Logseq, it’s a lot like Obsidian as it also has knowledge graphs, tags, is markdown-based and self-hostable but, in contrast to Obsidian, it’s fully open source
Selfhosted
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
Rules:
-
Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.
-
No spam posting.
-
Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.
-
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.
-
Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).
-
No trolling.
Resources:
- selfh.st Newsletter and index of selfhosted software and apps
- awesome-selfhosted software
- awesome-sysadmin resources
- Self-Hosted Podcast from Jupiter Broadcasting
Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.
Questions? DM the mods!
Obsidian is where I landed after trying several.
Just tried it for a bit. Looks pretty sleek and has some nice features, but it seems like it's not open-source, which is something I'd like to avoid.
Then Logseq. It's an outliner (each line can be it's own...thing...), but it's open source and a direct competitor of Obsidian. In fact, I was ambivalent between the two when I first started with online note-taking.
Joplin. Obsidian is not open source, doesn’t have native self hosting and it gets complicated. Joplin is very simple and just works. Although, it stores the notes in a hashed database, so you can’t edit raw files without Joplin client
Good call on Obsidian not being FOSS! I don't know that.
Trilium for the same reasons, but the featureset of Trilium is more like Obsidian.
Problem with Joplin: The raw files are randomly named so you can't easily find a specific note
That's not even the bigger problem. I found the desktop ui very clunky. There were too many papercuts for me to keep using joplin. However, its TUI and mobile app are excellent.
Joplin as well, syching my 3 devices with the WebDAV option. I checked a few other options about a year ago and Joplin seemed the best.
https://notion.so It's a web-based editor with a good android app. Has basic formatting, plugins/integrations, and dark mode. It's free for individual use cases. Has some nice paid features for collaboration and business use cases, though the free plan still allows sharing and concurrent editing.
E: noticed this is in self hosted after posting. Maybe not what you're looking for, but it's a good service if you're ok with that.
Logseq.
I used Joplin in the past, but just didn't quite get completely comfortable with it.
I also tried Nextcloud in the past... that project has become too big for my needs and the file syncing had issues.
Logseq is very similar to Joplin (ie markdown files), but IMHO the editor is easier with Logseq, plus the files are just simple plaintext files, named after the page title, so are easy to edit outside of the application (and immediately update in the app)
At first, I was a little unsure of Logseq's default of working as a daily journal, but after a while it makes more sense for me - I use it at work, so 99.9% of my notes are meetings, tasks that occur during daily life... and of course those daily journals can refer to other "non-time based" project pages...
I also use syncthing to sync the notes between android phone, linux and Windows laptops and my NAS... so that wouldn't change for you.
I use Obsidian - it's phenomenal! https://avidandrew.com/elevate-your-note-taking-with-obsidian.html
Trillium although I wish it has multiple users on the same instance, other than that it's amazing and suits my needs.
Obsidian, and there's also another one that's not yet self-hostable but planning to, called Notesnook
I've been running the Joplin server for over a year with clients on four laptops and three phones and share notes with my wife and its wonderful. There are certainly quirks and sometimes sync issues but by and large I'm really happy with it. There seems to be one cluster of notes I have that always irritates a fresh client sync and it shows up at 50 conflicts but I work through it. Also my notebooks are huge and the first sync can take an hour. It's a lot slower than I'd expect.
Logseq
A nice grid lined notebook and a mechanical pencil is still my favorite.
I like to use Google Keep for certain things, but I have a hard time explaining how those things are better for Google Keep.
I'm looking at giving Neorg a try.
A nice grid lined notebook and a mechanical pencil is still my favorite.
If only my default font wasn't so bad that it causes data loss.
I am currently on Obsidian without any sync at all. Using this in both desktop and mobile.
But used it more in mobile for an offline note-taking app where I could write and read them without any internet connection. Especially to load images from local, make categorization (folders) and more with data I had in my mobile.
While for desktop, I rarely opened it anymore. I am more into VIM with markdown format and then just push it to git host for a quicker note taking.
Markor on Android and Obsidian on Desktop.
All synced with syncthing
Joplin syncing on my Nextcloud instance. I love being able to quickly screenshot something on my laptop for reference and later retrieve it on my phone :)
I’d like to highly recommend QOwnNotes with. File system sync like Nextcloud. Superb.
OneNote. Don't love being super reliant on all the Microsoft Office cloud stuff but there really isn't anything that comes close to what I use it for
orgmode with neovim on PC and orgzly on phone. syncing with syncthing
Edit: I'm actually using orgzly revived, a community maintained version of orgzly, since orgzly is no longer mantained
For anyone who is interested in note taking in your everyday editor like vim or emacs, orgmode is an emacs tool (in neovim there is a clone plugin) for note taking, todos, agendas, etc. It uses a format similar to markdown, and a good part is that with the orgzly app you receive notifications for your events. So basically you can use orgmode as a calendar as well (I do!).
neovim + git with gitea/forgejo
Emacs + org-mode for task planning and knowledge base, Obsidian + Syncthing for notes on-the-go.
QOwnNotes (had to look up the exact name as it's the stupidest app name ever). but compared to joplin it's lighter, faster, simpler (no database but individual .md files and folders) and works well enough with syncthing.
I used to use Joplin, and its great, but the Electron client isn't great on Linux mobile, so now I am using GNOME Paper on all devices, synced via Nextcloud. It's much simpler than Joplin but I need exactly 0 of the missng features.
Historically I've been using Google keep or one note (I'm a monster I know). I've been trying to see if I can migrate over to Nextcloud notes as I slowly de-FAANG my life.
Emacs with org mode. It has so many feature hooked into so many other things such as time management, calendar, email, jupyter. Hard to switch.
I've stuck with Joplin for a while. Self hosting the sync server so it's all saved privately.
I've used Joplin and Standard Notes. I do use Standard Notes premium and I much prefer it.
Flatnotes for me. I haven’t tried many others, but it was perfect for what I needed. Markdown, writes plain text files so no database/easy to backup
I used to use Joplin, I liked that it integrated with my Nextcloud, and the markdown format. However, the way that it handles the markdown files was too black-boxey to me, with the way it split them up in a weird scheme.
Now I use Ghostwriter with straight markdown files inside my Nextcloud folder. So I still get the syncing functionality, but a more flexible setup that doesn't require a specific app to access all of my notes.
any text editor... no, literally
I've tried lot of different apps, but I think I've settled on Trilium for now.
It doesn't have a great mobile experience, but the web app works fine on mobile. The app in general is super customizable and way easier to write scripts / plugins for.