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What is the best linux alternative to OneNote? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I've no problem with using LibreOffice for most of my document needs, but i haven't found a good substitute for microsoft's OneNote yet. I mainly use it to plan my RPG games and it helps a lot. What alternatives are there for organizing notes on linux, with similar features to those that OneNote provides?

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I am surprised that no one has mentioned Rnote yet.

It is my favourite newly-created program for Linux. It is a relatively new app which supports annotating files and taking handwritten notes. You can import PDFs, set the page size to infinite or a fixed size (something OneNote can't do), adjust the background to display grids or lines or dots or nothing with any spacing you like, input text with your keyboard, .... It is available on Flathub for easy installation.

The only major downside is the following: Disclaimer: The file format is still unstable. It might change and break compatibility between versions.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (4 children)

For text-based notes I use Obsidian.

It isn't open source, but it writes standard markdown files to disk, so I can switch programs whenever I like and I am not locked into the Obsidian ecosystem with my notes. That was the main reason why I decided against using Joplin, especially after my experience with converting recipes from Nextcloud Cookbook to markdown ...

In general I am always trying to find a simple file-based solution for whatever I need to do. I want to be able to sync it with Syncthing instead of something fancier that requires a centralised web server or even relies on a cloud service.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Did you know that you can even sync your note using git and thus a git remote server for syncing? It even works with iOS 😃

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Amkng all note taking apps, FOSS or not, online and offline, Obsidian still holds the top spot unmatched. I don't even dislike to admit it anymore. It's just that good and really has almost everything.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Synching works but if you have a server, Obsidian live sync is fantastic and seamless.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Actually that's one of the main reasons I use Syncthing: It doesn't need a server, as it is a peer-to-peer architecture. Unlike a centralised solution (cloud storage, Nextcloud, etc.) devices sync directly with each other. If they are on the same local network, you get to enjoy the full bandwidth of your local network. If they need to sync over a long distance over the internet, you are limited by the upload and download speeds of your internet provider, just like with centralised storage.

I have a server that serves as an introducer, so I don't have to connect each device with every other device manually. But the server doesn't need to be available once all devices are connected with each other.

Syncing continues to work without it for as long as I don't reinstall any of the other devices. And even if I'd reinstall a device, I could delegate any other device to be the introducer or connect the devices manually with each other. It really is quite robust and fail-safe.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

oh my god, this looks like the note app i've wanted for so long on linux!!

it's still missing some text formatting features imo, but maybe i could hack those in a submit a patch… definitely keeping on my radar! thank you!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Haha, that's what I was thinking as well when I first discovered it. Glad you found it through my post!

I took my handwritten notes with PDF Annotator in a Windows VM for over three years ...

[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I was asking a similar question a few months ago, and my search turned up Joplin. It's a free, open source app that works across multiple platforms and can sync data through a cloud service, either through Joplin's own cloud storage or through a third-party cloud storage like Dropbox.

https://joplinapp.org/

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks! I'll check it out.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I use and enjoy Joplin. It's much less feature-rich than OneNote, but if you're predominantly using it to make text-based notes it does that with aplomb. I enjoy the cloud syncing, which is very useful combined with the fact that there's an Android app (so I can access my notes on the go).

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

You might want to explain the features of OneNote, particularly the exact ones that you want. I get the impression that most people don't know its organization structure.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Your input is very accurate. Being able to write notes freely anywhere on the page, draw on it, attach images, links, etc is a big part of it, but one of the most important things to me is organizing different pages into dividers/binders like you said.

I set up various sections for quests, locations, npcs, etc, for my rpg worlds, and need it to be well organized and be able to link to different sections within the same binder. I also like to color code everything.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thank you.

We are encouraged to use the Microsoft office suite if tools at work, and I still haven't figured out how to use OneNote to improve my life.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I looked at Joplin and Obsidian for the kind of notetaking I do and settled on Obsidian. To be honest, both have more features than I use. I like Obsidian because it's based on Markdown, so you're not tied to some oddball file format. But you should try them out and see which one fits your work style.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Joplin also uses markdown, and it has the advantage of being open source.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (5 children)

...in a database file. That and the awful android app had me look elsewhere. Too bad really, FOSS and self host options with it are great.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

And can sync to webDAV

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I recently settled on Obsidian too. It's proprietary software, but the text files themselves are in simple markdown and readable in a text editor. Additionally, you can sync across multiple devices using their paid service (which works flawlessly for everything) or set up sync yourself for free if you know how to host a couchdb instance yourself (works perfectly for everything except iOS, apparently).

The plugin support was baked in from the start so it's extremely flexible.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I wasn't worried about it being proprietary until I saw the founder reasoning for not having the source be open under a nonpermissive licence.

https://obsidian.rocks/why-isnt-obsidian-open-source/

I decided to go with logseq because of it.

It also syncs with all my devices using my own servers, instead of needing to trust obsidian/logseq.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You can also use SyncThing, works great.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yes I probably should have implemented that, but the Obsidian plugin implementation ("Self-hosted Live sync") appears to work almost shockingly well. I was amazed by how easy it was to setup . Setting up a couchdb instance took more time than getting sync going across all my devices, and couchdb wasn't that hard either.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Obsidian is my go to for D&D.

They still sprinkle a bit of their own stuff into the markdown but it's generally usable outside.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I'm not sure what features of OneNote you are talking about, but maybe logseq will suit your needs.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I switched from OneNote to Logseq. Its feature set is pretty much completely different, but in the end I realized it's fine with me and resulted in my notes being more useful.

The main downside that I see now is that it's kind of slow - much faster than the Electron version of OneNote was last time I used it, but slower than old native OneNote app or Obsidian. Otherwise its main differences from Obsidian are that in Obsidian the basic building unit is a page, whereas in Logseq it's a paragraph (and, usually, its sub-paragraphs - it's an outliner), which Obsidian can only do with plug-ins and not as seamlessly, and that with Obsidian you pretty much need to use community plug-ins, whereas with Logseq a lot of the functionality is built-in.

It's open-source and uses markdown, not completely standard, but close enough for the files to be entirely usable if Logseq ever dies. Its community is smaller than with Obsidian, which is a downside, but it's not exactly obscure either.

Really probably the most important thing about Obsidian and Logseq is to read an article or watch a video about how automatic backlinking works. It's especially useful for something like Zettelkasten, but it also works for more "normal" approaches as well as concepts like Getting Things Done.

Both are OK tools and are similar in many ways, but they're quite different from OneNote. Downside of both is that synchronization between devices sometimes creates issues unless you use their paid service.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I use logseq and notesnook.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I absolutely second logseq. Would you mind elaborating why/how you use notesnook in addition?

Thanks in advance!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've used both, honestly can't justify the price of notesnook after using logseq. I'm in the process of switching over entirely to logseq.

I will say though that notesnook is a great alternative to Evernote and OneNote that is private and secure. I just don't use its features enough to justify using it over logseq and syncthing.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Probably logseq or Obsidian, but... if you like plain text and really need customization you might go with what I use: emacs + org-roam

https://orgroam.com

Guides

text: https://jethrokuan.github.io/org-roam-guide/

video:

Start Using Org-roam Today | Install, Configure, and Use https://piped.video/watch?v=AyhPmypHDEw

[–] Canuck 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Saber

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Setup Trilium and use the Firefox extension to save screenshots or the whole page to it automatically which I love.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I'm feeling old. I have a folder called Notes with a directory hierarchy with text files in them. If I want to edit something, I navigate to the appropriate directory and type "vim -S". If I want to get to them remotely (which I haven't really needed) I would SSH in to my system with whatever terminal emulator I had available.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

You might look at these relative newcomers to this category of app...with some caveats for why I haven't switched from Obsidian.

Acreom - Not open source yet, but planned. Flat markdown files like Obsidian and Logseq. Dealbreaker for me is that in order to use the app on Android, you have to sign in with Google, Apple, or Github and use their cloud for sync. I'm trying to convince the dev to allow their "local first" mantra to permeate all versions of the app regardless of platform. He is very receptive, so we'll see. If they do, I can see myself switching to Acreom instead of continuing with Obsidian. But that's the beauty of open file format, you can pack up and leave very easily!
Notesnook - Is FOSS. But not self-hostable yet. That is on their roadmap. Potential dealbreaker is that it doesn't support markdown, rather shortcuts that behave similar to markdown syntax. As a result of that and their E2EE, the file format is not as open as Obsidian and others that use simple .md files.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

There's a program called cherrytree that I think is very underrated. It's probably not a 1:1 replacement for OneNote but I recommend checking it out in case it fulfills a similar but different need.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Some which I can think out of my head are : Joplin Trillium Logseq Notion Obsidian Anytype

If you need to draw, I would look into notion and obsidian.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I ended up going with obsidian. I wanted absolute portability I needed multiplatform support. I hadn't heard of Joplin at the time I made my choice, but I can say I'm happy with Obsidian and I like how their documentation is dog-fooded and useful in that form.