this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2024
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Privacy
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I've been self-hosting Standard Notes for a while, and if you think it's something you can pull off, I'd recommend it. Especially if you can get by without folders, (too many) fancy editors, or some of the extra cloud stuff they have been offering.
If you don't feel like self-hosting, there are other options too, like
Maybe Logseq, too.
+FOSS like Joplin and unlike Obsidian
+plaintext markdown files like Obsidian and unlike Joplin's janky database
-less feature-rich than obsidian
-block-based instead of note-based, so a slight paradigm-shift is required
You can add two spaces at the end of every line to manually trigger
a line break
Is there a problem with your Lemmy client? My comment renders fine on Raccoon.
Maybe, but I'm pretty sure "end a line in two spaces to ensure a line break is inserted" is standard Markdown. I can see the source fine but not the formatted comment.
Eternity doesn't render that fine and neither do any of the websites and frontends I've tried. It's likely Raccoon in specific renders this as you intended, but it is in the markdown spec — that Lemmy mostly follows — that "strictly" two line breaks are needed to render one line break in HTML.
It isn't very "what you see is what you get"...
I regret I'm probably never escaping Obsidian. For a closed-source piece of software it has such a beautiful ecosystem of themes and plugins. I love to use it for writing my blog articles, and the mostly strict adherence to the markdown spec, the HTML rendering and plugins that add support for Pandoc (and Zotero)...
But by default I can't seem to get Logseq in that space, even if I really want to, where I only organise files based on metadata and folders.
How do you get "trapped" in it? I've never used it seriously, but my last experiment on Android requires you to create a folder to write Markdown files to. Which seems about as portable as any app can possibly be; it could disappear from your devices tomorrow, and you'd still have all your stuff, right?
FWIW Markor also lets you edit Markdown files locally on Android, and it's probably a far cry from Obsidian but it could easily serve as a drop-in replacement in such a scenario.
It's not about the files, I'm very happy with files being local and easily synced and messed with. It is as you say, you create a folder which Obsidian reads as a "vault" and create
.mdfiles and folders in there, plus the hidden folders that let Obsidian organise plugins...But I'm also not exclusively using it on Android, it's my desktop driver for just about everything text. Especially please with the community plugins which make it extremely accessible for someone with additional needs when it comes to reading or writing, the recent improvements to tables and the plugins that integrate it with Pandoc and Zotero.
I was never able to replace what it was with anything except maybe Logseq, and even the Logseq couldn't replace all of the functionality and theming. I tried living a few days in Logseq, just moving my vault there, but it didn't work so well.
It's not a major issue, I would like to move to FOSS but it's not an emergency like moving away from Google is an emergency.
Thanks for the detailed answer! I was aware of the community plugins (and I'm very pleased Obsidian isn't trying to sell them to anyone) but wasn't sure if there was anything else going on under the hood... Plugin configuration definitely makes sense.
And gives me an excuse to start exporting the stuff I've got in my local Standard Notes instance too. I like their interface, but their mobile clients kept throwing me out by switching to the default server, and the web client disabled non-official synching too, so I'm starting to like the idea of having an actual copy of the notes rather than hoping SN doesn't have another fit.
Again, depending on your needs perhaps Logseq is fine. It seems that developers of each app (Logseq and Obsidian namely) have this expectation of how users want to use their apps but in my experience they are both configurable to use Tags, Folders or Links to organise content. This lets you take notes and organise in several ways.
Logseq is FOSS, Obsidian is not and is more popular (thus larger community plugins/themes ecosystem). That's the main difference.
I would love for someone to walk me around what SN can do and walk someone around what Obsidian can do.
My biggest issue with Logsec is the CLA signing. I still use it but don't feel like contributing to it anymore
Oof. I did not know about that. That's unfortunate!
I just wish any of them had a native Android UI instead of a weird, janky mess that is Logseq and iOS clone in Obsidian.
It seems like apps are all using web apps as a shortcut for deploying cross platform functionality. Which is sometimes fine until you run into compatibility or UI issues like those.
I mean yeah, I get it, and I know the same's the reason behind everyone and their dog using Electron, but in both cases the result is... not great.
Too bad it requires 2GB of RAM. Joplin is "perfect" but the UI is ugly.
I know these apps but none of them is as good as standard notes in my opinion. Notesnook seems fine but I don't like fact that it is based in Pakistan. I used Joplin before buying a sub for standard notes so I know it.
Currently I have also subscription on Crypt.ee for photos but there is also a notes app integrated. Maybe I'll start using it. Developer of cryptee was very active on reddit and he seems like a man who values privacy and security.
But I hope that simply proton will not force the migration of standard notes accounts to proton accounts and for old users everything will be as before.
Is there anything won't with the company itself being in Pakistan, if it's explicitly hosting your data in Germany? I'm not aware of any nation-level threat going on over there, and their client is open-source on all platforms, so I don't imagine there's much that would be compromised.
Idk, maybe I'm wrong. Notesnook is recommended by privacyguides at all. All my mistrust comes from the fact that such countries are not famous for respecting human rights. What if the government forces the owners to give up the keys? Maybe it's an unrealistic scenario cause data is encrypted.
You're asking the right questions.
Regarding keys: they never store those. If they did, that would be a problem from the beginning. The whole point of E2EE encryption is that the servers and server owners should never be able to access your data even if you wanted them to.
Yes, you had me cause I write only about keys, but I thought also about backdoors on gov demand.
If you're worried about backdoors, you can build every client from source and verify the code. IIRC they haven't paid for an audit, but if they failed to protect your passwords/keys that'd be really bad for their reputation. And considering their target demographic, it's pretty important to keep that part of the reputation alive.
Notesnook is open source and you can check (if you have the knowledge) if there are any issues. They're working on making the server self-hostable (also fully open source) so there's that.
What's the upside over self-hosted (and encrypted) Trilium, which is what I currently use? (I ask this not as a challenge, but out of curiosity.)
From the looks of it, Trillium is halfway between Standard Notes and hosting your own wiki.
If you're happy with Trillium, I'd say stick with it. It looks pretty good, TBH. Standard Notes is self-hostable more as an afterthought, which is to its detriment.
Thanks, appreciate it!