I was asking a similar question a few months ago, and my search turned up Joplin. It's a free, open source app that works across multiple platforms and can sync data through a cloud service, either through Joplin's own cloud storage or through a third-party cloud storage like Dropbox.
this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2023
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Thanks! I'll check it out.
I use and enjoy Joplin. It's much less feature-rich than OneNote, but if you're predominantly using it to make text-based notes it does that with aplomb. I enjoy the cloud syncing, which is very useful combined with the fact that there's an Android app (so I can access my notes on the go).
You might want to explain the features of OneNote, particularly the exact ones that you want. I get the impression that most people don't know its organization structure.
My short input: it's not just note taking. It's has a tiered level of organization for the notes to categorize and quickly move about. The example I read was like it's set up like you have multiple binders, with dividers in each, and pages (notes) within those. The page is very open ended, you can add text boxes in any spot, mixed with pics in any spot.
Your input is very accurate. Being able to write notes freely anywhere on the page, draw on it, attach images, links, etc is a big part of it, but one of the most important things to me is organizing different pages into dividers/binders like you said.
I set up various sections for quests, locations, npcs, etc, for my rpg worlds, and need it to be well organized and be able to link to different sections within the same binder. I also like to color code everything.
Thank you.
We are encouraged to use the Microsoft office suite if tools at work, and I still haven't figured out how to use OneNote to improve my life.
I use onenote at work for all my notes. tabs and individual pages let me organize things so nothing is too long to scroll and find what I need. I can put text, screenshot, and hyperlink (to another part of one note or outside link), and a link to a pdf or excel file. I can add check boxes to whichever line items.
once I've got a nice set of notes, I can share either the entire notebook, the section, or just that page with the next person. or if they're a bit of a luddite, I can print it out and maintain format (mostly). the most recent version broke emailing a page, but if you're still running an older version of one note, it embeds it, with formatting, without being a pdf.
got something you need to paste in all the time? I've got one page where each text box is one copy/paste comment. clicking the header automatically selects all the text in just that box.
like OP, I tend to use one note at home for D&D, but if I can find something just as good I'm happy to try it. work leaves me with MS Office.
I looked at Joplin and Obsidian for the kind of notetaking I do and settled on Obsidian. To be honest, both have more features than I use. I like Obsidian because it's based on Markdown, so you're not tied to some oddball file format. But you should try them out and see which one fits your work style.
Joplin also uses markdown, and it has the advantage of being open source.
And can sync to webDAV
I recently settled on Obsidian too. It's proprietary software, but the text files themselves are in simple markdown and readable in a text editor. Additionally, you can sync across multiple devices using their paid service (which works flawlessly for everything) or set up sync yourself for free if you know how to host a couchdb instance yourself (works perfectly for everything except iOS, apparently).
The plugin support was baked in from the start so it's extremely flexible.
I wasn't worried about it being proprietary until I saw the founder reasoning for not having the source be open under a nonpermissive licence.
https://obsidian.rocks/why-isnt-obsidian-open-source/
I decided to go with logseq because of it.
It also syncs with all my devices using my own servers, instead of needing to trust obsidian/logseq.
That's fair, the privacy concerns are not ultimately addressable with a closed-source application. I can encrypt communication and the db itself since I am self-hosting it, but ultimately I'm using the obsidian app on desktop and mobile so I don't know where the data is going unless I specifically manage it's network usage etc which is a ton of extra work.
I haven't actually started taking notes with obsidian yet, I just got it setup. But the plugin support is...massive. IDK.
Obsidian is my go to for D&D.
They still sprinkle a bit of their own stuff into the markdown but it's generally usable outside.
Thanks for the suggestions! I'll see which one works best for me.
I'm not sure what features of OneNote you are talking about, but maybe logseq will suit your needs.
I switched from OneNote to Logseq. Its feature set is pretty much completely different, but in the end I realized it's fine with me and resulted in my notes being more useful.
The main downside that I see now is that it's kind of slow - much faster than the Electron version of OneNote was last time I used it, but slower than old native OneNote app or Obsidian. Otherwise its main differences from Obsidian are that in Obsidian the basic building unit is a page, whereas in Logseq it's a paragraph (and, usually, its sub-paragraphs - it's an outliner), which Obsidian can only do with plug-ins and not as seamlessly, and that with Obsidian you pretty much need to use community plug-ins, whereas with Logseq a lot of the functionality is built-in.
It's open-source and uses markdown, not completely standard, but close enough for the files to be entirely usable if Logseq ever dies. Its community is smaller than with Obsidian, which is a downside, but it's not exactly obscure either.
Really probably the most important thing about Obsidian and Logseq is to read an article or watch a video about how automatic backlinking works. It's especially useful for something like Zettelkasten, but it also works for more "normal" approaches as well as concepts like Getting Things Done.
Both are OK tools and are similar in many ways, but they're quite different from OneNote. Downside of both is that synchronization between devices sometimes creates issues unless you use their paid service.
I use logseq and notesnook.
I absolutely second logseq. Would you mind elaborating why/how you use notesnook in addition?
Thanks in advance!
I've used both, honestly can't justify the price of notesnook after using logseq. I'm in the process of switching over entirely to logseq.
I will say though that notesnook is a great alternative to Evernote and OneNote that is private and secure. I just don't use its features enough to justify using it over logseq and syncthing.
Notesnook required me to re-login every week or so. I paid for it in the beginning but after that kept happening over and over (it was fixed for a while and then regressed) I just gave up. If I need to quickly write something down I don't want to context-switch into my password manager first. Especially since auto-complete wouldn't help me, since for whatever fucked up reason Notesnook first asks for the TOTP token and THEN for the password.
I absolutely second logseq. Would you mind elaborating why/how you use notesnook in addition?
Thanks in advance!
Setup Trilium and use the Firefox extension to save screenshots or the whole page to it automatically which I love.
I'm feeling old. I have a folder called Notes with a directory hierarchy with text files in them. If I want to edit something, I navigate to the appropriate directory and type "vim -S". If I want to get to them remotely (which I haven't really needed) I would SSH in to my system with whatever terminal emulator I had available.
Probably logseq or Obsidian, but... if you like plain text and really need customization you might go with what I use: emacs + org-roam
Guides
text: https://jethrokuan.github.io/org-roam-guide/
video:
Start Using Org-roam Today | Install, Configure, and Use https://piped.video/watch?v=AyhPmypHDEw
There's a program called cherrytree that I think is very underrated. It's probably not a 1:1 replacement for OneNote but I recommend checking it out in case it fulfills a similar but different need.
Here's an Obsidian RPG Video: https://youtube.com/search?q=obsidian+rpg
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/search?q=obsidian+rpg
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I ended up going with obsidian. I wanted absolute portability I needed multiplatform support. I hadn't heard of Joplin at the time I made my choice, but I can say I'm happy with Obsidian and I like how their documentation is dog-fooded and useful in that form.
Joplin is very advanced
You check out this video: https://youtu.be/XRpHIa-2XCE
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/XRpHIa-2XCE
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
A Text File... No, really, a simple text file is imo the best way to take notes, you can open it on any computer, it's fully FOSS, you can sync it in 100 different ways
I use the Notes feature of my Nextcloud instance.
On the windows side of things (at my job) i dumped onenote for cherry tree. Its on portable apps website.
Not sure for linux. I run linux at home but only need one note- like programs at work.
+1 for Cherrytree, I can even recommend it on Linux. The tree structure makes it so much better to sort things than OneNote with the limited depth.
Some which I can think out of my head are : Joplin Trillium Logseq Notion Obsidian Anytype
If you need to draw, I would look into notion and obsidian.
I only really use the web version of it in Linux but I dumped OneNote for notion.
I have some scripts that use their API to send notes from the command line to a db page and some nvim mappings that I'm trying to get to send my buffers to a page but that part is problematic still.
I looked at obsidian but never really tried it out. I don't like the limits notion has but it's much faster for me to find my notes than OneNote. I have a metric fuckton of notes
My own use for OneNote was mainly drawing/hand written notes using a drawing tablet. For that use case, I have replaced it with Xournal++
For other notes written with the keyboard, I use simple local markdown files.
All my notes are synced between computers with Syncthing
Obsidian could work, its a markdown editor but I doesn't have any handwriting or drawing support, also its sync feature costs money but you can use nextcloud or github to sync your stuff anyway. An opensource alternative would be logseq but I prefer Obsidian
Joplin.
10+ years ago there was something called Basket Note Pads that had the same blank canvas style note taking that onenote has now.
My heart broke in two when the project died because the metaphor wasn't popular at the time. It'd be so well positioned if it had stayed in development until today.
I want to like libre office, but every time I have tried to use it, it ended up crashing eventually
I'm new to windows as a service desk guy and one note is the only thing I have available. I just wish I knew how to get the best out of it for templates I throw into notes and incidents.
Siyuan is probably the most advanced note taking app out there right now. Affine.pro is also a good one Appflowy is also good. All are FOSS.
Siyuan looks too good to be true.