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Ditching Obsidian and building my own

amberwilliams.io

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Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#471

Post by PurpleRamen »

SamPatt wrote: post #437
PurpleRamen wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In point of fact this is actually an argument IN FAVOR of Obsidian. While the editor might be proprietary - the notes themselves are just standard markdown. If somehow all the copies of Obsidian magically disappeared off the earth tomorrow, I could easily switch over to Emacs org mode, VS Code, or literally anything else. Not really.. This problem runs far deeper than most are willing to see. First, Obsidian is usi…

But you do have full control, if you want it. Nothing stops you from altering plugins or making your own. The plugins sit in a local directory. Very easy to modify.

> Nothing stops you from altering plugins or making your own.

You still have no control over obsidian itself. Any change can and will break plugins. So you either settle with one version for the next decade, or you have to maintain them. This is just the normal dependency-hell that every project has, where you have to compromise with external dependency and their whims. Just that neither plugins nor obsidian (to some degree) are the level of professional software-projects in that regard.

And let's not talk about changing Obsidian on fundamental levels. You have even less control on how it works on everything which is not accessible by plugins.

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#472

Post by rasen58 »

dpkirchner wrote: post #304
accrual wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although not perfect, I added a couple features to help ensure uptime: * LAN components are on a UPS, helps keep continuity between power blips and breaker flips * Dynamic DNS, cron runs a script 4x per day to ensure a DNS name points to my IP, even if issued a new one by the ISP * Rebooting everything occasionally to ensure the network and services come back up on their own and I didn't make a mistake with some conf…

I run Tailscale on an Apple TV which is on a UPS. The thing uses very little power so the UPS lasts a long, long time.

Do you have to hack the Apple TV to run tailscale on it or how does that work?

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#473

Post by deafpolygon »

Funny - I went the opposite direction. Built my PKM in neovim (still a works in progress) + lua + markdown [main plugins I use is treesitter, telescope]; the upside? It's the same tool I use for editing all of my code, config, documentation. I have already re-implemented features such as Dataview and Tasks (not a 1:1 re-implementation, but covering the gaps) using common shell tools (i.e. lua, rg, sed, etc). I have written a few small functions, plugins for neovim that I use myself. I've kept it as barebones and minimal as possible (don't want to overbuild) so I can maintain it myself and not incur maintenance cost for this.

I sync using git between my two laptops - I have given up on mobile sync as I realize: I rarely need to edit my notes on the go, it's mostly for view only, and most of my deep work is on the laptop anyways. Yes, I have a "3 copies - 2 locations - 1 remote" backup system in place (I upload an encrypted volume once a week to iCloud [I'm already paying for it] for my remote).

I wanted to eliminate a dependency on proprietary tools and I've found a way to manage my notes in the same way I manage everything else - using my filesystem, and common open source tools.

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#474

Post by fmxsh »

> Will our preferred notes system last the sands of time?

Yes... My note system will last.

> Could you see yourself using your note-taking app you use today in 30 years?

No, I do not trust apps to last. Therefore I use a simple file system hierarchy to categorize everything. Then I use the best avaliable browser and editor.

My setup is Markor on mobile for browse and edit. Syncthing-fork to get it all into my big system where I run customized Neovim and can make scripts to interact with the data as well as syncing any generated output to the phone.

Having been a Obsedian fan, with similar plug-in fascination, I also experienced the negatives the article mention, and I finally settled with a simple file hierarchy and resorting to as few and basic tools as possible. Obsidian is great, but I didn't need all the features. I need a way to categorize, to quickly find, to edit, and to easily sync and my current setup satisfies that and I'm productive with it. (of course it does not reflect Obsidian's second brain feature, but personally I found that concept to require more work than reward and it wasn't intuitive for me to get accustomed to, but I guess the second brain thing is more like a lifestyle).

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#475

Post by deafpolygon »

Helmut10001 wrote: post #352

Most note-taking apps share the same fate: they either become obsolete over time (due to unsupported operating systems, security issues, or discontinued drivers) or end up locking you into a proprietary ecosystem. My solution was to move to a file-based system — using plain folders, files, symlinks, and relative links. The filesystem is one of the most fundamental and enduring parts of computing infrastructure, which…

This is exactly the route I've taken. Just rely on known tools and filesystem.

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#476

Post by kubav027 »

I have switched to joplin from evernote and I am using webdav on synology NAS to synchronize notes. It is open source and also self hosted and works on all platforms without problem. I also share notes with my wife. We use it for planning and shopping lists and it works really great. It has some basic conflict resolution which is usable for two people.

Joplin uses sqlite as storage but you can export collection to md files and there is backup plugin which does that periodically.

Also you can setup external editor. I am editing notes in neovim and joplin is just for viewing.

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#477

Post by deafpolygon »

tasuki wrote: post #177
williamsss wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a fan of Vim, I'm a fan of this solution. Are you able to access them on your phone?

> Are you able to access them on your phone? Yes, with caveats. I actually publish my wiki on the web with about fourty lines of bash to transform the Markdown into a static HTML website[0]. So I can access it through the web browser. When people ask me for recipes or whatever, I can just give them a url. I host one of my git remotes on GitHub (an extra backup, a service which is usually up and gives me a way to sync…

This is what I've switched to doing -- just pushing to my phone as a viewer; I realized that I don't write/think on my phone at all. It's just too annoying, but I do like having certain things (like recipes) on hand.

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#478

Post by PurpleRamen »

matkv wrote: post #444
PurpleRamen wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In point of fact this is actually an argument IN FAVOR of Obsidian. While the editor might be proprietary - the notes themselves are just standard markdown. If somehow all the copies of Obsidian magically disappeared off the earth tomorrow, I could easily switch over to Emacs org mode, VS Code, or literally anything else. Not really.. This problem runs far deeper than most are willing to see. First, Obsidian is usi…

Genuinely curious, which plugins do you mean for example when you say that many heavy features are leaning on them? I could see the dataview plugin as an example (even though I don't use that one personally) but most other plugins seem like they just add more convenient ways to do something that would be still pretty simple to do manually. (Templates for example).

> Genuinely curious, which plugins do you mean for example when you say that many heavy features are leaning on them?

Depends on what you are doing. But the whole task & project-management-corner is constantly moving. Everything which modified the editor and preview was also regular breaking in the last years. For example, there were some plugins adding banners at the top of documents, or background-images or some icons. Or plugins modifying the yaml-area. They were all breaking multiple times when Obsidian was switching to the new live-preview-editor, then on changing frontmatter to properties, and on some other occasion IIRC. Usually after some months a new plugin appears, or someone forks the old one and fixes it. But as a user, it's pretty annoying to constantly have something breaking outside your control and getting stripped of features you want/need for various reasons.

Obsidian is useful, but far from being stable long-term yet. It's still very young.

> I could see the dataview plugin as an example

Yes, dataview was also very unstable the first 2 years or so, switching code and concepts, breaking old code along the line. It seems to be stable now, as the focus is on datacore.

> but most other plugins seem like they just add more convenient ways to do something that would be still pretty simple to do manually. (Templates for example).

Does it matter what a plugin is doing? If it breaks, it's a loss, whether it's crucial or just annoying.

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#479

Post by deafpolygon »

grep_name wrote: post #305
iLemming wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Younger folk and beginners keep ignoring Emacs (and Lisp in general), without the slightest attempt to even understand what kind of philosophy makes it appealing. The profound difference lies in ontological fungibility – Emacs isn’t software you use, but cognitive clay that becomes an extension of your mind’s operating system. Where any specialized app is inevitably doomed to constrain you to some kind of constructed…

People definitely sleep on emacs, which is a shame, but I do get it. I switched to emacs fulltime for coding for my work a few years ago, and really had it tailored to my preferences but drift (that took just slightly too long for me to keep up with while on the job) combined with AI features in other editors led me to land on Zed for code, which saddened me but is probably the best fit for coding. However, Org-Mode…

Which is why I've settled on neovim; I've written my code to be as modular as possible, so I can pull it in an CLI program if needs be.

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#480

Post by billfruit »

kepano wrote: post #459
billfruit wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still they are recommending people to use device storage permissions with "All files" permissions rather than the limited App Storage permissions. They prefer that the users use the less secure option.

The primary reason it's recommended is that it provides more freedom and interoperability. Read this thread and you'll notice that many people sync their notes using Syncthing. You cannot use Syncthing with app storage because the files are sandboxed. Many people enjoy the freedom of being able to read/modify notes using multiple apps. The secondary reason is related to user expectations and file deletion. The device…

That(using whole device, all files access permissions) is entrusting all your files to the good senses of Obsidian, which is not an open source app.

There isn't a good reason to grant an app unlimited file access permissions.

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