[HN Gopher] Ditching Obsidian and building my own
___________________________________________________________________
Ditching Obsidian and building my own
Author : williamsss
Score : 194 points
Date : 2025-05-18 16:21 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (amberwilliams.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (amberwilliams.io)
| williamsss wrote:
| This article is a background of why I built my own PKMS. I've
| also written another article with a step-by-step on how I built
| it here https://amberwilliams.io/blogs/the-last-note-system
| busymom0 wrote:
| Can I ask how you created the image at the top of the article?
| I really like it.
| vunderba wrote:
| I noticed it too (not necessarily in a bad way) - I'd put it
| at 99% probability it was generated using OpenAI's _gpt-
| image-1_ model.
| williamsss wrote:
| AI image gen
| vunderba wrote:
| 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 tired._
|
| In point of fact this is actually an argument _IN FAVOR_ of
| Obsidian. While the editor might be proprietary - the notes
| themselves are just standard markdown. If somehow all the copies
| of Obsidian magically disappeared off the earth tomorrow, I could
| easily switch over to Emacs org mode, VS Code, or literally
| anything else.
|
| _> 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._
|
| Again, a little bit odd considering that the author is
| technically savvy enough to write an entire PKMS but didn't seem
| to consider that you can just check your markdown notes into a
| git repository and sync with the native android/iOS Obsidian app
| on a mobile device. All my notes sync up to Gitea hosted on my
| VPS and it works relatively seamlessly.
|
| I'm glad the author had fun. Personally, I'm very happy with
| Obsidian and the plugin architecture has made it easy for me to
| extend it where necessary.
| exe34 wrote:
| > 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 tired.
|
| I had a very similar thought process about 15 years ago, and
| went on a quest to write my own notes system - after trying out
| a lot of ideas and giving up, I washed up in emacs and gave
| org-mode a try. It's actually good enough, and I can grep
| through my notes easiy, and sync them with git.
| williamsss wrote:
| 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!
| e28eta wrote:
| What about git makes you uncomfortable?
|
| I saw that you didn't want to use a 3rd party provider, but
| why not stick a git repo on your VPS (which you are trusting
| with your data today) and use that to coordinate syncs
| between your client devices?
| williamsss wrote:
| Made a comment in the thread explaining this
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44023090
|
| I expect my PKMS to evolve and wouldn't rule out a self-
| hosted Git server if I find it's a better option long term.
| tasuki wrote:
| > wouldn't rule out a self-hosted Git server
|
| I don't think you really get it. Git is distributed.
| There's no need for "a git server". You already have a
| machine on which you host the SQL database, you can just
| use that as yet another git remote.
| JonChesterfield wrote:
| Git is decentralised. You can sync between laptop and phone
| directly, no third party server required.
| achierius wrote:
| To be clear, GitHub is centralized, but Git is not. You can
| sync between laptop and phone directly with Git -- no third
| party server required.
| charlie0 wrote:
| The odd part here is why take it to 100%+ when you can just
| build a plugin on Obsidian rather than re-building the whole
| thing? Seems a bit extreme.
| williamsss wrote:
| In 20 years will that plugin work? I doubt it.
| komali2 wrote:
| This is why I didn't like Obsidian, half the plugins I
| tried didn't work despite them being in the top 20
| downloaded ones. Meanwhile I'll use like 15 year old
| emacs plugins that haven't been updated in like 5 years
| and they'll work fine (I think org-diary or something
| along those lines was what I tried).
| 9dev wrote:
| You can't even compile stuff from 20 years ago without
| some extensive archeological efforts. I doubt this is
| your largest problem by then.
| kdmtctl wrote:
| Directus is not eternal either. They are OSS, but you
| can't support it yourself forever. For a such a long run
| this looks like a controversial choice for me.
| petee wrote:
| Some people just enjoy the process, and you'll always learn
| something new
| viraptor wrote:
| It's not just git. You have the plugins available for S3,
| couchdb, FTP, MongoDB, cloud drives, rsync, syncthing, and
| probably every other storage/protocol in the world. And
| they're all available for free in obsidian.
| adastra22 wrote:
| No one said anything about GitHub... git is perfectly fine
| for this use case and 100% private.
| bryanhogan wrote:
| Common ways to sync Obsidian are through cloud tools (Google
| Drive, OneDrive, etc.), SyncThing Fork or Git.
|
| I'd recommend you to look into SyncThing Fork or a similar
| tool if you never want your notes to leave your own server.
|
| I wrote about ways to sync Obsidian here:
| https://bryanhogan.com/blog/how-to-sync-obsidian
| caconym_ wrote:
| > In point of fact this is actually an argument IN FAVOR of
| Obsidian. While the editor might be proprietary - the notes
| themselves are just standard markdown. If somehow all the
| copies of Obsidian magically disappeared off the earth
| tomorrow, I could easily switch over to Emacs org mode, VS
| Code, or literally anything else.
|
| 100% this. The reason I started using Obsidian in the first
| place is that it's built on the exact directory structure and
| file formats that I was already using to manage my writing and
| notes, and if Obsidian goes away for some reason, that won't
| change.
| braden-lk wrote:
| Big obsidian fan, but I will say: notes being "just markdown"
| is not entirely true depending on how you use obsidian. If you
| are a plug-in heavy user, and those plugins introduce new
| syntax and lots of JavaScript functionality, you are
| accumulating a bespoke custom syntax that only works on your
| copy of obsidian with your set of plugins. Obsidian and those
| plugins are still free and are a huge benefit, but just
| something to keep in mind regarding data hygiene and longevity.
| edanm wrote:
| True, but the format is still text. In a "catastrophe", you
| can always just a) ignore these, or b) write custom code to
| process them (e.g. port the plugin to VSCode or whatever).
|
| Still far better than a proprietary format.
| eviks wrote:
| A proprietary format with an export function allows you the
| same inconvenience of having to write code for processing.
| Xss3 wrote:
| No. You might not be able to load the program to get to
| the export button. They might paywall it away. Etc.
| scubbo wrote:
| > Again, a little bit odd considering that the author is
| technically savvy enough to write an entire PKMS but didn't
| seem to consider that you can just check your markdown notes
| into a git repository and sync with the native android/iOS
| Obsidian app on a mobile device.
|
| Even simpler, I have mine in a Dropbox folder. Felt very
| strange for _this_ to be the straw that broke the camel's back
| for the author.
|
| Nonetheless, very glad for them that they enjoyed and learned
| from the experience of building a replacement!
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| The main thing being complained about here is that you have to
| pay for device sync. But instead of setting ups FOSS alternative
| like with a-shell and git you decided to... checks notes... build
| a less featureful obsidian without getting all the benefits of
| the obsidian ecosystem?
|
| I'm all for doing projects like this as an intellectual exercise.
| It's just that the motivation behind doing so in the article is a
| bit more "huh?"
| williamsss wrote:
| Yep fair point. I'm doing the project in chucks and writing
| about it. his written part notably unlocks the ability to use
| my phone. Currently vetting a way to sync my database files
| with my markdown files on my laptop as I enjoy using Vim.
|
| Funny enough I had downloaded a-shell and experimented with it
| and going git based. But ultimately didn't want my notes stored
| through Github. If that way works for you, cool!
| vunderba wrote:
| I do agree with the author and others that I also wouldn't
| feel comfortable storing personal notes on Github. As I
| mentioned in a previous comment - you can use "git" without
| Github by hosting an instance of the open-source Gitea
| service.
|
| https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea
| williamsss wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. I'll have a play with Gitea
|
| My concern with this approach would be I've read through
| Directus' codebase and can understand it. With a self-
| hosted Git server like this I'd be worried if shit hit the
| fan and corrupted my Git files or stopped being maintained
| I'd be a duck out of water
| OneDeuxTriSeiGo wrote:
| It's also worth noting that Gitea forked a while back.
| The community fork is Forgejo.
|
| https://forgejo.org/
|
| And if you really just want a simple hosting system,
| https://tangled.sh is really easy to set up. It uses
| atproto (network underlying bluesky) as their identity
| provider and for tracking issues, PRs, comments, etc.
| Their "knot server" is basically just a little self-
| hosted go node that manages git repos. The project is
| fairly small atm and it's pretty much all in go so it's
| not too hard to skim through if you want to see how it
| works under the hood (or if you are afraid of needing to
| be able to keep it maintained long term).
| williamsss wrote:
| Sure will have a look
| caconym_ wrote:
| > if shit hit the fan and corrupted my Git files or
| stopped being maintained I'd be a duck out of water
|
| You should have the same concern with anything you're
| hosting yourself, and you should have 3-2-1 backups to
| mitigate that concern. Gitea just uses regular Git
| repositories under the hood last i checked, and Git is an
| extremely mature system; I'd expect 20+ year old
| repositories to work fine as long as the data are kept
| physically intact.
| tasuki wrote:
| You don't need Gitea (nor Forgejo, nor GitLab, ...). You
| just need `git` installed on whatever server you already
| have. And just use that as one of the git remotes.
| exe34 wrote:
| > 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 tired.
|
| git or syncthing
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| 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 without
| that worry
| williamsss wrote:
| 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.
| matrss wrote:
| 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.
| riwsky wrote:
| 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`
| misnome wrote:
| The only limitation here is that (on iOS at least) the
| git plugin on mobile cannot do ssh, only https.
|
| (This is at least 1+ years old info, might have changed)
| jmbwell wrote:
| I appreciate that you are taking the time not only to do the
| work but to document your experience and share it.
| williamsss wrote:
| Thanks. More devs should write about what they're building.
| Its the hardest part for me
| Sytten wrote:
| 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.
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| FWIW, I'd be more concerned about the implications of the
| company having my notes in lieu of the pure cost perspective.
| But the thing is, you can avoid that entirely too by
| implementing your own sync
| para_parolu wrote:
| And implementing local sync for obsidian is just running on
| docker container
| misnome wrote:
| FWIW unless they are outright lying this is a choice, one of
| the choices when setting up a vault is E2E that you have to
| enter whenever setting up a new sync, but they are really
| clear that if you lose this password you are at the whims of
| your own backups.
|
| They do also publish the "verify the encryption steps" for
| this.
|
| Of course, depending on your threat model this could be
| insufficient, but then you probably wouldn't trust obsidian
| in the first place.
| hartator wrote:
| I think the author point still stands though: Obsidian won't
| probably be here in 20 years.
| no_wizard wrote:
| I'm a time traveler from 2046 and I hate to break it to you
| but it's still running strong.
|
| Couldn't avoid the computation panic of 2038 but it got by
| MissTake wrote:
| Neither solution is guaranteed to stick around for 20 years.
|
| As we've seen before, it takes one VC investment to change a
| source available license into something not so friendly and
| forks are never guaranteed.
| raesene9 wrote:
| For me that's one of the great points about obsidian's choice
| of all notes being Markdown.
|
| Even if Obsidian vanished tomorrow and the application became
| unmaintainable, I'd still have all my notes in a text based
| format.
| al_borland wrote:
| I wish all markdown editors just had their markdown files
| in a simple folder like Obsidian does.
|
| I wanted to like Bear, which advertises that it uses
| markdown. But when I went looking for the files, they were
| locked away in a database. This was many years ago, so if
| this has changed, I'd be happy to hear it.
|
| I'd love to be able to easily jump between apps, which
| markdown should allow in theory, but in practice view apps
| allow for. I don't find using a text editor to be ideal
| here as a solution, as I want my notes to look like notes
| and hide away the syntax when the cursor isn't on the
| syntax. Obsidian handles this well, most text editors do
| not.
| theappsecguy wrote:
| Why not? It's got a huge user base, a massive open source
| plug-in ecosystem and a sensible revenue model. It's probably
| one of the note apps that has the largest community around it
| outside of Notion, which is heavily VC influenced and is more
| of a do everything app
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| Can I have those 1000$ if you think that is nothing?
| harvey9 wrote:
| Sure, but only in installments over the next 10 years and in
| exchange I need you to provide a sync service for my notes.
| komali2 wrote:
| I'll install https://syncthing.net/ on your computer right
| now for 100 bucks!
| gr4vityWall wrote:
| > 1000$ over 10 years is nothing
|
| It's a non-trivial amount of money to a lot of people (myself
| included). I spend way more than that on Free Software, but I'm
| not throwing money to a proprietary program if I can choose.
| 8fingerlouie wrote:
| > But lets be realistic, 1000$ over 10 years is nothing
|
| Where is the limit ?
|
| While $100/year maybe doesn't sound like much, it's hardly the
| only subscription service you have, and they all add up, from
| your mail provider, office suite, cloud storage, streaming
| services, phone bills, internet service, etc.
|
| Personally I find $100/year to edit notes on my phone to be a
| bit much, but then again, I just use iOS Notes.
|
| I am so fed up with everything turning into subscriptions, that
| I've just completely stopped buying things that are
| subscription based.
|
| I understand developers need to make a living, but simply
| throwing a subscription on top of it won't convince me to buy
| your product. You convince me by making a compelling product,
| and by continuously updating it, adding new features, which
| will convince me to buy another version.
| al_borland wrote:
| Personally, I just set myself a budget of $100/month for
| subscriptions. I was going to drive myself crazy judging
| every one all the time, so I decided as long as I'm under
| this threshold I'm not going to stress.
|
| I track the ones I have so I can compare the cost, looking at
| either daily, monthly, or yearly cost. Sorting by price, I
| can look them over to judge if one of them seems unusually
| expensive for what it is, and regularly review to see if
| there are and I'm not using and need to be cancelled.
|
| My most expensive is the could backup for my NAS. $8/month is
| about what I pay for Proton, which offers a lot more than
| just note syncing. So $8 for notes does seem like a lot.
| Looking at Obsidian's pricing page[0], the $8/month is for
| publishing... hosting a website with your Obsidian data. Just
| syncing is only $4, and there are many free ways to do it.
| That part of the article felt like the author was trying to
| justify writing their own tool due to cost. That doesn't feel
| justified, and they were stretching... but the good thing is
| there doesn't need to be any financial justification at all.
| Just make your own tool for the sake of making your own tool.
| That's good enough.
|
| [0] https://obsidian.md/pricing
| AstroBen wrote:
| even better: Obsidian is only $480 over 10 years!
| lolinder wrote:
| > Since my PKMS is hosted online to manage notes across devices,
| I have multiple layers of security to ensure my notes are kept
| private. {Screenshot of a login form}
|
| The biggest life hack I can recommend for a self hoster is to set
| up a VPN on your local network and then just _never_ expose your
| services on the public internet unless you 're specifically
| trying to serve people outside your own household.
|
| Before I did this I was constantly worried about the security
| implications of each app I thought about installing or creating.
| Now it's not even worth setting up auth on a lot of simple
| services I build because if someone is able to hit their
| endpoints I'm already in deep trouble for many other reasons.
| williamsss wrote:
| Good point. I also use my PKMS as a CMS for my blog. Might just
| split out the services and go this route.
| sabellito wrote:
| For single page web apps I use pagecrypt [0] and just publish
| the html file (with inline scripts and styles) as public files.
|
| [0] https://pagecrypt.maxlaumeister.com
| rafram wrote:
| The downside is that if you're on a two-week vacation and your
| home network/server goes down on day two, there's probably
| nothing you can do until you get home. If it's hosted online,
| you can count on that 99.99...% uptime and SSH access no matter
| what.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Ssh exposed on a non-standard port, with root disabled, using
| key-based auth should be pretty non-controversial.
|
| The security through obscurity (non-standard port, no root)
| are both kinda silly but why not.
|
| That said, with awesome services like TailScale, it's pretty
| hard to get locked out of your network. TailScale is so so
| good at "just working".
| accrual wrote:
| Fail2ban or rate-limiting SSH into a block table are useful
| layers to have as well.
| batch12 wrote:
| > The security through obscurity (non-standard port, no
| root) are both kinda silly but why not
|
| I think these are decent controls when layered with others.
| The effectiveness differs depending on your threat models,
| of course, but at the very least it helps reduce the noise
| seen from most automated scans reducing the effort involved
| in monitoring your assets.
| cyberax wrote:
| Another option is port knocking. Super easy to set up and
| with 4 knocks it provides 64 bits of randomness.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| Disabling root provides more than security-through-
| obscurity if your sudo config requires a password to
| elevate: it essentially means you need both your SSH
| private key and your password to gain root.
| vhanda wrote:
| I think what they meant is that if it's hosted online / home-
| network, only allow access to all services through a VPN.
| Wireguard is relatively easy to setup, and you can configure
| all your services to only be available through wireguard.
|
| Ever since ssh almost got backdoor-ed, the only thing
| "exposed" on my servers is Wireguard, which is UDP based and
| therefore harder to know if it's running. SSH also goes over
| wireguard.
| Zambyte wrote:
| These solutions are composable. Just run it on a VPS over a
| VPN.
| rafram wrote:
| That's a good point.
| accrual wrote:
| Although not perfect, I added a couple features to help
| ensure uptime:
|
| * LAN components are on a UPS, helps keep continuity between
| power blips and breaker flips
|
| * Dynamic DNS, cron runs a script 4x per day to ensure a DNS
| name points to my IP, even if issued a new one by the ISP
|
| * Rebooting everything occasionally to ensure the network and
| services come back up on their own and I didn't make a
| mistake with some config that loads at boot, etc.
| sammyteee wrote:
| You can also enjoy your vacation instead :)
| brightball wrote:
| Tailscale is actually great for this if you configure an exit
| node on a device in your home.
| SahAssar wrote:
| So you've managed to unlearn the last decade of security
| learnings in regards to zero-trust and similar concepts?
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| You need to understand your own risk tolerance and, more
| importantly, effort/resource threshold. Zero-trust is great
| if you have the resources to put to it, and companies should
| do it. But individuals trying to manage multiple companies
| worth of services, alone, on their own network? There's going
| to be corners cut.
| caconym_ wrote:
| That's a comically uncharitable extrapolation on what was
| said.
| sigmonsays wrote:
| self hosting is entirely different than enterprise security
| practices. You're a little out of touch with reality if you
| don't realize this.
| lolinder wrote:
| I'm not running a business, I'm running a home. The threat
| models are totally different and I adjust my security posture
| accordingly.
|
| Besides, I don't bother with auth for _simple_ services, not
| stuff that actually hosts data. If someone unauthorized is
| inside my network they 're not going to be interested in
| using my TTS/STT service or in finding out the last barcode I
| scanned or in using my tiny consumer GPU to generate tokens
| on an LLM--there are way worse things they could be doing at
| that point than fiddling with the many tiny services I have
| set up.
|
| Also: I couldn't set up so many silly, inconsequential
| services if I didn't have a VPN. With my setup, every new
| idea I have can be a quick service on my network accessible
| by me anywhere in the world. If I had to expose each of these
| things to the internet I wouldn't bother running them at all
| lest they have an exploit that ends up being an entrypoint
| into my network.
| caconym_ wrote:
| +1. I have Wireguard set up on all my mobile devices and
| configured to automatically start when connecting to any wifi
| that isn't mine, so I can take my devices anywhere and I'm
| still on my home LAN. It works seamlessly and flawlessly.
|
| I self-host a lot of services, and without Wireguard (or
| equivalent), remote access just wouldn't be realistic.
| thepill wrote:
| On Android devices? If so: how? :)
| viraptor wrote:
| I don't use it with wireguard, but Zerotier works just fine
| on Android.
| Jarwain wrote:
| As does tailscale!
| ParetoOptimal wrote:
| Or headscale:
|
| https://headscale.net/stable/
| _heimdall wrote:
| This is my recommendation for anyone that wants full
| control.
|
| I use Tailscale, purely out of laziness and a willingness
| to trust them today, but I'd move to head scale if either
| of those caveats changed.
| fluidcruft wrote:
| My only issue with wireguard/tailscale is that somehow my
| work IT has managed to make it unusable on our wifi. It's
| really annoying. I'm pretty sure it's a misconfiguration
| on their end but they don't have any reason to care.
|
| OpenVPN does seem to always work everywhere (presumably
| because outside contractors and support personnel use
| OpenVPN when onsite so it's a squeaky wheel that matters)
| so I've moved to that instead. Beyond that I can't figure
| out what the hell is the problem and the way IT works,
| they have no reason to fix it. I did get them to somewhat
| work on it by reporting Google VPN as randomly failing,
| but they just fixed Google VPN and nothing more than
| that. So anyway wireguard is great until you encounter
| bullshit corporate firewalls.
| Arch-TK wrote:
| How did you automate it to start on networks which are not
| yours?
|
| This is like the only piece of the puzzle for me.
| mcpeepants wrote:
| This is a built-in feature of the Wireguard app on iOS, not
| sure about other platforms.
| george_perez wrote:
| And specifically it's based on VPN On Demand. https://dev
| eloper.apple.com/documentation/networkextension/v...
| runjake wrote:
| For the Tailscale app on Apple platforms it's called VPN On
| Demand. Here's how you can configure it.
|
| https://tailscale.com/kb/1291/ios-vpn-on-demand
| thequux wrote:
| Set the AllowedIPs wireguard setting (and/or the route, if
| you can set that separately) to one larger than your home
| network (i.e., if your home network is 192.168.1.0/24, use
| 192.168.0.0/23). Then, block wireguard packets from the
| internal network on your router. Then the tunnel will
| always be running; it just won't be used when you're at
| home because there's a more specific route
| caconym_ wrote:
| All my regular mobile devices are Apple, so whoever said
| that has it right. I also have a Linux laptop but
| NetworkManager support for Wireguard was broken last I
| checked, and at the time I didn't care enough to set it up
| by hand.
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| I have wg into home and wg into an aws instance. All my
| mobile and laptops can reach them.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| welcome to the world when not TailScale, not a private
| WireGuard, not aL2TP, OpenVPN works. No, SSTP doesn't too.
| HTTPS works. Even on the devices you don't or can't control.
| chris12321 wrote:
| You can also set up DNS records pointing to your home server's
| VPN IP, which, with Tailscale, I've found to be pretty static
| and then a reverse proxy on your home server. So I have my home
| network apps running on app1.my-domiain.com app2.my-domain.com,
| app3.my-domain.com etc, which only work when I'm connected to
| the VPN.
|
| The downsides are that I need to be connected to the VPN at
| home to use the domain and I currently don't have SSL set up on
| the domains, so browsers complain when I connect to them. The
| second problem I could fix, but I'm not sure if there's a
| solution for the first.
| sebws wrote:
| You can fix them both in one. In your local network you host
| a local DNS, in my case I'm using pihole. It has records
| which point to the local IP of a reverse proxy. With this
| setup you can have SSL for your domain names on your local
| network.
|
| To make it then work outside your local network, in tailscale
| settings you use "split dns" to set your DNS to be the IP of
| your pihole in the tailnet for your domain. Now when you try
| hit your local domains you should receive the same local IPs
| that you do at home. Then in the tailscale route settings of
| your machine hosting the reverse proxy you make it advertise
| the subnet of those local IPs. Now when you receive the local
| IPs your devices using the tailscale VPN should go to your
| home server with SSL and no external DNS.
|
| Hope that's somewhat clear enough
| 8fingerlouie wrote:
| The internet is not a friendly place, so a VPN is a great idea.
|
| With modern tools like Wireguard, you can even set it up
| relatively easy, either as Wireguard alone or as Tailscale (or
| ZeroTier, though that's not Wireguard).
|
| Wireguard (and Tailscale) allows you to setup the tunnel so
| that only local (RFC1918 ie) traffic is routed over it, meaning
| it won't eat up your battery like when just routing all traffic
| over it.
|
| I have Wireguard setup like that. It enables on any Wi-Fi
| network that isn't mine, as well as cellular, and the battery
| impact is less than 2% over a day.
| old-gregg wrote:
| Your "life hack" is not a good advice. There's plenty of well-
| written explanations for why perimeter based security doesn't
| work. What is strange is that you've started in the right
| place: by being "constantly worried about security implications
| of each app". Unfortunately it's annoying and time consuming,
| but that's the right way to keep your data private. And if
| that's too much hassle, it means it's worth it to pay others to
| do it.
|
| When I'm thinking about a hypothetical situation when I need to
| save the world by hacking into a hypothetical villain, my best
| hope will be him using your approach to security.
| gugagore wrote:
| Could you provide an example of one of the well written
| explanations?
| marcusb wrote:
| just go and look at any of the vendors selling "zero trust"
| solutions. They all have white papers available about how
| a) perimeter security is "dead" and b) how their specific
| flavor of zero trust is the One True zero trust and the
| only thing you can trust to protect your data.
|
| You will without exception need to provide an email address
| to access these white papers, so their inside sales team
| can ensure you fully understand the importance of trusting
| their zero trust, and not trusting anyone else's.
|
| I'm not kidding - even a little.
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| > There's plenty of well-written explanations for why
| perimeter based security doesn't work
|
| It certainly helps when your attack surface consists of
| numerous web apps of unknown quality.
|
| Drive-by RCEs (e.g. log4j) then suddenly become much less of
| a headache when none of it is reachable by the world at
| large.
|
| Exactly how you do that, whether via an authenticating
| reverse proxy or VPN doesn't really matter.
| lolinder wrote:
| Any serious approach to security begins with a reasonable and
| clearly defined threat model, and my threat model for my home
| network doesn't currently include a team of superheros
| targeting my file backups in an effort to save the world. But
| I'll definitely keep your advice in mind when I do decide to
| start executing on my evil plots.
|
| For now my threat model consists of script kiddies and
| abusive corporations. Self-hosting gets me away from the
| corporations and keeping my stuff off of the public internet
| keeps me away from script kiddies.
| horsellama wrote:
| fwiw, on mac/ios you can put your obsidian vault inside icloud
| directory and have a "free" cross-device sync feature.
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| Works if you are in the Apple ecosystem entirely. I have read
| there are difficulties if you want to sync to a non Apple
| device under this approach
| shigi42 wrote:
| This is one of the reasons I use a git repo along with
| iCloud. Anyway, using iCloud across 4+ Apple devices has not
| been a problem in general.
| zikduruqe wrote:
| Hell, you don't even need obsidian. Just create a bash function
| notes() { if [ ! -z "$1" ]; then
| mkdir -m 00750 -p /Users/User/iCloud/Documents/notes
| Now=$(date '+%B %d %Y %H:%M') echo -en
| "\n$Now\t$@\n" >> /Users/User/iCloud/Documents/notes/notes.txt
| else echo "${Now}" cat
| /Users/User/iCloud/Documents/notes/notes.txt 2>/dev/null
| fi }
| accrual wrote:
| While we're sharing simple note taking functions, here's mine
| that I used for a few years. :) function
| nod { mg +-1 "/home/user/notes/$(date "+%Y-%m-%d").txt"; }
|
| * 'nod' stands for "notes of (the) day" and was quick to
| type.
|
| * 'mg' is micro emacs, my first shell-based editor thanks to
| OpenBSD. The '+-1' syntax means "open at end of file" so I
| could easily append.
| bspammer wrote:
| I had the bright idea of symlinking $HOME/.local to an iCloud
| directory once. About a week later it got completely deleted.
| No way to restore, or any indication of what happened. Luckily
| I had a backup with another provider, but I will never trust
| iCloud again for anything that's not on the golden path (e.g.
| photos)
| hartator wrote:
| Interesting that storing images is not something solved yet.
|
| If you watch the animated gif, he is still using a third party
| service to store that graph.
|
| I also think people to tend to like Markdown mostly because it's
| plain text. The added benefits of that preview view is minimal.
| Like my gut feeling Markdown is popular 90% because of it's in an
| accepted way to do plaintext and only 10% for the added
| formatting.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Obsidian can automatically ingest files and store them on disk
| while giving links to it. My personal vault contains many kinds
| of files living in the "Attachments" folder.
|
| > Markdown is popular 90% because of it's in an accepted way to
| do plaintext and only 10% for the added formatting.
|
| For me Markdown allows me to write and format text at the speed
| of thought. Added bonus is that it's readable with "less
| xyz.md" or anything which can render text.
| vunderba wrote:
| Yep. Obsidian strikes a good compromise of automatically
| copying attachments into a relative subfolder for the note
| and then linking them in the MD file: lotr-
| recipes lotr-recipes/manflesh.md lotr-
| recipes/media/manflesh_1.png lotr-
| recipes/media/manflesh_2.png
|
| Also makes it trivial to run a note through a static site
| generator and publish online.
| damir wrote:
| I believe tiddlywiki stores PNGs as base64 strings, so image is
| always there.
|
| Yes, the file can grow large with many images, but it's a
| single file containing everything... even scripting!
| bayindirh wrote:
| Yes, it embeds all attachments as base64.
|
| TiddlyWiki is great until you want to add a structure to your
| Wiki. I was using it like mad, then I found out that linking
| pages took more time then writing notes, and I pulled the
| trigger and moved to Obsidian.
| Tomte wrote:
| If you run the node.js server version it can handle images
| properly, as separate files. That also gives you the
| practical ability to use many large images and videos.
| skydhash wrote:
| With plaintext, it's very trivial to add a script that put
| images in some location and build the link to that.
|
| Markdown is great because you can easily add structure while
| typing compared to other format which have a more extensive
| markup format. I prefer org-mode because what Markdown can do,
| but also more extensive capabilities if you need so, but
| there's not a lot of editors for it especially on mobile.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| > "The added benefits of that preview view is minimal."
|
| In relative terms you may be right... but subjectively, having
| grown accustomed to Obsidian's live view in editor mode, I'd
| have a hard time giving it up.
| bayindirh wrote:
| > 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.
| Obsidian charges $8 a month to access the same notes across
| multiple devices.
|
| Errm, no? Obsidian sync is optional. I pay for it to support
| them, but my main vaults are all synced by iCloud, which was
| _auto set-up by Obisidan_ during initial setup _on my iPhone_.
|
| On the Android side, any service which can sync files can work, I
| assume.
|
| Note: Yes, I use Obsidian on my phone without sync, _all the
| time_ , and it syncs.
| layer8 wrote:
| Not practical if you want to also sync with non-Apple devices.
| bayindirh wrote:
| I think any app which can sync in the background can
| automatically sync things? Dropbox, Moebius, PCloud, Google
| Drive?
|
| My Office vault lives in a separate cloud service, and it
| works?
| layer8 wrote:
| My understanding is that on iOS your only non-paid choice
| is iCloud, and iCloud doesn't reliably sync to non-Apple
| systems. To clarify, the use case here is that you have an
| iPhone but also non-Apple systems, which is a fairly common
| scenario.
| Saris wrote:
| TBH that sounds like a better reason to get something
| other than Apple systems instead of changing all your
| apps to work around Apples bizarre limitations.
| layer8 wrote:
| To clarify, by "on iOS your only non-paid choice is
| iCloud" I meant for the Obsidian app specifically. Other
| apps do provide the option to sync with non-Apple cloud
| storage, without payment.
|
| There are multitudes of pros and cons regarding choosing
| an iPhone. The restrictions of the Obsidian app is only a
| single one of those. Choosing an Android phone has
| drawbacks of its own.
| Saris wrote:
| Obsidian lets you pick any folder you want when setting
| up the notebook, so you could put it in any of your
| synced folders right?
|
| Or does the iOS version of Obsidian do things
| differently?
| bayindirh wrote:
| The iOS version asks you whether you want to store your
| vault in iCloud or not only.
|
| However, if you don't store your vault in iCloud, it
| creates an Obsidian folder inside the area which can be
| accessed by Files app (as I just checked), which means,
| _any application having files integration can access and
| sync that folder_.
|
| Even if you store your vault in iCloud, it's still
| accessible by any app which offer files integration [0].
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43972056
| kepano wrote:
| iCloud is not the only alternative to Obsidian Sync on
| iOS. There are also several Obsidian plugins that allow
| you to sync to a variety of services.
| misnome wrote:
| Then use the git-sync plugin, or many of the others mentioned
| here.
| darkwater wrote:
| Directius (the foundation on what this was built) is Source
| Available [1] and not Opensource.
|
| [1] https://github.com/directus/directus/blob/main/license
| williamsss wrote:
| Thanks I'll revise the article
| OlivOnTech wrote:
| OP's main arguments to build their own PKMS are: - cost (feature
| or maintenance) - migration because it won't exist in the future
|
| But their solution is to depend on directus, which can lead to
| the exact same issues. To my eyes, they just added an extra
| step...
| ollien wrote:
| I wrote my own CLI tool for notes a few months ago
| (https://github.com/ollien/quicknotes). A web interface with
| proper rendering is something I thought about, but didn't pursue
| because I just know my UI skills aren't up to the task. Directus
| is a really interesting compromise!
| rolisz wrote:
| You can do it so easily with AI coding tools. I'm not a
| frontend dev, but now I can whip up something decent looking in
| 10 minutes.
| williamsss wrote:
| This is just the sort of tooling there should be more community
| around.
|
| A gif would help clarify what your tool does. I've used an
| automated flow with Github Actions and Charm's VHS
| (https://github.com/charmbracelet/vhs) in my repo here to demo
| my CLI tool I built a while back (https://github.com/Amber-
| Williams/yall/blob/main/demo.gif). Might be of interest : )
| gbraad wrote:
| I used git to sync a work related repo, but now use remotely-save
| with WebDAV (nextcloud, with base set to /Notes). No cost for
| sync and still access to the ecosystem of Obsidian.
| dmje wrote:
| I just don't have any of these worries with Obsidian. I pay for
| it because it's great software and needs support. The sync is
| amazing, totally solid. The data is wherever you want that data
| to be. It's just MD files. You can adapt the tool to be whatever
| you want from a PKM system - massively complex, with some kind of
| dataview hell, or just some files in a hierarchy. You can use
| plugins or not use plugins. You can build your own. There's no
| lock in. "Migration" isn't really a thing - it's some files in a
| folder system. It's as future proof as it can be.
|
| I mean go nuts and roll your own if you want, but really, what's
| not to like?
| jszymborski wrote:
| Kudos to the author for scratching their own itch.
|
| People in a similar position might be interested in Joplin, which
| is indeed FOSS, and has lots of sync options. I personally use
| SyncThing, which keeps things free, but you can also use a number
| of other free cloud providers. You can choose to encrypt your
| notes to protect your privacy.
| ctkhn wrote:
| Self hosted Joplin with encryption has been more than enough
| for me. It was pretty easy pulling all my apple notes into
| joplin as md files. Building my own like this just seems
| excessive
| ezst wrote:
| If you need a little bit more than Joplin (which is a great
| notes taking app, but not so much of a PKMS), give Trilium1 a
| try! (I used Joplin for a little while, and it's a good tool,
| and it's fine not to chase for more if you don't need it, but
| if you do, not much beats Trilium, IMO)
|
| 1: https://github.com/TriliumNext/Notes/
| mutoyoru wrote:
| > 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 fetch the changes. It's
| not perfectly smooth, like Obsidian's own integration, but I
| prefer this instead of setting a Git repository. Also, the files
| don't stay in a remote server.
|
| [0]: https://syncthing.net
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| I've been meaning to switch over to syncthing. I currently use
| insync for google drive syncing on Linux and it's basically
| instant and constant. I can make an edit on one machine and in
| the time it takes me to grab my laptop, it's been synced. That
| said, using google drive which I don't want to do anymore.
| moelf wrote:
| too bad Syncthing is no longer officially maintaining andoird
| app https://forum.syncthing.net/t/discontinuing-syncthing-
| androi...
| atrus wrote:
| But the syncthing fork (https://play.google.com/store/apps/de
| tails?id=com.github.cat...) has been going for years now, and
| should have been the first choice anyways.
| Nezteb wrote:
| For anyone who would prefer to get the Syncthing-Fork build
| from F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.github.ca
| tfriend1.syncth...
| trwhite wrote:
| It's $4 a month to sync Obsidian notes, for anyone wondering.
| harvey9 wrote:
| It's a good price but still feels wasteful if you also
| run/pay for nextcloud or similar.
| nsteel wrote:
| There are plugins allowing you to sync via other means (for
| free). I don't know how the author fails to realise/mention
| this. I've been using Remotely Save with WebDAV or years
| without issue.
|
| And the notes are all just markdown files. If the obsidian
| software were to disappear you have all your notes. It's
| fine someone wanted to spend a load of time writing their
| own software but none of the reasons presented in this
| piece make sense.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| It's not wasteful to support great software.
| galleywest200 wrote:
| 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
| kepano wrote:
| The $4 plan was launched March 20, 2024
|
| https://obsidian.md/blog/standard-plan/
| bryanhogan wrote:
| I think your comment is very disingenuous. And not just
| because it's another subscription. That plan does not work if
| you got more than one vault, and if you use Obsidian you will
| probably have more than one vault.
|
| https://obsidian.md/sync
| trwhite wrote:
| It's a time/cost tradeoff and for me personally $4 has been
| fine for out-of-the-box syncing between clients for the
| last ~2 years of using just the one vault. It's now $8 for
| 10 vaults (I only recently added my second), which is still
| a relatively insignificant amount considering I spend more
| than that on toilet paper.
| freddie_mercury wrote:
| I use Obsidian and don't have more than one vault. What a
| weird thing to claim.
| TheFreim wrote:
| > if you use Obsidian you will probably have more than one
| vault.
|
| Why would anyone ever want to use more than one vault? I
| just use different folders. The only reason I can think of
| would be if you are using Obsidian for work where you
| aren't allowed to use unapproved services.
| Xss3 wrote:
| Just me perhaps, but I have three. Personal, Work, and
| Shared. But only personal and shared are synced as work
| stuff needs to stay on the work PC.
| Saris wrote:
| Syncthing is a lifesaver, it's such a useful tool!
|
| There are also several Obsidian community plugins for sync, I
| use Remotely Save via WebDAV.
| blackmoon42 wrote:
| Or you setup a Couchdb and the self hosted live sync plugin.
| Although the data will reside on a remote server in this case.
| mk12 wrote:
| I do this but additionally with an always-on Raspberry Pi, so
| syncing works perfectly even if the laptop and phone aren't
| able to sync directly to each other. The SyncTrain iOS app
| arrived just in time for me:
| https://t-shaped.nl/posts/synctrain-a-rethought-ios-client-f...
| charkubi wrote:
| Apple allowing iCloud directories to be permanently downloaded
| fixed this for me.
| al_borland wrote:
| Yep. I use iCloud for my Obsidian vault, set to always be
| downloaded. I haven't had an issue, and doesn't cost me
| anything (beyond what I'm already paying for iCloud due to
| Photo Library).
| bryanhogan wrote:
| I've also been using Obsidian a lot. I recommend the SyncThing
| Fork over SyncThing.
|
| I myself currently use Google Drive with DriveSync on Android
| to sync my notes, which works great. Other cloud providers also
| work well.
|
| I wrote a comparison of different tools to sync here:
| https://bryanhogan.com/blog/how-to-sync-obsidian
| SamPatt wrote:
| Same. I admit I've running into a few syncing headaches over
| the years, but given the cost of $0 and the fact it's open
| source, I recommend it too.
|
| I previously rolled my own notes system and I find Obsidian
| plus Syncthing is better. Plugins are a big deal.
| for_i_in_range wrote:
| For anyone who wants an analog version of this:
| https://youtu.be/UV7vaqElPHk?si=_c-rxqV4RGhluTJS
| Trasmatta wrote:
| > Obsidian charges $8 a month to access the same notes across
| multiple devices.
|
| It's $4 actually, for the normal plan that works perfectly well
| for most use cases. It's also end to end encrypted, which is
| great. And it's not just about syncing for me, it's about a
| backup solution for the notes.
|
| > I started to have concerns about the longevity of the plugins
| and app itself. Some of you may remember when Evernote
| aggressively limited free users to 50 notes, many users migrated
| their notes elsewhere. I was one of those users.
|
| The great thing about Obsidian (in comparison to Evernote), is
| that everything is just a plain text markdown file on disk. You
| can open those files in any app. If Obsidian goes away someday,
| all your notes can continue to be edited in any plain text
| editor. Sometimes I open notes in VS Code, because there are
| certain things I just prefer writing there.
| williamsss wrote:
| Glad to see they have improved their pricing. It was 8/mo paid
| for a full year or 10/mo paid monthly last year when I decided
| to build this.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240104200401/https://obsidian....
| jackthetab wrote:
| I tend to start a note with frontmatter in Obsidian, drop into
| vim to do the writing, then back into Obsidian to clean things
| up. Wish there were a cleaner way to do it, but it works for
| me.
| babuloseo wrote:
| Emacs chads just keep winning.
| iLemming wrote:
| Younger folk and beginners keep ignoring Emacs (and Lisp in
| general), without the slightest attempt to even understand what
| kind of philosophy makes it appealing.
|
| The profound difference lies in ontological fungibility - Emacs
| isn't software you use, but cognitive clay that becomes an
| extension of your mind's operating system. Where any
| specialized app is inevitably doomed to constrain you to some
| kind of constructed imagination of what note-taking/knowledge
| work should be, Emacs+Org erases the distinction between a tool
| and thought through radical philosophical pillars.
|
| 1. The Medium is the Message Paradox
|
| Emacs rejects the app paradigm's fundamental axiom. Instead of
| being a "notes app" or "writing app", it's a meta-medium where:
|
| - Your notes can spontaneously become a calendar event -
| spreadsheet formula - email draft - code compiler
|
| - The act of writing is programming your environment (Org
| markup becomes executable functions)
|
| - Tools aren't discrete entities but fluid expressions of your
| current mental state (e.g., I can run a shell command piping it
| to grep and then pipe the results into a text buffer)
|
| 1. Agency Through Textual Primordial Soup
|
| By rooting everything in plain text + programmable buffers,
| you're working with the substrate of computation itself. Unlike
| database-driven apps that entomb your ideas in rigid schemas:
|
| - Every thought remains perpetually protean - a TODO item can
| morph into a API documentation generator through markup alone
|
| - You manipulate knowledge at the level of semantics (headings,
| tags, properties) rather than fighting GUI metaphors
|
| - The friction between "taking notes" and "building systems"
| disappears - your journal entries are the configuration files
| of your life (I manage all my dotfiles -- for Linux, Mac, home
| and work machines via Org-mode)
|
| 1. Compounding Selfhood
|
| Specialized apps optimize for atomic efficiency; Emacs thrives
| on continuous identity investment. Each macro you write, each
| Org capture template, each minor mode becomes:
|
| - A cognitive microhabitat that evolves with your thinking
| patterns
|
| - Permanent infrastructure that pays compound interest (my 2010
| Org config still works, while Evernote of 2010 is abandonware)
|
| - A mirror of your epistemology - the keybindings/hierarchies
| are your neural pathways externalized
|
| This creates an irreducible satisfaction: you're not just using
| tools but cultivating a personal universe where every
| interaction leaves permanent fertile ground for future growth.
| The specialized app user lives in rented apartments; the Emacs
| devotee walks through an ever-expanding mansion whose rooms
| rearrange themselves to their thoughts.
| swah wrote:
| (Long time Emacs user, abandoned since VSCode became a thing
| because it hurt my wrists so much.)
|
| Do you think what you're talking about is hard to demo?
|
| "- The act of writing is programming your environment (Org
| markup becomes executable functions)
|
| - Tools aren't discrete entities but fluid expressions of
| your current mental state (e.g., I can run a shell command
| piping it to grep and then pipe the results into a text
| buffer)"
|
| I haven't seen an impressive demo of this kind of stuff tbh.
| iLemming wrote:
| No, it's not hard to demo, and I've been thinking about
| making some vids, but it's just difficult for me for
| multiple reasons. Besides, the whole topic feels too
| grandiose to cover easily and make it satisfying for every
| level of expertise -- newbies and seasoned veterans.
|
| I'm a regular dweller of https://www.meetup.com/emacsatx.
| We meet every first Wednesday of the month - if timezone
| permits it, come talk to us if you have specific questions.
| I will promise you though to make an effort to produce some
| demos and publish them.
| I_am_tiberius wrote:
| Does anyone know of a tool that can e2e + collaboration (or in
| other words: notion but e2e)?
| ezst wrote:
| Maybe Anytype, or self hosted appflowy
| knlb2022 wrote:
| 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
| williamsss wrote:
| Sounds like something I would use. A demo gif in the readme
| would help understand what it does faster
| knlb2022 wrote:
| Yeah, it's very far from usable by other people at the moment
| =/.
|
| The readme at
| https://github.com/kunalb/termdex/tree/main/markdown_files is
| probably the best bit.
| rcarmo wrote:
| 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.
| AlienRobot wrote:
| I'm not saying AI is going to replace programmers, but it's been
| almost a century already and we still don't have a decent note
| taking app or even a todo list app and that's like the first app
| you learn to make. Maybe humanity just kind of sucks at this
| whole application development thing.
|
| I use cherrytree currently, by the way.
| conception wrote:
| There are hundreds of decent note taking apps and todo apps.
| The issue is that almost no one has the exact same needs or
| workflow for either of those things. I've given up on
| suggesting those things to people and sticking with "whichever
| one you use is the best". So the best you'll ever do is a
| decent one //for you// but it's possible that definition may
| not work for anyone else.
| ericb wrote:
| I'm a fan of TrilliumNext, which is open source, for this:
|
| https://github.com/TriliumNext/Notes
| williamsss wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. Their encryption service is a nice source
| of inspiration on note encryption
| https://github.com/TriliumNext/Notes/blob/56d4d7c20f775eed73...
| ezst wrote:
| Same, this gets my recommendation. Trilium is one of the most
| under-rated tool I know of.
| zie wrote:
| I ditched for [silverbullet](https://silverbullet.md). MIT
| licensed, markdown editor with embedded lua scripting. It's a PWA
| app that works offline and syncs well.
| williamsss wrote:
| Holy shit this is awesome
| 369548684892826 wrote:
| Thanks for mentioning this, it looks exactly what I want; a
| markdown web app that stores the files using the filesystem on
| the backend!
| makizar wrote:
| The Maya Angelou quote is a very poor choice. I don't know if the
| author realizes the absurdity of putting the civil rights
| movement in parallel with her "PKM journey"
| diggan wrote:
| Does it really matter what context the quote was initially said
| in, if it generalizes to be applicable to many other things?
|
| For context, this is the quote that is "absurd":
|
| > You can't really know where you are going until you know
| where you have been
|
| I feel like that'd be fine in a lot of different contexts.
| AstroBen wrote:
| > It helped me reclaim control over my privacy, and significantly
| cut down on recurring costs.
|
| Obsidian has end to end encryption and is $4 a month. I totally
| relate to it being fun to build your own tools but acting like
| it's a practical use of time... idk
| MeetingsBrowser wrote:
| Obsidian's syncing was pretty spotty for me. I was a big fan
| and was paying by the year, but kept getting frustrated when
| notes weren't syncing across devices.
|
| $4/month is a lot for something that only sometimes syncs.
| cypherpunks01 wrote:
| Are there any private note solutions that can encrypt all
| markdown files against your own Yubikey-generated privkey?
|
| You can do this with SOPS and age encryption and it's amazing,
| but can't view/edit notes outside a terminal or on mobile very
| easily that I've found.
|
| Looking for a new solution like this, or maybe obscure
| configuration for an existing notes app that can support this
| workflow.
|
| All of the "end-to-end" solutions seems like they just store your
| encrypted keys somewhere with the application files, sync them
| around to different machines, etc, and decrypt key with a
| password. But web frontends can be compromised and the master
| password intercepted, so I'd like to require a Yubikey touch for
| each document decrypt, which would make exfiltrating multiple
| documents more difficult.
| williamsss wrote:
| Encryption is a rabbit hole I want to jump down soon. Other
| users recommended Triliumnext looks like they do file
| encryption like that worth checking out
| https://triliumnext.github.io/Docs/Wiki/protected-notes
| geoffreymcgill wrote:
| If you need an option to publish your notes online, check out
| Retype (https://retype.com). You can use Obsidian or GitBook or
| any Markdown files as your GUI editor and generate a static
| website using Retype.
| charlie0 wrote:
| I'm a lot more concerned about some random app on my phone
| accessing my Obsidian notes, which is why I haven't synced them
| to my phone yet, rather than Obsidian somehow knee-capping at
| some point in the future (which is not possible since it's all
| just md files in the end) .
| gitroom wrote:
| Gotta respect anyone who just builds their own stuff instead of
| waiting around for the 'perfect' app to show up.
| flkiwi wrote:
| As a longtime Logseq user who was sick of their app focus (it
| used to be a webapp!) and skeptical of their revenue model, I
| switched to Silverbullet a while back. It gets the basics right,
| and I can throw together some Lua and make it do whatever else I
| want. Plus there's a small but enthusiastic community developing
| for it. I have it set up in a VPS and it has brought back most of
| the magic of early days Logseq.
| ezst wrote:
| I inadvertently converted a longtime Logseq user to Trilium. In
| case you find yourself hacking too much around Silverbullet, or
| want to try something else, you should give it a try :-)
| flkiwi wrote:
| Trillium is great for some folks (and I would have no qualms
| recommending it), but I cannot _stand_ hierarchical notes.
| That 's a personal preference. I just want a big mishmash of
| notes all linking to each other. I don't want to manage a
| taxonomy.
| ezst wrote:
| For the record, it's not forcing you in this or another
| way, you can just dump all your notes on a flat level and
| later browse a network of backlinks in Trilium like other
| similar systems.
|
| Where I find Trilium to shine though, is when, after
| linking notes to one other for a little while, you realise
| "Well, I have a bunch of them that relate to `People`,
| others to `Products`, and, oh, a bunch of `Customers` as
| well, wouldn't it be nice if those were sharing the same
| properties?" (like People:{"Lives in", "Date of birth",
| "Partner of"...}, Customer:{"Address",
| "Contracts":-Multiple-, ...}).
|
| When you reach that point you can use Inheritance (from the
| hierarchy) and/or Composition (from Template notes) so that
| all your "People"-like or "Customer"-like notes share the
| same properties, and you can then easily manage them as
| data, giving the same organisational and queryable power of
| a RDBMS without having to commit on a data model from the
| get go (it evolves with you as you refine the inherited or
| templated attributes).
|
| I think any sufficiently large collection of notes
| eventually reaches a point where it self-organises around a
| set of "Reference notes" more often linked to, and this is
| where Trilium saves you a ton of time instead of giving you
| more house-keeping work (good luck maintaining those
| "Reference notes" in sync with each-other in a system like
| Logseq or Obsidian, been there, done that).
| flkiwi wrote:
| I essentially have that with the templates I'm using with
| Silverbullet. Organically developed metadata based on
| categories that don't actually exist anywhere.
|
| I'll spin up a Trillium instance soon and see if it's
| still not for me (but I uh won't approach it with that
| mindset).
| ezst wrote:
| Does Silverbullet support amending existing instances
| with the updated metadata when modifying the template?
| Does it let you extend templates from templates (e.g. a
| "Colleague" is a "Person" + some specific properties like
| "Department", "Joined on")?
|
| One way to go with your experiment would be to create an
| inbox1 where all the new notes go (or use a day note2 if
| you want calendar support) and a side notes hierarchy
| called "Collections" with subfolders like "Persons",
| "Companies", ... each having their own Template3. That
| way, when you are in a new note and need to create a
| reference to a note that doesn't yet exist, it will pull
| from the available templates and create the new note from
| it. The template note under "Collections" will retain the
| backlink to all instances. Just like that you got
| yourself something as capable as Tana's supertags4.
|
| 1:
| https://triliumnext.github.io/Docs/Wiki/attributes.html
| 2: https://triliumnext.github.io/Docs/Wiki/day-notes.html
| 3: https://triliumnext.github.io/Docs/Wiki/template.html
| 4: https://tana.inc/supertags
| ezst wrote:
| I went deep into to the PKMS rabbit hole a year and a half ago,
| benchmarked Obsidian and many many others, and settled with
| Trilium1 which I can only highly recommend. It addresses all the
| hosting/deployment requirements of OP2 without the quirky
| workarounds mentioned here (syncthing & al), and makes the kind
| of "lifestyle scripting" this article about very simple and
| straightforward.
|
| In my mind and experience, Trilium has a very unique and
| extensible model that lends itself to "growing with your PKMS":
| notes is the atom of information, attributes can be used to
| manage notes as structured and relational data, templates and
| inheritance provide structure and consistency at scale.
|
| Trilium may not look like much on the surface, but it is
| incredibly capable while being approachable. Give it a serious
| try.
|
| 1: https://github.com/TriliumNext/Notes/
|
| 2: you can use Trilium local-first/only, or cloud-only, or
| hybrid. It has its own sync protocol, you just point your
| instance to a server to sync with, and now you have a master-
| master replication. All my notes are available offline so I can
| keep working in-flight, notes shared with others are available
| via web whether I'm online or not, and I can edit my notes on the
| web where I don't need offline persistence. All of that is built-
| in/native to Trilium.
| williamsss wrote:
| Another person in the thread recommended it. I'll have to check
| it out this week thanks!
| Jarwain wrote:
| Trillium looks great! I'm curious if it has an outliner mode or
| something similar? I currently use logseq and the two features
| I love are how each bullet/block is its own thing that can be
| cross-referenced and embedded in other blocks and pages, and
| that my workflow is essentially to have daily journal pages I
| dump everything into and tag and references/crossreferences are
| automatically handled and linked to build out a network of
| things.
|
| I've noticed that trillium has hierarchical notes; is there a
| view to look at an item higher on the tree and have it also
| have the contents of all its children?
| ezst wrote:
| > I've noticed that trillium has hierarchical notes; is there
| a view to look at an item higher on the tree and have it also
| have the contents of all its children?
|
| You are right that the "atom" of content is the block in an
| outliner and the Note in Trilium. If you can tolerate0 the
| coarser-granularity, you can make Trilium behave pretty
| closely to an outliner: notes can be embedded within notes,
| either manually, or via the "Book" note-type1 (that
| essentially renders a tree as embedded notes), hoisting2
| should be a familiar concept then.
|
| 0: when researching the topic, I immediately fell in love
| with outliners, thinking I would never go back to a note-
| based approach like Joplin which I was using then, but here I
| am, promoting a note-based solution. Metadata/tags at block
| level is not something I could get the hang of (I know how to
| manage collections of notes at scale, but not collections of
| blocks). 1: https://triliumnext.github.io/Docs/Wiki/book-
| note.html 2: https://triliumnext.github.io/Docs/Wiki/note-
| hoisting.html
| mettamage wrote:
| I'm at the other side of the note system trade-off thingy. I use
| Apple Notes.
|
| It's not perfect, but if I really want better search
| functionality, I'll just use the SQLite database that stores the
| notes. I've never needed to roll up my sleeves for that. I get
| around the limitations.
|
| It's not perfect, but crafting one's own Personal Knowledge
| Management System sounds like a 5 year journey for 10 to 20 hours
| per week at least.
| shreezus wrote:
| Exactly - I have tinkered with all sorts of systems (including
| Obsidian), and ultimately prefer the simplicity of Apple Notes.
| I have a system of nested folders and tags that handles my
| organization needs pretty well, and I find added complexity
| just ends up adding more friction to the note-taking process.
| Apple Notes search could certainly use improvement though.
| vlark wrote:
| You might be interested in this, then:
| https://www.myforevernotes.com/
| hindsightRegret wrote:
| Obviously no right answer, but personally I think worrying too
| much finding the perfect tool instead of just integrating more
| knowledge to your PKMS is a distraction.
|
| Rolling your own solution is especially limiting in the context
| of the sheer amount of integrations the popular ones (like Notion
| for example) support.
|
| You're basically saying you will quickly build something better
| than the X hundred engineers at PKMS company Y quickly and it
| will continue to be better than what X hundred engineers will
| iterate upon.
|
| I think that time is just better spent learning and picking the
| subset of features that, for example, Notion offers that really
| improves your learning rate.
| williamsss wrote:
| I agree Notion is great. I prefer it if I need a shared PKMS
| such as a company wide document system.
|
| That said I've played around with its API a few years ago and
| with page elements being block elements you need to loop
| through n amount of requests to get the content, it didn't make
| sense for my use case.
| RadiozRadioz wrote:
| If you reframe it slightly, it can make sense. Those x hundred
| engineers are working on y hundred features / integrations. Do
| you need all of those? Do you want all of those? I bet a
| handful of those engineers are currently working on a brand new
| UI redesign that will move all the buttons you're used to. One
| of the engineers is adding a new cookie popup & enforcing SMS
| 2FA as we speak.
|
| One of the things I dislike about moden software is the
| constant bloat and churn, because there are so many customers
| and so many different incentives for software companies to keep
| pushing features ad infinitum. In contrast, home-grown software
| like this has one customer and they know exactly what they
| want. It doesn't matter that a theoretical home-grown app
| doesn't integrate with the 10 social networks the user doesn't
| use, because it integrates perfectly with the one they do use.
|
| This person isn't rebuilding the entirety of Obsidian, they're
| rebuilding the subset of parts they actually use and get value
| from, which is a much smaller project. By intelligently
| narrowing your scope like this, making stuff yourself is
| totally viable. Reframe "limiting" as "targeted".
| txtfan wrote:
| And here's me just shoving everything into hundreds of .txt
| files. Easy to grep, easy to backup, and every system has an
| editor for them.
| williamsss wrote:
| Username checks out & you'll probably outlast us all
| buibuibui wrote:
| I am also searching for an alternative to Obsidian, that also
| works well on iOS and macOS. Obsidian is currently really slow
| somehow although all extensions are disabled, e.g. rendering the
| content when switching between notes is not instant. I really
| really like Outline, but I don't want to access the web just to
| write and read notes.
| 404mm wrote:
| I wish there was something as lightweight and as well integrated
| as Apple Notes. Just support MD, sync well and have a search
| function.
| tuwtuwtuwtuw wrote:
| I replaced Obsidian with VS Code and a git repo.
|
| After using Obsidian for a couple of years I realized use a
| very limited set of features - editing markdown in a directory
| structure.
|
| All I needed was really the directory structure view to the
| left and content to the right.
| 404mm wrote:
| That's also one of the options I considered. Right now I have
| a git-synced obsidian but it feels awkward.
| tasuki wrote:
| > The most commonly used PKMS or note-taking apps today are
| Notion, Obsidian, Evernote and Logseq. The problem is that PKMS
| come and go.
|
| Uh oh. I wouldn't use _those_. Of course they come and go - they
| 're made by companies.
|
| > Could you see yourself using your note-taking app you use today
| in 30 years?
|
| Yes of course. Otherwise I wouldn't be using it.
|
| > Do you ever have concerns around the privacy of your notes?
|
| Not really.
|
| > Are you spending more time setting up your notes system rather
| than managing your notes?
|
| No.
|
| > What does an effective and timeless PKMS even look like?
|
| I use VimWiki[0]. There's a possibility it will go away, but I
| doubt it. There's a possibility both vim and neovim will go away,
| but I doubt it.
|
| It stores everything as Markdown files. Should Markdown ever go
| away, it's all still very readable plain text files. I use UTF-8.
| Perhaps that'll go away at some point?
|
| I version everything with git, I doubt git will fully go away,
| but I'm ok migrating to a different VCS if need be.
|
| I bet the longevity of my setup is way better than the longevity
| of a backend written in TypeScript, backed by a SQL database,
| running in Docker, based on a CMS I've never heard of (Directus).
|
| [0]: https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki
| williamsss wrote:
| As a fan of Vim, I'm a fan of this solution. Are you able to
| access them on your phone?
| tasuki wrote:
| > Are you able to access them on your phone?
|
| Yes, with caveats.
|
| I actually publish my wiki on the web with about fourty lines
| of bash to transform the Markdown into a static HTML
| website[0]. So I can access it through the web browser. When
| people ask me for recipes or whatever, I can just give them a
| url.
|
| I host one of my git remotes on GitHub (an extra backup, a
| service which is usually up and gives me a way to sync my
| notes should all my other devices be offline). I understand
| and admire that you didn't want to do that. Probably it's
| possible to install git on a phone and use a markdown editor?
| I don't particularly trust my phone tbh. Certainly not enough
| to put my git signing key on it!
|
| [0]: https://github.com/tasuki/vitwiki/blob/master/build.sh
| skeledrew wrote:
| I find it just a bit crazy that this is still an issue. I too
| jumped from Evernote when they did their rug pull in 2016, landed
| on Emacs+org-mode, and never looked back. Since then I've adopted
| Orgzly for org-mode on my phone, and syncthing to keep it all
| synced. The only real issue I ever had was the occasional
| conflict, which I resolved by splitting one of the files further
| into things that got modified on the laptop (primarily write-ups
| and my cheatsheet collection) vs things that got modified on
| mobile (primarily repetitive tasks).
|
| I haven't found use for plugins yet since I'm really just
| searching, updating tasks and archiving. But if I do need extra
| functionality, Emacs is the most versatile editor out there, and
| org-mode is native to it.
| holmb wrote:
| The discontinuation of Syncthing for Android bothers me.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41895718
| skeledrew wrote:
| I did see that a while back, but I haven't had any issues so
| didn't look into it. A quick search just now though shows
| Syncthing-Fork on F-Droid, so it should be an easy migration
| if there does come a need. I did the same with Orgzly a few
| months ago as it too was forked due to the original dev going
| MIA, and there were a few annoyances I wanted resolved.
| komali2 wrote:
| I have many thoughts, as I'm sure everyone on this forum does. I
| feel like mentioning PKMS on Hacker News is like mentioning, idk,
| shave soap or knives on reddit.
|
| > But if it's so obvious, why aren't other developers rolling out
| their own PKMS? Perhaps I'm the first to discover this or perhaps
| developers aren't writing about their custom PKMS.
|
| Well, because of Standards, of course: https://xkcd.com/927/
|
| I don't mean to shit on the OP's work here, but from what I can
| tell, the app they built is a multi-platform markdown editor and
| renderer that has an auth stack. Oh, and it's self hostable.
|
| If I hop on https://awesome-selfhosted.net/ , head down to the
| note taking section: https://awesome-selfhosted.net/tags/note-
| taking--editors.htm... , I can see at least 7 that support this
| feature. Oh, also this category: https://awesome-
| selfhosted.net/tags/knowledge-management-too... has many more.
|
| So while I think it's fun to do personal projects, I kinda feel
| like, if you had time to do this, it would probably have been
| better both for you and just like the world in general if you
| instead just created a PR with whatever feature you wanted on one
| of these more fleshed out projects. Bonus: you get a bunch more
| stuff, for free, since many other people are working on the same
| project. Bonus bonus: You can put a project with a shitload of
| github stars and users on your portfolio/resume/whatever and
| point to your PR.
|
| Anyway as for PKMS thoughts, I've been using org mode since 2016.
| I've tried Obsidian and Logseq for completedness but in both
| cases ended up back in org mode for various reasons.
|
| In PKMS, everyone goes on about knowledge graphs, linking etc,
| but I've realized lately I've never found that useful - I do use
| org-roam and link notes, but when I want to find links to, say,
| "machine learning," I'm just as likely to simply do a full-text
| file search for the term, which leads to the same results. As for
| the visual knowledge graphs, I've never seen them useful for
| anything other than showing off at coworking meetups.
|
| What I've come back to is, what I _really need_ my PKMS to do
| that I haven 't really configured org mode to do yet for me is,
| in situations that happen to me CONSTANTLY when I'm out and
| about, I need my PKMS very quickly to answer questions for me
| like, "who was that guy I read recently that said something about
| modern capitalism causing us all to be alienated," or, "I vaguely
| remember reading about how social media categorizes us into
| advertising groups, what was that again?", or, "What was that
| city in Italy we went to with that crazy good ice cream? Actually
| on that note what islands did we go to on that trip?" I'm
| frequently in conversations with people where I want to share
| information with them, but maybe because I have ADHD brain or
| just am uniquely deficient and remembering very specific bits of
| info, I can't recall stuff (a great example of this, and I had to
| google to write this part: I ALWAYS forget Quentin Tarantino's
| name despite really liking his movies). Anyway, I tried using an
| org-roam org-to-html deploy tool to create a searchable, private
| website of my knowledge graph, and that's... fine I guess. I need
| to get it automated somehow, but even then I'm sure it won't be
| great. Of course I'm thinking of some kind of deployed solution
| that queries an LLM that can search my entire note repo, but
| that's a project and a half I don't have time to do.
|
| So for now my plan is to just keep plugging away at org mode and
| org-to-html to see if I can get a really good flow there.
| righthand wrote:
| KDE Plasma has a vaults feature which allows you to encrypt and
| decrypt contents of a directory. Combine that (or some other
| encryption software, eg syncthing encryption instead) with
| syncthing and markdown editor is virtually the same thing no?
| xcircle wrote:
| I use Joplin (https://joplinapp.org) on mobile and pc(windows and
| Linux). Joplin has a free encrypted sync via OneDrive.
| nkrisc wrote:
| I have my Obsidian notes on an iCloud Drive that I already had.
| Works great, even on Windows.
|
| Would probably work with other similar options too.
| bigcat12345678 wrote:
| I think this is a great time to build personal knowledge base!
|
| LLMs are the missing piece that everyone has been desperately
| need to have the knowledge base come to life, instead of as a
| glorified key word search engine
| arnath wrote:
| I could be wrong, but I've always been under the impression that
| Obsidian charges a lot for sync because the app is amazing and
| free. Sync helps pay for that. But they're also very helpful
| about providing other ways to sync your files to your phone. I
| use iCloud Drive (which I have anyway for other reasons).
| MeetingsBrowser wrote:
| At least for me personally, the paid syncing was pretty spotty.
| I was a hug fan of the app, paid for yearly billing, but never
| got notes to sync consistently across devices.
| karn97 wrote:
| Syncthing + wireguard solves this. What a waste of time.
| eliben wrote:
| Plain text in git. Eternal, searchable, compact.
| elteto wrote:
| This is orthogonal. You can do this _and_ still use Obsidian
| since a vault is just a directory and notes are markdown.
| bryanhogan wrote:
| I don't understand the negative concerns mentioned by the author.
|
| It's quite easy to sync notes to your mobile device using a free
| method, or using a cloud service you might already be paying for
| [4].
|
| The great thing about Obsidian is that the notes itself are just
| markdown files, so you can use them in any other program. This
| protects you as a user in case Obsidian enters a enshittification
| phase. A good alternative is haptic [0], it is very similar to
| Obsidian but can also be used in the browser. Or LogSeq [1],
| SilverBullet[2] and just Visual Studio Code also work well. For
| just editing a single file MarkText[3] is also good.
|
| [0]: https://github.com/chroxify/haptic
|
| [1]: https://logseq.com/
|
| [2]: https://silverbullet.md/
|
| [3]: https://www.marktext.cc/
|
| [4]: https://bryanhogan.com/blog/how-to-sync-obsidian
| Svoka wrote:
| I applaud the action, but motivation is strange. I am all for
| making custom software for your own needs and tailored for own
| use cases, but price?
|
| How much does your VPS costs vs Obsidian subscription? I wonder.
| Is it like 1 5$/month micro machine and you just pray that it
| will survive for 10 years without data loss?
| zeta0134 wrote:
| > 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
|
| On Android, I solved this problem quite simply by pointing
| Obsidian's mobile app at a syncthing folder, which cheerfully
| communicates with my workstation (and about a dozen other devices
| I own) and keeps things up to date. Works way better than I
| expected it to. Honestly the most infuriating part is that Google
| seems to have decided that apps like syncthing aren't welcome on
| the Play Store anymore, leaving the maintenance of that
| particular app up in the air. But the point here is that Obsidian
| can point to any folder, and the syncing task is totally
| separate. It's nice to have the convenience of their hosted
| option, but it's by no means the only solution to that problem.
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| It seems to really be an ad for Directus (https://directus.io/)
| (?) That he used to replace Obsidian.
|
| One of the first image to hit me when I got there is a button
| "Start For Free".
|
| And if I want to run it on my own server in "production" it costs
| money? or at least you have to fill out a form and "Lets chat".
|
| When I go to a page, I click on pricing, and what I get is a form
| to fill out and "Lets Chat", I am out of there. If they cant show
| how pricing is structured, No thanks.
|
| """ Chat with our team about your project. We're here as a
| resource for you. Get clarity on your project, licensing, or
| enterprise needs. """
|
| It is open sourced they say https://github.com/directus/directus
|
| The first line of the introduction:
|
| """Directus is a real-time API and App dashboard for managing SQL
| database content."""
|
| Yeah... that is not what I need for my personal notes system.
|
| """Manage Pure SQL. Works with new or existing SQL databases, no
| migration required."""
|
| No
|
| """Choose your Database. Supports PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite,
| OracleDB, CockroachDB, MariaDB, and MS-SQL."""
|
| Still going on about that?
|
| I dont see this a good fit for the use case he presents.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-05-18 23:00 UTC)