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Why I Like Obsidian

ddanieltan.com

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Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#41

Post by dustincoates »

I like Obsidian, too, having recently switched over from 9 years of OneNote (the fact that there's a tool to import my OneNote notes helped a lot).

The most important tip for getting started with Obsidian, in my mind, is to absolutely ignore all of the Obsidian "power users." I'm 99% convinced that no one actually uses zettelkasten seriously, but even if so, it's overkill for when you're just checking out the app. And, please, don't buy one of these $500 Obsidian courses. It's just not necessary.

With that said, I have started extending out my own setup, and one of the plugins that I like the most is DataView, which allows me to automatically link to other notes, or pull in tagged text, or to-do items. It has allowed me to really take daily recaps reliably for the first time ever, because, even if I have nothing to write, I at least have a repository of what I was doing for that day.

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#42

Post by Loxicon »

hannofcart wrote: post #21

My notes system is: On desktop: Nvim with some markdown plugins plus Goyo On mobile: Obsidian Syncthing for sync (though previously I've Dropbox as well for the same) On desktop I find Obsidian's vim mode slightly uncanny valley-ish. Close enough to be able to emulate my vim flow. But not _quite_ right. On mobile, I've found Obsidian to be just top class. Though admittedly most of my real note taking happens on deskt…

+1 for Goyo and markdown.

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#43

Post by TSiege »

rabbitofdeath wrote: post #35

Just last week I fully committed to Obsidian with the git sync plugin. It took some fiddling and a bit of trust to sync 4 years of notes. (Previously I was just using Sublime Text and my notes folder as a project hooked up to my gitea instance.) But now, its like second nature and I'm looking for neat plugins that you cant live with out.

Can you share a link to the git plugin you're referring to?

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#44

Post by ChatGTP »

hannofcart wrote: post #21

My notes system is: On desktop: Nvim with some markdown plugins plus Goyo On mobile: Obsidian Syncthing for sync (though previously I've Dropbox as well for the same) On desktop I find Obsidian's vim mode slightly uncanny valley-ish. Close enough to be able to emulate my vim flow. But not _quite_ right. On mobile, I've found Obsidian to be just top class. Though admittedly most of my real note taking happens on deskt…

So your notes are sprawled across different apps?

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#45

Post by rthkljlkrj »

dustincoates wrote: post #41

I like Obsidian, too, having recently switched over from 9 years of OneNote (the fact that there's a tool to import my OneNote notes helped a lot). The most important tip for getting started with Obsidian, in my mind, is to absolutely ignore all of the Obsidian "power users." I'm 99% convinced that no one actually uses zettelkasten seriously, but even if so, it's overkill for when you're just checking out the app. An…

The plugin ecosystem for obsidian is insanely large, and I say that not in a good way.

I agree, just ignore all of that. Plain files and internal links, that's it.

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#46

Post by Loxicon »

twiclo wrote: post #37
hannofcart wrote: post #21

My notes system is: On desktop: Nvim with some markdown plugins plus Goyo On mobile: Obsidian Syncthing for sync (though previously I've Dropbox as well for the same) On desktop I find Obsidian's vim mode slightly uncanny valley-ish. Close enough to be able to emulate my vim flow. But not _quite_ right. On mobile, I've found Obsidian to be just top class. Though admittedly most of my real note taking happens on deskt…

Why not use VimWiki on desktop?

I used to use vimWiki and then changed to normal vim because I like netrw and vim-vinegar + Goyo + netrw makes for a simpler workflow.

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#47

Post by Multicomp »

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on your favorite notetaking app OP, it's more than I've done for mine. I'm glad it works for you, the in-between applications trying to do notetaking is a pain.

I settled on OneNote because I'm always trying to capture context with my notes, codify my knowledge. Usually that means screenshots, handwriting, file copies, rarely video or audio embeddings.

I'm not going to try to convince you to use onenote, I want to instead complain about how this makes me boring and uncool, I see how trendy/popular the 'markdown files plus some goodies' notetaking applications are, but somehow I just don't get why those have enough ROI for my usecase, but still, my ego of not being a cool 10x developer who uses only certified organic grass-fed markdown files for my notes means I write rant comments like this.

Anyways, that's much ado about nothing on my part, again, thanks for sharing!

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#48

Post by jddj »

candiddevmike wrote: post #30
mofosyne wrote: post #20

Anyone tried Dendron ( https://github.com/dendronhq/dendron )? It feels like it could almost become a competitor to Obsidian and plus is essentially a vscode plugin, so you get the benefit of using vscode as your code editor as well. Too bad the project has ended as there is no clear approach for the Dendron team to make it financially sustainable (with their cloud sync subscription, much like Obsidian Sync). But it'…

I used dendron with vscode and the extension really screwed up vscode for me. It seems to hook into a lot of things within vscode and created quite a few annoying prompts and added some weird markdown previewing issues.

Interesting. Maybe codium for notes and code for code?

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#49

Post by jimmytucson »

mdhb wrote: post #24
jimmytucson wrote: post #2

> allows structure to grow organically > powerful feature ... Internal Links. > plain text files Well, they're not _plain_ text - there is some markup. So that invites the question - why not HyperText Markup Language? Doesn't HTML have all of these features - hyperlinks, folder structures, "plain" text? Isn't HTML also future proof? It's been around long enough. And doesn't it also work offline? There's a bunch of di…

You’re getting smashed for no particularly good reason in my opinion. I am in the camp if I like the idea of Obsidian but I have a bunch of other stuff I want to include and do stuff with like JSON-LD data for example. But the idea of writing raw HTML is in fact a huge pain in the ass as everyone was all too eager to point out here. We have had markdown to HTML converters and visual editing experiences for a long tim…

Yeah, clearly I touched a nerve :)

But I still don't know what Obsidian gives you besides letting you write in Markdown instead of HTML. And that is basically a Markdown to HTML converter, as you pointed out.

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#50

Post by Brajeshwar »

midasz wrote: post #16

I really like Obsidian but the long startup time (on mobile) has stopped me from using it as a daily driver.

Perhaps, perhaps, this is something for you to look at. I use Obsidian on the Desktop but I don't do much work/editing on the Mobile, so I just use iA Editor (you an choose any editor of your choice). As the files are that -- files, I just browse and open the file I want to edit. I get to the files with Obsidian on the Desktop and iA Editor on the mobile to edit/read it.
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