Looking for OneNote Alternative

IuseArchbtw@feddit.de to Free and Open Source Software@beehaw.org – 61 points –

Hey everyone,

I am looking for an alternative for OneNote for Linux. A clone would be perfect, the interface of it and the ability to paste pictures into a very wide notes field is great. Please help me!

86

Check out Obsidian! The canvas feature is very similar to onenote snd obsidian in general is the best notwtaking app/ personal knowledge management system in existence

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

I switched to Obsidian not too long ago.

For my needs, Joplin was a good open source alternative.

Between the two I went with Obsidian because, while the apps are closed-source, the data is accessible. All your notes are just stored in plaintext (with markdown) as simple files in a directory structure.

Joplin, in contrast, uses a SQLite database which adds a layer of complexity.

This was one of the main selling features for me (before I tried it and experienced all the other killer features). I've experienced a bad case of vendor-lock before where it was hell to export my data. So having it all available in plain text at all times is really reassuring.

Yep, Joplin is great too, that's what I use currently! I also like that it has built-in syncing with nextcloud and dropbox; as far as I know, obsidian only has their own paid-for syncing (unless you sync externally like the person below using syncthing)

I absolutely love Obsidian, despite being closed source. Their community plugin ecosystem is incredible. I use a plugin on all my devices to backup my notes to a private git repo hourly.

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.

The Excalidraw plugin may do the trick.

Can you use that with a tablet to make hand written notes?

You can, but there is no form of exporting your handwritten notes. There's also sort of a tendency to "bend" what you've just written a bit after you lift your stylus. Like it's vectorizing and slightly correcting the path you just drew.

I have had moderate success using the built-in Scribble feature to convey my handwriting into text in the main editor. It's not super great but is serviceable. It's real opinionated about when and where new paragraphs should appear.

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

As your description is rather short and does not really restrict the "recommendation space", I'll start the round of recommendations with Joplin

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?

As far as I know it's a known limitation. Joplin just does not have background sync. It's ok for my use case but the initial sync can take a long time depending on your database size. Other than that, I'm happy with Joplin.

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

Do you use Joplin? I've heard about it a ton but I can't figure out when I'd ever use it. I use Bookstack for a Wiki and then I have an empty (besides myself) Matrix room that I use for quick notes or something I need to send from my phone to a different device. And then I also have Nextcloud and could just use docs there. I love self hosting open source apps but I struggle to see how often I'd use Joplin (or any note app) over other options. I'm hoping you or somebody can finally make something click for me.

I tried it once but didn't see the use of it, but I saw it recommended often and I can see why, because it is nice to sync notes with your phone, if you need it there. I personally am a fan of the suckless/KISS mentality and just use syncthing to sync my plain markdown notes between devices.

one thing that annoyed me, though, was that the markdown editor in joplin always inserted some weird blank lines or spacings. That might not be relevant or even obvious for someone who just uses the rich text formatting editor, but I mostly used the plain text editor and eventually asked myself what joplin is basically useful for in my use case, as I already had syncthing in place and I could just use any plain text editor of my choice. So for me the benefit of hierarchically structuring my notes was not worth the extra program on my computer/phone, especially considering that syncthing and vim/codium are programs specifically created for the use case that joplin tries to merge into a single product. But I might be an extreme case, as I have also replaced Nextcloud with Filebrowser and Syncthing, so take my words with a grain of salt.

TLDR: Joplin is a great program and I can recommend it, it is just not suited for fans of the KISS mentality.

I tried Joplin, but found it more cumbersome than just directly using markdown files, and rw them with Markor on Android. On Linux, I will just directly rw the markdown files in vim, or vscode if I want to get fancy.

I primarily have Joplin for my phone. I do have it on my computer just so I can edit stuff that I want on my phone. I sync it between all of my devices via my Nextcloud instance. Works great.

I use Joplin and sync the notes between devices (including Android) with Syncthing. There's lots of other options for syncing, but I already had Syncthing set up and liked it

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

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

I selfhost my Joplin server and use the clients on my Linux desktop, my windows laptop, iphone and Android. It is definitely one of my favorite selfhosted apps. To prevent any issues with sync, the first thing I do when I open the app is to click the Sync button and do the same when I close the app at the end of the day. This way I ensure that I am always working with the latest version. It has not failed me so far, considering I am a very heavy user and have quite a few notes running at any given day.

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

you can sync them with dav on nextcloud, then joplin takes care of pushing and pulling but the files are on nextcloud

Standard Notes is the downright best notes software, highly recommend it as a OneNote alt!

+1 for Standard Notes it's brilliant!

I use it and pay for premium, but I do miss the simple pasting of images inline like with OneNote 😔

Meanwhile here's me still using Google Keep...

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

I hope not I'm still transferring my notes from Evernote to Keep. Evernote lost me with there device limit.

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.

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.

Google play music was the last straw for me. I will never depend on them for a service ever again. They just aren't reliable.

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

Because nobody mentioned it already I want to bring Notesnook in.

It is very privacy friendly, OpenSource and cross platform. Just if you want to sync there is no self hosted solution yet.

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.

Joplin is great but Obsidian is definitely worth checking out. You can find both as flatpaks.

Big fan of Obsidian. Especially for written notes. If you are working with a lot of images I'd give its canvas feature a try. I'm not using it personally, but I think it might fit the bill.

I would suggest Logseq. It's excellent and a step up from One Note IMHO.

I'm using it both for notes at work (software development) as well as a separate graph for my own thoughts, ideas, todos, pretty much everything. Using Syncthing to sync my graphs between devices works pretty well, though it's had a bit of a learning curve in getting it set up.

@IuseArchbtw I switched to Zettlr a few years ago and never looked back https://zettlr.com/ there are tons of markdown apps in other platforms that can give you the cross-platform feel but for desktop this is it for me

Zim Desktop Wiki: https://zim-wiki.org/

It's good for creating interconnected articles on your desktop. No mobile version though, so it's more of a knowledge base that a notes app.

Attachments and links to external files work beautifully. WYSIWYG editor, all articles stores as plain text files with zim wiki syntax, attachments are plain files in folders

Technically OneNote online in office 365 is also an option

Btw no built in sync, but since it's all just plain files in folders syncing works beautifully with Own loud/Nextcloud

There is built-in git versioning though, though I'm not sure when you'd use that for personal use

Notesnook is a pretty good service. More of a less clunky Evernote. It's free by default but has paid for options and also very privacy focused.

Not a great direct alternative, but rnote is pretty good

I use qownnotes in combination with nextcloud. Supports mark down, git like history and syncing with the nextcloud notes app, which you can also use on your phone.

Markor on Android, nvim on Linux and sync with syncthing. Using markdown.

Create a folder, put markdown files in it, sync* and backup* the folder however you like and edit the files with whatever you like*.

Within my folder I have a daily journal - start each day with a list of what I hope to achieve today and make notes throughout the day as I progress on those tasks. The next day that journal becomes something I'lll refer back to in the morning to decide what to do next. Depending on the project - weekly or monthly might be more suitable than daily. Or maybe something else entirely.

I also have folders an files for longer term tasks.

If you want to collaborate, make a second folder and choose a sync platform you can all agree on.

(* I use GitHub for Sync, Backblaze B2 for backup, and Visual Studio Code for editing, with extensions for markdown and making GitHub a little easier... specifically GitDoc for auto-commit/push/pull and Markdown All in One for formatting/etc. Also Copilot is handy for some note taking tasks. The "foam" extension mentioned here looks like it might be great too)

If you're looking for touch/stylus compatibility I highly recommend the Excalidraw plugin for Obsidian.

Creating a TiddlyWiki is also an alternative. Especially to Obsidian

Logseq is my go to. It can be as simple or complex as you want, and it's open source under AGPL 3.0 which is really important to me.

If you are looking for a handwritten notes app that syncs across devices you could give Saber a try.

Nice one 👍. I've been looking to replace onenote handwritten notes for years with something with better Linux support. Interested to give this a try! Thanks for sharing!

I’ve tried about everything and landed on Workflowy and love it. Simple, fast, excellent for organizing.

I dunno if this is weird or what but personally I can't stand markdown editors. It's 2023 and Microsoft Word is a fairly polished thing that I expect replicated in some way in my note taking app.

Currently I'm using Notion and it's pretty nice. Free for students too which is great.

I was using Wiki.js which was nice but a bit clunky and I ran into a few showstopper bugs that I couldn't bother fixing.

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.

Yeah it's funny how some absolutely swear by it, yet others can't stand it.

I'm with you, I'm at the point where I go to use markdown in emails and loathe having to click around to format things nicely.

@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