Free and Open Source Software

Obsidian is what I use mostly, it syncs great with syncthing across all my devices. It doesn't have drawing support, so whenever I need to doodle something I end up in samsung notes again.

Obsidians great! I do wish it was open-source though :(

There is an open source alternative called Logseq https://logseq.com/

Very much this. Obsidian has a learning curve. It needs more than a day to get a feel for.

@Stronk +1 for Obsidian! I love it. It's definitely different than OneNote. Notion may actually be a better fit for you, but I encourage everyone to check out Obsidian just to see if it's for you! Excellent software.

@IuseArchbtw

Obsidian is hella based

Joplin also has a great web-clipper through a companion addon in Firefox (and I assume also Chromium)

Joplin is great in many ways, and I do use it to some degree, but there's a few things that irks me.

• Notes and attachments being stored in a database and referenced by a cryptic UID instead of plain files with human readable names makes integration with other apps impossible. And it's bad for data portability
• On Android I've never been able to get it to background sync. I need to keep Joplin in the foreground. The second I switch to another app it stops syncing
• On sync conflicts it'll just use the newest note as master and overwrite older changes. Luckily if you realise it happened you can use the history feature to get back lost changes. Typical scenario for me is to add much more stuff to a shopping list while on desktop. 30minutes later open the app on Android while shopping to tick off an item. Realize all the recently added items from desktop are gone to the ether (stored in history on the desktop and other synced devices)

Hopefully these sync issues are some rare bug for me. I've tried all the usual "battery saving" tricks in android, but still Joplin will not background sync. Other apps like DavX5 sync fine. Are anybody else here having luck with Joplin on mobile?

I used Joplin on Windows and iPhone - syncing (encrypted) using a OneDrive account. So far working well.

And I'm another who self hosts Joplin. My wife and I use it on our desktops and mobile devices. We specifically switched to it from One Note and it's been perfect for our use!

I used it extensively as I was writing (I'm an author) to make notes about things I needed to go back and correct, or an idea to incorporate, etc.

Interesting I didn't know you could even host a server for it. I use Joplin with local files and nextcloud to sync them I'll have to check that out

is that FOSS?

I use the same setup: Joplin and SyncThing. Works well on my macbook and windows boxen.

Joplin is amazing. I think I have it syncing through OneDrive (I don't use OneDrive or any Microsoft products so I'm not sure why I did that), but it has so many options to sync using things you may already use

Hopefully we get some warning signs before it ends up in the Google Graveyard.

The probability of that happening just barely hovers above zero.

Over a decade later, I'm still bitter about how they unceremoniously dumped Google Reader's corpse into the ground with effectively no notice.

Oh same, I use Google keep for personal organisation and one note for actual note taking on my tablet. Google keep has an unofficial API that you can use to script it. I wish there was an open source alternative to it though tbf. I honestly don't understand where Google derives profit from it is it's just short incongruous scraps of text

I switched to OneNote a few years ago and was going crazy trying to find a bunch of notes I took .. turns out they were all in Keep happily noting away.

Keep was great but I find the OneNote structure and flexibility a bit more useful.

I wasn't aware of that one, thanks! Bummer though, the mobile port doesn't seem to have been updated for a while :/

I've been using Notesnook for nearly a year and I'm really happy with it as well. Very feature-rich and easy to use despite a focus on security. I had a scare recently with an important note seemingly disappearing, and I was saved thanks to a really nicely implemented note history functionality that I didn't even know existed.

I will say that some of the design decisions can be a bit confusing, so it's worth testing it out before buying. Even a year in I find myself a bit thrown off by how exactly the relationships between notebooks, topics, tags, etc are expected to work.

Different strokes for different folks, but I wish markdown was in everything. I love the simplicity of it and how easy it is to bold, italicize, make a header, etc. while typing. I'll take markdown over docs or word any day of the week.

@Maxcoffee that's understandable. My boss also hates Markdown. It's not for everyone. I like how lightweight it is, how many things support it, the inline formatting, portability, etc.

Like I said though, it's definitely not for everyone.

My biggest pet peeves is partial support for markdown.

@IuseArchbtw