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!
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.
There is Logseq! https://logseq.com/
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.
Obsidian is hella based
@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.
There is an open source alternative called Logseq https://logseq.com/
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 had to stop using it when it nuked one of my notebooks due to a conflict. I’m still not sure exactly what caused it; but I had to go into the DB, reassign the pages that were not completely deleted (orphaned?) to a new notebook, and cry about the few that weren’t recoverable.
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.
amen, bro!
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.
Standard Notes is the downright best notes software, highly recommend it as a OneNote alt!
is that FOSS?
Yep, also encrypted and cross platform too!
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.
@Big_Lanids @foss Is there a hosted version somewhere?
This is the one I’m running in a docker container.
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
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.
I can say I’ve never heard of any of these recommended.
Standard Notes: https://standardnotes.com
Obsidian: https://obsidian.md/
Xournal++: https://xournalpp.github.io/
They all look great! Checking these out later!
+1 for Xournalpp. I use it every day for tablet PC notes.
Meanwhile here’s me still using Google Keep…
Hopefully we get some warning signs before it ends up in the Google Graveyard.
It does manage copy / paste of images fairly well.
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
I hope not I’m still transferring my notes from Evernote to Keep. Evernote lost me with there device limit.
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 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
I use the same setup: Joplin and SyncThing. Works well on my macbook and windows boxen.
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 moved from Onenote to Joplin, and it’s been faultless. I’m using a free dropbox account for syncing and that works fine too.
Xournal++
I wasn’t aware of that one, thanks! Bummer though, the mobile port doesn’t seem to have been updated for a while :/
I wasn’t even aware there was a mobile port, I use it on a 2-in-1 laptop with a stylus
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
Not a great direct alternative, but rnote is pretty good
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 use vscode, the foam extension is great!
Thank you! Trying it out now and it’s amazing.
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!
