Obsidian – a cross platform app to help you create a knowledge base with Markdown files

I’ve been really enjoying obsidian.md:

It is very snappy (even though it is based on Electron). I love that it is all local by default with no required login or sync (and you can use your own syncing solution). But it also has a good business model attached (it’s free for personal use, but if you’re getting paid for any of the notes that you keep in it then you need to pay for yearly license). Works great on Linux too.

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Nice find Jason!! Just downloaded it and renamed all the .txt files to .md in my notes folder :nerd:

I usually use Apple Notes for notes, however they’re synced in the cloud (handy if you want to pick up working on something on your phone) but I try to avoid using it for anything sensitive, such as server notes - so Obsidian looks like it could be really nice for that!

Obsidian does try to make two connections to the web on start up, if you disable check for updates it seems to stop (I’d prevent it anyway via LittleSnitch but it’s worth knowing if you don’t use LittleSnitch).

I wonder if we should split posts like this into individual threads so that they can trend in our lists btw? This is just the sort of thing Devtalk is aiming to help with - make it easy for people to see what’s hot/trending :smiley:

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Cool, I’m glad that you like it. I feel like it deserves more visibility than I’ve seen it get so far.

Yeah that’s good to point out. I have noticed that it checks for updates rather frequently, more than on each startup or day. Maybe every 30 minutes (but I’d have to measure it before being able to say for sure).

That’s fine by me :smile:

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Done :nerd_face:

Chrome is the same - and since I only use it for dev/testing I also have LittleSnitch set for it to ask for permission to access the web after each start-up.

Wonder if we need a dedicated section just for apps? Let’s see how things go for a while first perhaps…

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Pretty interesting find. I am setting up Syncthing today (on 3 machines! and I’ll do 2 more in the next days) and I’ll install this and put my notes in a folder dedicated for notes. Thanks!

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It’s a pity that is Electron based, because that type of apps don’t get into my computer… You know it’s javascript based, and that ecosystems it’s just not secure to trust in. I try to avoid it as a plague :sunglasses:

But looks really cool.

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If you can isolate it via something like LittleSnitch (or AppArmor, SELinux, Docker etc.) then it should be safe. But yeah I hear you. I don’t quite like the idea of Electron apps and will research a few other options before deciding to trust this one.

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Also in recent versions of macOS you have to give apps permissions to access files and these can be down to folders like your desktop or documents :smiley:

Yep. It’s annoying to do it but I appreciate the peace of mind.

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There’s OpenSnitch for Linux too :smiley:

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I am using Docker when I need. I dockerized VSCODE, that is an Electron app, but not using it nowadays(too slow).

So i guess if I decided to use this one I will need to dockerize it too. They have it as a snap package in Ubuntu, but once it needs to access the filesystem it breaks the sandbox it was supposed to run in.

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This latest OS Catalina is calling home for every executable you run in your MAC, and considering some as an attack, when they aren’t. It’s so broken this idea/implementation.

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I’ve only run into issues once, but wasn’t sure whether it was to do with this new feature (a simple restart solved it though).

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Try to read macOS Catalina Slow by Design to see if you recognize any of that behavior in your experience.

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In Apple’s eyes their OS must be end-user-friendly. How would you try and enforce people don’t get ransomware when they are on the level of your average grandma?

For the record, Microsoft did a lot of questionable such decisions in the past (and many people aren’t okay with what they did, to this day), again to protect the average clueless person.

We as techies can act all smug and intelligent – “won’t happen to me, I know what I am doing” – but most people seriously have no clue.

…Although I’d appreciate if MS and Apple actually gave you a choice to opt out – but I know such news would make the rounds in many forums and people will just learn to opt out immediately after they install the OS so then the measures won’t be worth anything.

I don’t approve of what they are doing but do recognize that they must address not only technical users. And the rest of us, if we get too unhappy, can always go to Linux.

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I discovered Foam that looks kind of the same concept?

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Glad you’re happy with it, but I think I’ll stick with GNU Emacs and Org Mode. :slight_smile:

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So, someone tried to use notion? I saw a couple of people on the internet talked about it.

I saw has a few obsidian plugins to pushed you notes to your GitHub repository. And they launched the mobile version.

But I missed the web interface on obsidian, and only available to pro accounts.

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There’s a thread about it here Herminio:

:+1:

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Thank you, Aston! :purple_heart:

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