Generally speaking I’m not opposed to sqlite. The case of a notes app is the one exception.

If i need to make a big find and replace change, i dont need to rely on the app to have the capability or whip out a sql editor or cli tool. I just open my favorite text editor and do it. Or chain some cli tools built into the os.

Its not even about data portability or export. Its about working with the data.

Exactly. Not a huge fan of notes apps storing the data in a db.otherwise there is a lot to like about joplin. With obsidian i open my notes in codium all the time to make mass edits or fill gaps that obsidians UI cant meet, which is not possible with joplin.

Fortunately with obsidian as long as you keep the plugins on the lighter side and keep any non-markdown content in seperate files via linking, im not too worried about having to jump ship if it ever goes bad. Worst case if a plugin dies or i have to migrate, the actual loss of data is that some plugin used json or whatever and it’d have to be converted or replaced.

I do have hope at least that if the company folds they’ll open source it, or turn a blind eye to a community reengineering effort. And what is unique about obsidian markdown and metadata will probably get community-built migration tools quickly if enough people jump ship en masse.

But for the time being Obsidian is the best option for me and i dont feel that bad about it.

Having as many followers as he does on the fediverse right now is difficult. There aren’t any tools or options to reduce the flood of notifications you get or do do any sort of sane filtering (especially on mastodon) so i totally understand why he often reacts the way he does. You cant feasibly block or de-federate when your reach is so large.

The political aspect is especially true. The FOSS confusion is often similar to the communism confusion, especially when it comes to small-scale things.

Take the concept of a neighborhood garden that no one is expected to pay money into, for instance. “Wait, so the people here who like gardening don’t expect me to pay or provide labor unless I’m able to? What do you mean i should take only according to my needs? What about Jimothy, he never helps but he takes way more than I do! What do you mean Jimothy contributes as he is able or in other ways? How can i trust everyone to be fair?”

Take the money for goods/services exchange out of the equation and it can really throw people off.

I’ve been using florisboard for a few months now. You will have typos. Auto-correct for obvious things would be nice… once you install a dictionary its not awful, but the dictionary struggles with simple typos since it isnt usually taking rhe surrounding words into context of the misspelled word. I think the only dictionary i could get installed was from libreoffice? So could just be a lack of common mobile typos in the dataset.

Florisboard does support things i actually used from gboard like a function row up top with undo/redo, activating voice options, and a clipboard with history. It also supports things like apps that support the autofill hints similarly to how itd pop up on gboard. Of all the foss options, it was the only one that had these modern expectations, so i also think its the best bet for a gboard alternative people will actually switch to. Anysoft and openboard are way too minimal (not a bad thing, just not what an avid gboard user is looking for)

Swipe on floris is ok. It definitely triggers when you don’t want it on occasion. And the lack of autocorrect makes recovery miserable.

I tried openboard too, but i could not get openboard to a reasonable size on the screen. Pixel 7 pro is fairly big… and i use the smallest text scaling… but even the smallest layout options put the top row out of reach of my thumbs.

I also have that UPS rack mounted, just the cage nut bolts. It doesn’t concern me at all. I have it towards the bottom of the rack since its heavy(ish) but its also not too deep so there isn’t a lot of flex on it.

I have not explored Trillium enough, but from what I know, it seems to be an excellent choice and worthy of mention and advocacy. I did not say that Trillium was bad.

Unless obsidian goes fully foss, and gets way way more stable, i’ll be using the genuinely better choice, thanks though.

I'm glad it's a better choice for you! Replying to you doesn't mean I was saying your choice was incorrect for you or others, merely that I wanted to discuss in context of your comment. Apologies if you read that from my response. I do not think I can declare a genuinely better choice. In my opinion, the most important thing with note-taking is whether you keep returning to do it and can easily find past notes.

You’re doing that thing where someone starts going to bat and listing off this that or this other thing to rationalize their own choice or rationalize the choice for others.

Ok? I don't recall saying Obsidian was THE choice, nor that your reasons were incorrect, so I don't know why you're casting me in that role. Generally I lean towards self-hosting and foss options for the reasons you describe, but this is an instance where I calculated differently, and I just want to provide context that, compared to other proprietary options, Obsidian is way less a concern. I've personally gone down rabbit holes with foss alternatives because i've been overly concerned about things and ended up not being productive. I've also chosen foss tools before that I thought would be safe or easy to migrate out of, and then ended up having a terrible time anyway when the day came that it became abandonware or a new maintainer took it in a different direction.

Perhaps you are doing that thing where you forget that not everyone can easily use a fully foss option and that not everyone can reliably install a tool from github in the event it isn't available on an app store or via an installer? (I'm certainly guilty of this sometimes myself)

Even for a tool like Trillium, while it wouldn't enshitify the same way a proprietary tool could, it could also just be abandoned, no forks could arise, and someone without a ton of self-hosting/compiling/cli-based install troubleshooting experience would be in just as bad a situation for migrating or going elsewhere. Even right now, Trillium is technically unsupported on macOS, so it's not a great option for some out the gate. (Nor does that make Obsidian automatically better)

100% agree that Notion is fantastic compared to OneNote. I also switched back in 2018.

Unfortunately, their mobile app is still fairly sub-par, their data format is proprietary and not markdown, and it is only slightly cheaper than Obsidian Sync. Also, their integration system has basically gone nowhere. Which sucks because it could be good. I also have lost data on numerous occasions due to their sync system and their official policy is "oops". In that respect, OneNote is better.

I used Notion for about 5 years before switching to Obsidian recently. Notion was far better than anything id used and generally it is a good tool, but i also was never able to make notion work as well for me as Obsidian, esp. in a way that i optimistically keep information in it. Notion often was just enough effort (esp when on the go with mobile) that i just simply could never use it to its full potential.

However, obsidian, imo, does require some plugins to meet my needs. But i think this is a good thing. Projects basically does everything i like about Notions databases. Dataview takes care of database views.

Might as well switch now to something which largely works better and is more feature rich.

Which is relative to personal taste and needs.

If I was going to trust obsidian, their code would be fully foss.

I definitely agree that I wish it was fully foss, but i also think it is a far better option than notion, onenote, etc for most people (as long as it meets their needs and preferences) since with obsidian you do actually own your data and you don't need to pay unless you want their sync.

Since it isn't, there is nothing future proofing my notes in their software.

Even if, worst case, Obsidian enshitifies, all the notes are markdown or json (json for config and things that don't work in markdown, but the community and the devs work hard to keep that to a minimum) so you can still access your stuff in any text editor and it will be fairly easy to get the important data migrated into anything else. (I often use vs code to manage my notes, for instance, esp for big find and replace or re-org tasks) Even the non-standard markdown from obsidian and the most popular plugins reads well and could fairly easily be replicated with remarked or other markdown libraries. In this way, i think Obsidians approach is far superior to a tool which uses a database to store its data, since a database would require some effort to use standalone, or some work to migrate it to another tool or some sort of minimal client interface.

By its design, Obsidian could also be replaced by reverse engineering their api. If obsidian takes the dark path, we will probably see a foss community grow from the plugin dev community to replace it and be as compatible with plugins as possible, even if its just the basic text and display components. Tbh, it could totally be a vs code plugin, an emacs mode, [insert any text editor with plugins here]… thats how portable the data is. The obsidian devs know this, and they are intentional about staying this way. A shift in attitude here would be noticed by the community very quickly.

Not a solution to your current problem, but an alternative to consider depending on your network setup.

I've been running unbound as my DNS via OPNSense. Same capabilities for blocklists, plus some nice privacy benefits with DoH/DoT. I think you can use unbound with pihole too, fwiw, i just don't have a need for that.