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Ditching Obsidian and building my own

amberwilliams.io

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Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#61

Post by JonChesterfield »

williamsss wrote: post #29
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…

Thanks for the feedback! Agreed Git can be used to sync your notes. Its a great solution for those comfortable putting their notes into a Git repo like Github. I wasn't comfortable with that however. Currently vetting a way to sync my database files with my markdown files on my laptop, so it functions similar to Obsidian. I enjoy Vim too much to work constrained to Directus' markdown editor!

Git is decentralised. You can sync between laptop and phone directly, no third party server required.

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#62

Post by atrus »

moelf wrote: post #57
mutoyoru wrote: post #41

> Obsidian was a great tool for me personally for a long time. But I felt frustrated when I wanted to access my notes on my phone while on-the-go and saw that I had to pay for this feature. I'm using Syncthing [0] to sync my vault between devices. On my main PC, Syncthing runs constantly in the background. Say, if I made a change, and want to send those changes to my phone, I open the application on my phone and let…

too bad Syncthing is no longer officially maintaining andoird app https://forum.syncthing.net/t/discontinuing-syncthing-androi...

But the syncthing fork (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.github.cat...) has been going for years now, and should have been the first choice anyways.

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#63

Post by harvey9 »

trwhite wrote: post #59
mutoyoru wrote: post #41

> Obsidian was a great tool for me personally for a long time. But I felt frustrated when I wanted to access my notes on my phone while on-the-go and saw that I had to pay for this feature. I'm using Syncthing [0] to sync my vault between devices. On my main PC, Syncthing runs constantly in the background. Say, if I made a change, and want to send those changes to my phone, I open the application on my phone and let…

It’s $4 a month to sync Obsidian notes, for anyone wondering.

It's a good price but still feels wasteful if you also run/pay for nextcloud or similar.

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#65

Post by rcarmo »

Reads like a mix of valid concerns and a plug for Directus, which is sort of fishy.

Either way, like many others, I use SyncThing to sync my vault, and routinely edit it with vim, so Obsidian is just one comfortable shell that can (relatively easily) be replaced.

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#66

Post by harvey9 »

TiredOfLife wrote: post #45
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.

Can I have those 1000$ if you think that is nothing?

Sure, but only in installments over the next 10 years and in exchange I need you to provide a sync service for my notes.

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#67

Post by galleywest200 »

trwhite wrote: post #59
mutoyoru wrote: post #41

> Obsidian was a great tool for me personally for a long time. But I felt frustrated when I wanted to access my notes on my phone while on-the-go and saw that I had to pay for this feature. I'm using Syncthing [0] to sync my vault between devices. On my main PC, Syncthing runs constantly in the background. Say, if I made a change, and want to send those changes to my phone, I open the application on my phone and let…

It’s $4 a month to sync Obsidian notes, for anyone wondering.

This was news to me, so this must have changed recently, as I have been billed more than that ever since I signed up.

I looked at my account, and I am charged $10 but it seems they automatically moved me to a "Plus" plan that has more storage. So no complaints from me really. Either that or the $4 plan is new. [1]

The $4 only comes with 1GB of storage. I would recommend the $10 for 50GB if you use images in your notes.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37251708

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#68

Post by matrss »

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.

In a single user scenario where you don't care about a web interface (and its associated additional features) for your repository you can literally use any server that is accessible to you via ssh and has git installed as a git remote for your repository.

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#69

Post by williamsss »

knlb2022 wrote: post #64

I've built a couple for myself so far; the most recent is in zig (sqlite extension that treats markdown files / frontmatter as virtual tables) and it's lasted me. I plan to rewrite it soon to adapt to how I've been using it :) https://github.com/kunalb/termdex

Sounds like something I would use. A demo gif in the readme would help understand what it does faster

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#70

Post by riwsky »

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.

Heck, you don't even need to run something like GitLab. Owing to Git's design as a distributed version control system, a "Git server" isn't even really a separate piece of software—it's the same software being used in a different way. Details @ https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-on-the-Server-Setting-Up-... , but you basically just need to `git init` somewhere on your VPS that you can later ssh to and add as a remote a la `git remote add origin username@yourvpsserver:/srv/git/project.git`
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