Hey all, I’m a Linux baby and just discovered all my Onenote notes for DnD aren’t transferable to my new machine 🙃
I’ve seen a few alternatives, specifically Joplin, mentioned, but what I’m looking for is an editor that lets me move notes all around or type in random places like Onenote. I found Spiral, but it’s not my favorite, though it does have what I need so far, if at a very bare and basic level.
Can anyone recommend anything with the ‘type anywhere’ functionality? I’m not even wholly invested in it being FOSS, but this seemed like the best place to ask. Thanks y’all
Not FOSS but I see so many YouTubers that DM talk about Obsidian for notes. I use it and love it myself, just not for DnD stuff.
Logseq and Joplin are FOSS and are often brought up. Joplins android app is garbage, if that matters to you.
Acreom isn’t FOSS yet, but it’s on the roadmap and I liked that one.
Notesnook is FOSS but has some features behind a paywall that might be deal breakers for some folks.
It doesn’t look like any of those have the basic feature of placing things where you want inside a page like onenote does.
My big takeaway from this thread is that, wow, people actually use that feature. I use OneNote at work, and I absolutely loathe that if I click a bit too low, I end up outside my note.
It’s basically the main feature of onenote that I use, being able to make technical notes and tables about circuits or cabling that I’m designing and drag them around to arrange it all is really nice.
Ah, I see. I think. I’m mostly troubleshooting through logs, packet captures, configurations, etc.
Yeah, that’s my #1 reason to not use it. I’ve got a long list of reasons to dislike OneNote, but that’s the big one.
Unfortunately I deal with sensitive data in my notes, so I’m restricted. Can’t even sync my notebook off my local SSD.
Logseq has a “whiteboard” feature which is the closest I’ve seen.
OneNote has been the only tool Ive failed to find a close alternative to, which is a shame because I hate the new simplified versions of OneNote.
I will say though, the linking available on Obsidian and Logseq is fantastic for d&d notes and worth ditching OneNote anyway (for me it was at least).
I haven’t used One Note but Obsidian lets you make canvases which you can freely place things on, kind of like a cork board.
Obsidian does… sorta. They call it “canvas”. But I think it’s more for visually connecting notes to other notes, not to connect different things within a given note.
I’m not sure what OneNote’s feature does, but in Logseq you can make a whiteboard and embed other pages and text boxes.
You can use the excalidraw plugin maybe? I guess I’m not understanding the placement work flow you’re speaking of. All the options I listed are free so you can download and try them. Big feature of Obsidian is the plugin marketplace. But hey, if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work.
Basically in onenote you can drag any box of text, table, image, excel table, pdf embed, and so on and place it anywhere you want on the page. It’s really nice for making notes because you can make a quick note in a box and just drag it around to arrange things.
Ah, ok. Thanks for the explanation. I was wildly off in my visualization of how you were using it. The other poster in this thread is right, the Canvas function can do a lot of that. You’d have to try it to see if it actually fits your use case. Regarding the others mentioned, I’m not sure any of them can do it. But Obsidian canvas or you could also play with the Excalidraw plugin. Or just test it separately here and imagine that functionality within your notes app, that’s what the plug in does.
Yeah I’ve tried Obsidian but it just has too much going on and feels very cluttered, but doesn’t have features like automatic sync between devices.
Isn’t that funny how different our experiences are? I liked Obsidian because it felt less cluttered than some of the others. But that might be the theme and fonts I set up, i’m not sure. I will agree with the sync. I’m fine paying for a service like that, but $8/mo paid annually is too much. I did end up paying for a year to see if it was worth it. And while it’s flawless and fast, I can’t justify that continued cost. Once my year is up I’ll look at syncthing or the CouchDB plugin sync to see if that does what I want and performs well. Shouldn’t be too hard as it’s literally just folders full of plain text files…
Yeah we can have very different ideas of what works for us haha.
Like I consider markdown editors cluttered and complex, because there’s not a simple toolbar up top to format everything in rich text. It feels like a one step forward, 2 steps back kind of deal to me.
To be fair to Obsidian, the default view is like three panes making it look busy, but you can toggle off both the left and right sidebar, leaving just the edit view which can be switched between edit and reading modes. Even the various toolbar icons need not be visible, and you could just use shortcuts to call them.
I use Syncthing to sync my Obsidian notes between desktop, server, Android, iPad, and Android tablet - it happens seamlessly in the background complete with version control.
With syncthing how well does obsidian handle edits on 2 devices at nearly the same time? Like if I make some edits on my phone while looking at a project and then before syncthing has synced the files, paste some images in on my desktop, does it handle that well?
I’m planning on switching from Joplin to Logseq
based on the stalled development and lack of support for mods on Joplin it seems like Logseq is the best path forward to getting a FOSS version of Obsidian and Onenote
Being platform agnostic was important to me, which is what lead me to Obsidian in the first place. Joplin stores the markdown files in a SQL db that requires additional steps to export or convert. I believe Logseq also does flat Markdown like Obsidian, but it just didn’t click with me for some reason.
Good luck, people are just going to recommend bare bones note apps that use markdown or something and don’t allow placing things where you want them.
I’ve looked and looked and nothing comes close to Onenote.
Obsidian effectively let’s you do it through window panes. Literally lay out any content in any fashion. There are trade-offs but the graph view makes up for a good portion I think.
Obsidian supports canvases now, which seems very much like OneNote.
I wouldn’t say barebones, but you’re right in there is no direct alternative to OneNote I have ever found. It remains the product I haven’t been able to directly replace.
A lot of the products people will suggest are very feature rich, just not all the same features as OneNote. For me, the ability to draw on the page freestyle with a stylus is what I love about OneNote. So easy to annotate notes. But linking and plugins are things others have which I love that OneNote lacks.
Obsidian is my favourite. It’s not FOSS, but it is totally plaintext-based, which is close to just as good.
+1 for logseq and its whiteboard. It’s the reason I switched. +It’s blocks(notes/paragraphs) can be reordeded. You can pay for sync between your phone and PC. But you can use sync thing which is free and once you set it up it’s pretty much set and forget. I tried obsidian and anytype, but logseq just clicked for me.
+You can write with a stylus on the whiteboard if that’s your thing.
This is what I came here to recommend. Logseq is amaze balls and it’s completely free and libre unless you want to donate to the project to use their built in sync.
I pay for it since I use it on 5 devices, 2 of which I can’t install things on. Logseq doesn’t need Admin rights to install since it’s always a portable app, but syncing is complicated without Admin rights on a device.
Plus, it’s a small team with an ethical business model building this product in beta; I’d probably donate anyway to help ensure it keeps getting development.
Maybe check out xournal++, has the type anywhere functionality
This is the answer. Joplin and obsidian are excellent for markdown notes, but theyr arent suitable for “jot whatever, anywhere”.
also has pressure sensitive pen support
I’m still using Obsidian (free but not FOSS) mainly because of the wealth of plugins. QOwnNotes was another good option I used before. I really liked Logseq, but the deal-breaker for me was its approach to primarily being an outliner - and that modified all the paragraphs of my markdown notes as they become referenced blocks (otherwise it is great). I like to stick to standard markdown for portability to any future app.
If you’re used to the OneNote desktop, try OneNote web.
I maintain my RPG groups’ notebooks and have stuck with OneNote throughout - especially because it’s easy to share access through the web application.
I really really liked this guy’s video on note taking apps
https://youtu.be/XRpHIa-2XCE?si=eUMH1T7eezu_6v-V
It slowly spirals completely off the rails, in a great way
Maybe note taking isn’t the best direction. Moving stuff around is more design… Maybe something like draw.io charts? Or even one of the slide apps?
Notesnook
Go for the pain tier (even though it’s FOSS) 100% worth it.
Think I might skip the pain tier 😆
Ahh autocorrect 🤦
You can still use OneNote online or mobile.
I wasn’t able to find anything even close so I just keep using One Note https://onenote.com/
Works without any issues in Firefox.
I use nextcloud notes. They are .md and work wonderfully imo. You can either edit them through nc or through the editor on linux (or vs code on windows). Tried obsidian, never got into it and its not open source.
Doesn’t allow moving sections around inside a note.
I‘m not sure I understand what you mean. If I wanted to move a section I would cut and paste it. What alternative don’t I know about?
You can drag the sections anywhere on the page, beside another one, above to the right, etc. So you can write some text, make a table and place that to the right of the text. Or place an image anywhere.
Cut and paste only works in a linear fashion, up or down.
Ok, got it. Thats neat.
As someone who is writing with a pen I use “write”. I think you can also type on a keyboard but moving things around as you want is definitely possible.
I used to use BasKet (a KDE program) for this, don’t know if it is still alive.
