cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/43147928
I built a note-taking app because the one I wanted didn’t exist. Clean UI, local .md files, no cloud, no account.
Built with Rust + Tauri 2.0 + SvelteKit. Full-text search powered by Tantivy. Graph view, AI writing tools (bring your own key), Obsidian import, version history.
Available for Linux (AppImage, APT, AUR), Windows, and macOS. Source: https://codeberg.org/ArkHost/HelixNotes
Do I get it right that this is like Obsidian, but free and open source?
How does it compare to Obsidian? Does it have note linking using square brackets?
Not to be rude or anything like that, where I’m going is not the “we already have obsidian, why you made this” but “currently obsidian is one of the few non-FOSS things I use in Linux, would be happy to replace obsidian with this if it’s a good substitute”.
I don’t use obsidian plugins, so I understand that HelixNotes doesn’t have this whole plugin ecosystem and can’t replace obsidian for people that rely on plugins, but for me it’s fine.
Is android app coming?
Have a look at Trilium. Anything Obsidian can do, it does better. And syncing is native.
Can trillium store all files in markdown/plaintext?
How is the theming by trillium? I use a light tan interface because it is much easier on my eyes, personally than high contrast white or eye-straining dark themes.
So, I recently abandoned Trilium, because it’s very half-assed.
It stores data in a database on your local file system, and you can export as markdown.
What do you mean “half-assed”? I manage very large collections of notes with it, in ways that no other PKMS can, just because none of them approach “note as data” (or “typed notes”) in a way that Trilium does.
My #1 criteria is for all my notes to remain consistent over time. If I create a note type for “Projects”, I want all notes representing a Project to have the same properties (start date, location, cost, …) at all time. Trilium has very neat concepts like Templates and Attributes Inheritance that make changes on the template be reflected on instances. That’s something even AnyType, Notion, Capacities, Logseq, Tena and others are struggling with. When your collection grows, so does your bookkeeping with those systems, and what should be a tool to help you get stuff done ends up giving you more work to do and holding you back. I beg to see a tool that helps my productivity so much.
Content is stored in a SQLite db (with options to export to markdown & al.), Trilium is open source, so there’s no lock-in and you get the best of both worlds.
You can totally reimplement the whole UI if that’s your thing, everything (or close-enough) is a note in Trilium, including themes and other JS/CSS notes that will override or extend parts of the application, like add-ons would elsewhere.
Can you tell me more? Is it FOSS? Is it electron? Is it a UI for a folder of markdown files? Is there a native android app? What is “native” syncing? Do I have to pay for some kind of cloud?
You can see by yourself at https://triliumnotes.org/
It’s FOSS, it’s web so you can use it hosted, or local first as an electron app, or both and then they will sync together.
It is NOT a UI for a folder of markdown files, because that’s silly when you expect from your system to hold relationships, metadata, rich note types, notes to coexist in multiple places, etc. Since it’s FOSS, and since you can sync your notes real-time and distributed across machines, there’s nothing wrong with this.
You can use the web version on Android as a PWA, but it won’t sync offline. There are workarounds to run a local server on your device for that use cases (not ideal in terms of user-friendlyness, but gets the job done).
You don’t need to pay anything to anyone if you host it yourself or if you keep it local. There is no official hosted plan, some people offer to do that for a tiny fee at https://www.pikapods.com/ (never used them, some people say they are decent).
Yes, local-first markdown like Obsidian, but fully open source (AGPL-3.0).
Note linking with square brackets - yes, supported. Graph view too so you can see connections between notes.
If you don’t rely on Obsidian plugins, you’ll feel right at home.
Android is on the roadmap, but the desktop experience comes first. Still early days.
Thanks, gotta try this!
Well, there’s Markor on android, so even without a dedicated android app, I can use Helix Notes + syncthing + Markor on the phone and ditch obsidian if it’s good.
That’s exactly the way I do it. However, the mobile app is something that will be made in the near future.
According to the page it supports note linking. Isn’t obsidian also free as long as you are not using the sync service?
At the moment I am using Anytype, but am looking into obsidian. Lately anytypes development feels kind of strange. They are more an more moving from a note app to a collaboration app. And I wonder how long the note taking will be unaffected by it. So obisidian is becoming more and more interesting, because of the independent markdown format…
Yeah it’s free, I just meant “foss”, I didn’t mean to say obsidian isn’t free.
Also I use syncthing, so I don’t care about built-in sync as long as it’s just a folder of files on my file system.