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Ditching Obsidian and building my own

amberwilliams.io

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Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#381

Post by bolognafairy »

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…

Concerning, maybe. Definitely not surprising. One’s technical ability to do something has, if anything, a negative correlation with their ability to value and manage their own time. The author’s justification is absolutely ridiculous, hands down. I simply pray that they’re never in charge of deploying another human’s time effectively.

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#382

Post by trwhite »

MeetingsBrowser wrote: post #234
AstroBen wrote: post #100

> It helped me reclaim control over my privacy, and significantly cut down on recurring costs. Obsidian has end to end encryption and is $4 a month. I totally relate to it being fun to build your own tools but acting like it's a practical use of time... idk

Obsidian's syncing was pretty spotty for me. I was a big fan and was paying by the year, but kept getting frustrated when notes weren't syncing across devices. $4/month is a lot for something that only sometimes syncs.

I'm aware there are some naming constraints due to the underlying mobile filesystems not liking certain characters. This might be why it's not syncing fully for you? I haven't had any other major issues yet.

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#383

Post by hashhar »

williamsss wrote: post #76
e28eta wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about git makes you uncomfortable? I saw that you didn’t want to use a 3rd party provider, but why not stick a git repo on your VPS (which you are trusting with your data today) and use that to coordinate syncs between your client devices?

Made a comment in the thread explaining this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44023090 I expect my PKMS to evolve and wouldn't rule out a self-hosted Git server if I find it's a better option long term.

You only really need SSH access on a box to use it as a git remote - no server needed.

I learnt this quite late and was not obvious to me so hope it's helpful for you too.

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#384

Post by [deleted] »

mh- wrote: post #332
mock-possum wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact: Dropbox doesn’t support emoji in file names ( or at least, didn’t last time I checked. ) Deal breaker for me - adding iconography to file and folder names can be a natural, zesty enterprise.

And here I am still coming to terms with using spaces in filenames.

[deleted]

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#385

Post by TiredOfLife »

Sytten wrote: post #246
8fingerlouie wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But lets be realistic, 1000$ over 10 years is nothing Where is the limit ? While $100/year maybe doesn't sound like much, it's hardly the only subscription service you have, and they all add up, from your mail provider, office suite, cloud storage, streaming services, phone bills, internet service, etc. Personally I find $100/year to edit notes on my phone to be a bit much, but then again, I just use iOS Notes. I a…

I think that no matter that they do you will always find people complaining. That is humanity's favorite sport. Even when it's free and open source people still complain. Making software for individual consumers is freaking hard. My own perspective as a founder shifted from "this is a viable method to build a sustainable business" to "let's use it as the base for B2B sales, but it is not viable".

Obsidian is not free and not open source

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#386

Post by poulpy123 »

yathaid wrote: post #356

> Obsidian charges $8 a month to access the same notes across multiple devices. While not a huge amount for such a useful app, it adds up to an eye-watering amount - almost $1,000 if I planned to use Obsidian for a decade. This highlights one of my personal bugbears. People have a mental barrier when it comes to recurring, low-cost payments; even though the net sum is small in comparison to other things that they wou…

> People have a mental barrier when it comes to recurring, low-cost payments;

It's because they add up. In this specific case, considering OP job and it's heavy use of obsidian, it makes no sense to not pay for the synchro, if only to support the company[1], but if I was paying 8€/month for all software and service I'm using I would be bankrupted immediately.

Ironically this hurt open source and companies proposing generous free tiers the most because the amount of money people have for software will go to the one they cannot get for free.

[1] actually it makes no sense to develop your own tool when alternatives already exists

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#387

Post by out_of_protocol »

ezst wrote: post #121

I went deep into to the PKMS rabbit hole a year and a half ago, benchmarked Obsidian and many many others, and settled with Trilium¹ which I can only highly recommend. It addresses all the hosting/deployment requirements of OP² without the quirky workarounds mentioned here (syncthing & al), and makes the kind of "lifestyle scripting" this article about very simple and straightforward. In my mind and experience, Trili…

Also, Trilium don't have mobile app which is very important for having notes available 24/7. Browser version don't allow offline access and not as convenient as an app

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#389

Post by poulpy123 »

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.

But Op's program have even less probability to be here in 20 years
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