cross-posted from: https://lemdro.id/post/17051418
I love the idea of having all my quick notes, to-do lists, knowledge base, journal, plans, etc., in one single, neatly organized place. Why wouldn’t I? But deciding on which Notion alternative to use is overwhelming.
There are so many options, and all claim to be the best. Online opinions are all over the place (as expected), and these apps aren’t exactly simple—they’re complex for good reasons, but that makes choosing one even harder. And don’t get me started on the endless YouTube videos on the topic—I could spend weeks or months researching this and testing every single one of them, but honestly, this is not how I wanna spend my time so I will ask you guys instead.
My Current Setup:
Markor: Used it for quick thoughts, journaling, and to-do lists but stopped using it because it’s not suited for everything, and there’s no sync between Android and Linux (becsuse it is android only).
Obsidian: Currently using it as my knowledge base and for long notes, simple to-do lists, and occasional journaling. Haven’t fully migrated to it or created an organized setup because I’m looking for a FOSS Notion alternative.
Standard Notes: Good for quick notes, but most features are paywalled, making it feel limited.
jtx Board: My go-to for journaling—it’s simple and quick to use.
What I need:
- FOSS, but only if it’s just as good as proprietary options in:
- Auto-sync between my Android phone and Linux desktop
- Journaling
- Quick notes
- To-do lists
- Planning
- Managing personal projects
- Writing down thoughts
- A really good Android app
- Easy to use
- Free for personal use
What I don’t care about:
Collaboration. This is for my personal use—no sharing, no team features.
Given my messy current setup and specific requirements, can anyone give me some recommendations?
Obsidian is not FOSS, but you can switch to it for now because the whole idea is that it's just a folder of markdown files. I recommend shopping around by pointing each app at the same markdown folder, so you can see your same notes without having to worry about complex migration. Being able to look at all your notes gives you a better idea of what will suit you.
Also, I recommend Pandoc for translating between document formats. It's not not absolutely perfect, but it is wildly good at dealing with the complex problem of translating.
The simplest thing you can use, IMO, is Marktext. It's basically Notepad for markdown -- no file manager, no special features on top of the markdown syntax, etc. Beyond that you start getting into what features you want on top, at which point you really do just have to test them out for your use case.
As far as options go, you have basically two options as far as systems go:
The other wierd variable is that some apps are literally just a WYSIWYG markdown editor (Marktext, etc.), whereas most of them are markdown editors with Other Stuff On Top™ (Obsidian, Zettlr, LogSeq, etc.). Not all apps implement the same flavor of markdown (which can be maddening, but you can use pandoc to change markdown flavor), but if you rely on a specific app's special flavor of garnish on top of markdown, it becomes harder to switch to another app in the future if you prefer its functionality or UI. Just something to keep in mind.
For me personally, one of the make or break traits is a good table creator. Making tables by hand in Markdown is a maddening, so having a GUI way to do it makes a huge difference if you end up needing to make a lot of tables. That is really hard to find because it is hard to automate Markdown table formatting in a foolproof way. As far as I know, the table plugin in Obsidian is the best way to do that by far at the moment. The Zettlr devs are working hard on rewriting theirs from scratch to be way more robust, but that is WIP.
tl;dr Just pick a Markdown editor, and you can shop from there as long as they store their files in a simple folder.