Recommendations for a FOSS Cross-Platform Note-Taking Application
Up to now I've been using Simplenote, which has a Linux client (but also Android & iOS) & supports live collaboration on notes. However, Simplenote hasn't had a meaningful update for a long time, & it's recently been behaving strangely, e.g. notes undeleting themselves, line duplications & undeletions.
Can anyone recommend an alternative? Spinning up an ownCloud/nextcloud instance just to use Joplin feels a little overkill. I stumbled across turtl, but the project looks abandoned.
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Joplin has multiple sync options. Other than Nextcloud, you can use OneDrive, Dropbox, and they have a subscription service as well.
Obsidian is another to look at, but you need to either pay for sync or bring your own sync (
though I don't know that you can sync to mobile without using their syncedit: see below comment by @fossisfun@lemmy.ml that explains how to do it).I think it's probably helpful to know if sync across platforms is important to you, and if so, whether you're willing to pay for it. I'm not sure that there are really many alternatives to an app provided for free with free syncing - that costs money to provide and honestly I'd be a bit dubious about using a service like that.
You can select a local folder in Obsidian for Android and sync the folder with Syncthing. You can even revoke network permissions for Obsidian and it all works completely offline (Flatpak override:
--unshare=network/ GrapheneOS: don't allow the network permission).This is my current setup, even though Obsidian is not FOSS. I like that it stores standard Markdown files in a traditional filesystem hierarchy, instead of what Joplin does with using Markdown files as a database. This means that with Obsidian I can use any text editor or any other Markdown app to access and edit my notes, whereas with Joplin I would have to export them first to standard Markdown and then potentially rename and reorganise all the files and their attachments.
Unfortunately with iOS you are stuck with Obsidian Sync because Syncthing does not work because of the permission model. Otherwise I prefer Obsidian over Joplin for the above mentioned reasons and nice extension ecosystem. It's easy to get your files out of Obsidian, no vendor lock-in
Möbius sync is a Syncthing client for iOS. I have the same setup as Foss Is Fun and everything works very well
I am also using iOS with Möbius Sync and it is working quite well. The sync is not running all the time in the background due to iOS restrictions but it is running multiple times per day on my device.
The option to sync folders was only introduced this year. It costs about 5$ one time payment.
Syncing over iCloud drive works well (Obsidian, iOS).
I as well use iCloud for syncing and it works well.
If you run iCloud and syncthing on the same machine you can point syncthing at the icloud folder, and you’ve got a way to sync icloud to Linux.
Thanks!
There will be many conversion tools for Joplin to other structures. So I guess the format is a non issue.
Joplin has export options itself, but I just don't like how Joplin manages notes on a filesystem. If it can be done nicely (see Obsidian), why bother with something needlessly complex (file structure, need to sync with the filesystem, etc.)?
But everyone has different requirements and for the right person, Joplin can certainly be a good solution. ;)
Joplin explains on their website that it's for preformance that they use a database rather than flat files.
There's also plenty of FOSS obsidianlikes. Logseq looks promising, but I'm sticking with Obsidian because I rely a lot on some of the extensions.
Either way, migrating is as easy as opening the same folder in one app or the other, so you might as well try.
I didn't know about Logseq! Looks really interesting and since there's a Flatpak available, I'll give it a try. Thanks for mentioning it!
Git clone with something like Termux on Android ? Bit of hassle, but you can make a desktop shortcut with bash scripts to make it easier.