, totally solid. The data is wherever you want that data to be. It’s just MD files. You can adapt the tool to be whatever you want from a PKM system - massively complex, with some kind of dataview hell, or just some files in a hierarchy. You can use plugins or not use plugins. You can build your own. There’s no lock in. “Migration” isn’t really a thing - it’s some files in a folder system. It’s as future proof as it can be.
I mean go nuts and roll your own if you want, but really, what’s not to like?
Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own
#39The main thing being complained about here is that you have to pay for device sync. But instead of setting ups FOSS alternative like with a-shell and git you decided to… checks notes… build a less featureful obsidian without getting all the benefits of the obsidian ecosystem? I’m all for doing projects like this as an intellectual exercise. It’s just that the motivation behind doing so in the article is a bit more “h…
Yep fair point. I'm doing the project in chucks and writing about it. his written part notably unlocks the ability to use my phone. Currently vetting a way to sync my database files with my markdown files on my laptop as I enjoy using Vim. Funny enough I had downloaded a-shell and experimented with it and going git based. But ultimately didn't want my notes stored through Github. If that way works for you, cool!
I appreciate that you are taking the time not only to do the work but to document your experience and share it.
Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own
#40Kudos to the author for scratching their own itch.
People in a similar position might be interested in Joplin, which is indeed FOSS, and has lots of sync options. I personally use SyncThing, which keeps things free, but you can also use a number of other free cloud providers. You can choose to encrypt your notes to protect your privacy.