Technology

Thanks for the rare, rational comment regarding Obsidian. Many people here seem to think releasing software as closed source automatically means you have something to hide; seemingly forgetting we live in a capitalist system in which you must constantly sell your services to survive. (I am saying this as someone who adores FOSS and donates to most of my homelab software on a regular basis).

I think a more productive way to look at is: is the closed source dev friendly (or at least non-hostile) to the open source community? In the case of Obsidian, they haven't done anything egregious, and regularly contribute to open source plugins. Furthermore, the notes are stored as markdown files. This gives the user strong resistance against potential enshittification, so even if they did go rogue you can just move to some other text editor lol. Granted, you would miss out on plugins but otherwise that's a good reason to keep your plugin usage light and plan your Obsidian vault accordingly.

it's ok for people to profit off of their IP

Absolutely. I just have trust issues with closed source software and platforms. Burned too many times.

If they open source all their code, some tech wizard will implement a self hosted obsidian sync server with the same convenience as theirs in a day, and the company will lose their revenue stream

Obsidian is storing everything as plaintext files. Those convenient selfhosted sync solutions have been out there for years.

I think it’s ok for people to profit off of their IP

I absolutely agree. That doesn't mean the software has to be closed source though, a lot of software works well when sold with paid support, especially to companies.

If the price is low enough, companies will often just pay even if they don't need the support.

It says it's free, but then there's a pricing and plans page?

A lot of alarm bells ringing for me about that app.

Nothing else is changing. No account required, no ads, no tracking, no strings attached. Your data remains fully in your control, stored locally in plain text Markdown files. All features are available to you for free without limits.

Seems they'll just keep making money on sync.

Doesn't appear so but there is that potential in a future update as they're in control of what the software actually does. If data is indeed stored in plain text files then hopefully an alternative software could be made to display that data.

Note-taking app. Each note is a markdown file, so you can add formatting.

Note linking is what did it for me a few years back. It’s possible in OneNote, and clunky as hell.

I was sold the moment I read links can be wiki style in Obsidian.

Can you elaborate on this? I use logseq as an information dump and use tags and hashtags to associate the individual entries with a certain topic. I love that i do not have to think about the file structure (where do i have to put it?) and instead can just write it down immediately.

E.g: had a meeting with #name with regards to #project Z. We have a set of new requirements that need to be implemented in by Q3 2025….

Would this be significantly different in obsidian?

I use it to track everything..

Quick notes knowledgebase Follow up (personal and work)

The great thing about Obsidian is how flexible it is. The bad thing about Obsidian is how flexible it is.. 😀

I have seen may people comment, or outright leave, Obsidian because because there was too much to learn.. or too many plugins to explore..

Personally, I only look for plugins if I need something specific. Don't see the point of trying random plugins. Is like spending time finding solutions to a problem you may not have..

Also, I work on tech and many documents are in markdown. Obsidian makes it easier to read those. Specially the collapse / expand functionality is really great for exploring large docs.. as long as the creators properly used sections (basically # for level 1, ## for level 2..and so on)

I use Obsidian as a tool to help my shitty memory.

I want to have one single place where I can go search for a thing I know I saw somewhere but can't remember where or what it was exactly

"Did I watch movie X" -> Obsidian -> Watchlist -> Movies and there it'll be.

Same for tv-series, anime, books, games. Yes there are services that do it like Trakt, Imdb, Letterboxd, TVMaze and god knows how many for games. They all get enshittified eventually requiring you to pay for basic functionality (looking at you trakt...)

I'm building a tool for getting my data out from all those services into Obsidian markdown format, maybe It'll get finished some day :D (IMDB and Goodreads work, but you need to do a manual csv export)

"How did I install that finicky piece of software last time" -> Obsidian, I wrote something down because I knew I couldn't remember it. Then I'll improve the guide + refresh with new data.

Now I have a pretty good step-by step guide on how to set up a computer, no matter the OS, just how I like it - all in Obsidian. Mostly just commands I copy-paste and some manual steps that I can't be arsed to automate.

Same with my daily notes, I just write down what I did maybe with some tags so I can find them when I start wondering when did I visit X or put up the curtains in the bedroom.

I use it as a work journal and personal knowledge management (PKM). Each day I open a daily journal note (built from a template with an easy shortcut) that contain rough notes on what I did that day. From that note I link over to project notes for any project I worked on or complex issues, scratch notes, etc. I do split windows, one with a narrow view of the daily note and then a larger panel for content notes (like documenting the project or create a scratch note or searching for a note on a problem I had 2 years ago that I need to remember about). There are many useful plugins but Templater and "Various Complements" are my favorite. Templater allows me to configure a template for any note I want to configure, so I can create a new note then hit a shortcut that will prompt me for a page title and auto fill the note with my template (that includes tags, headings, etc) for a meeting or new project or scratch note. Templater can also organize the note and move it around on my filesystem. Various Complements plugin allows me to build a dictionary of anything I want that will then fill in like an IDE when I'm typing in a note. So I use it for all my coworker names, I type 4 letters of someone's name and it pops up suggestions where I can tab-complete their full name.

It's truly a great program, better for me than all the others I've tried: OneNote, TiddlyWiki, DocuWiki, Dendron, and emacs. I used TiddlyWiki for years and had to bend it to my will in many wonky ways, then Obsidian came around and did 90% what I wanted out of the gate and the 3 or 4 plugins I use did the rest. I've been using it for a few years now.

here's a bunch of possible applications:

1. simple note taking. like notepad except you have your notes at a place where you can search through them and even link one from another.
2. second brain. you can watch a video about it but basically to organize your thoughts, record things you learn, make connections between things to have a digital brain you can search or browse through.
3. work or school. notes, to do lists, reminders, links to sources, etc all in one place with references via links
4. journal. pretty straightforward, but you can imagine things you could do if you could link from your journal entry to a website, or another entry, or something from your movie collection.
5. database. eg maybe you have a movie collection and want to document all the details, including which ones you watched, which ones you liked, and what you think about them. you can have a file for each movie but also files for directors, actors, etc that you can link to and from, in which you have info on those, including images, tags for easy search.

so you watched a movie and wonder what other movies you own have the same starring actor: search movie, click link to the star page, check backlinks.

obviously not the best use case because imdb exists but this is personal and could be extrapolated to any collection you have, maybe even all of them. why not have the movie adaptation link to the original book?

TLDR

you can think about it like: imagine if you could make a bunch of wiki pages. the formatting isn't quite as nice but essentially that's what you're doing. a bunch of pages with text, images, links and tags, that you can browse through. what would you use it for?

I just paid for the sync 🤷🏻‍♂️

It’s $4 a month, I drink one beer less a month and I actually save 3€ 😀

I like obsidian specifically because you don't need to rely on some built-in sync tool. The files are right there and in a sane format, you can sync them however you want. I use syncthing for this at home, but the choice is yours

It's regrettable that Obsidian isn't open source. But the nice thing about it is that its data store is just a bunch of markdown files in a folder structure, and very easily migrated to any other application. They may have the code but they don't take the data hostage like a lot of commercial software does.