Hey Privacy people,
I am looking for a OneNote alternative for all my campaign notes for my tabletop RPGs. I was looking at Obsidian.md as an option and wondering what their data collection is like?
Fot all my personal and private notes I use standard notes but the free version is not quite roboist enougj. I can’t afford to pay premium any time soon I need a free option I can use.
Any suggestions ?
Don’t count standard notes out just yet!
They offer discounted plans upon request!
https://standardnotes.com/help/56/what-if-i-can-t-afford-the-price-of-extended
Joplin is pretty good or organizing notes.
I tried Joplin but the layout confuses me. I don’t get why there is two windows one for text and one for code ?
You can switch to the WYSIWYG Editor in the settings
It’s a Markdown editor. You write markdown in one, and preview in the other. Or, you can just turn the preview off.
Agree, and I switched over a couple of years ago. Only yesterday learned about Mermaid graphs and was impressed that Joplin does them natively.
I had almost the same question. So let me quickly share what I came up with.
I have a ton of notes in different areas. By I was not happy with the way Obsidian worked – synchronization specifically. I didn’t want to pay for it. So I got on a quest for the perfect note-taking system. It had to be:
- Markdown-first. Because we all know why;
- Interoperable. That is as few additional flavors and things added as possible;
- Portable. Such that I could open my Notes folder in any app;
- Synchronization. With as few additional crutches as possible.
Main text editor
Desktop. I use !helix@programming.dev. It has marksman LSP (meaning markdown support out of the box). This is how I know no other app is involved into writing process (no telemetry, etc). Also zero task switching this way. I still use !obsidianmd@lemmy.world from time to time. I don’t use Logseq because it has opinionated file structure, which doesn’t meet my interoperability need. Also, I don’t always need an outliner. You can turn this feature in Obsidian, but you can’t turn it off in Logseq.
Mobile. I use the simplest markdown-capable apps for iOS and Android. Also, don’t forget Cryptomator.
Synch. For the most part I use !syncthing@lemmy.ml to sync all the notes. Such that they are not uploaded into any cloud storage. I don’t use iCloud, or rather almost never use it.
As for your question. Obsidian is a pretty good choice because of its extensibility, portability, and interface. Although it easy to get lost in the plugin rabbit hole. Its desktop and mobile (if you go for it) privacy policy is pretty solid. Client-first markdown app – nothing more and nothing else.
Lastly, there is this idea that one needs to sync notes via some cloud. Not true. You should consider your threat model first. Cloud sync is not must. In some cases, Syncthing is more than enough, is more private, and might be a more secure option (as it reduces your surface of attack to some extent).
I guess that’s all
This is the same setup I’m running, I can highly recommend it.
Plain text files.
Eidos – Offline alternative to Notion
Nextcloud notes if you have a Nextcloud instance
logseq
Unless you need specific functionality that silver bullet doesn’t provide, i’d start there. It’s very similar to logseq, but doesn’t have a bunch of questionable design choices based around a paid sync monetization scheme. Silverbullet is self hosted and has a web app. Logseq is a webapp, packaged for Android and desktop, but only allowed file access for your data so you can’t self host sync… Because they charge for that. It’s a mess.
I just use syncthing with logseq and it works fine…
I do too. My point is there’s already a web app you can self host, but you can’t store your data on your server. The web app uses the local file access framework, which is just dumb. There’s no reason for this except to be able to monetize sync, and that’s also dumb because as you said, sync thing works fine. But they’re making a bad choice to explicitly remove functionality, and that doesn’t make me feel confident about the future of the project.
For this exact reason I switched to Trilium, I can acces on all my devices. I’m very expectant of the new fork Trilium Next.
I don’t know, they have to monetise somehow. Paying for the convenience of sync seems like a valid path especially given there’s fully functional alternative syncs available for free.
I don’t disagree. My problem is not with their choice of monetizing sync. My problem is with their choice to package a web app for Android and desktop, provide that same web app for self hosting, but not allow you to store the data in the web app. In the discussions on GitHub they claim it’s just something they can’t tackle right now, or whatever. No. It’s functionality that was specifically stripped because that’s how every other self hosted web app works and the local storage framework they use is obviously bolted on and not well supported by browsers. In other words, they’re manufacturing problems to sell you a solution. And again, that’s their decision to make. It just doesn’t seem like they make good decisions, and we’re talking about an app you put a lot of work and data into.
As they are closed source no one can tell you their true privacy policy. It seems better than average from what I’ve read but you never know…
Personally I use logseq and sync the files via a Nextcloud instance. I can only recommend it, although I also recommend spending an hour to learn the tagging and linking logic and reading through their guide on what’s possible. I still only leverage a minor part of the potential myself.
One that is closer to onenote (I think, never used onenote) is Joplin.
Thanks for the advice
Obsidian is pretty good, it shouldn’t collect any data by default. But you can also check out Logseq, an open source Obsidian alternative.
I’ve never seen anything fishy from them, many people trust them for their work notes.
It’s all .md files you own.
Proton just bought Standard Notes, so keep an eye out for changes there. Otherwise, I use Obsidian but I have it sync to my home server so I can access the same data from my phone and computer.
+1 for StandardNotes. It’s been a wonderful product.
As a proton user I am keeping my eye on this and hopeing I will get access to this.
Same.
As long as it stays FOSS, you don’t need to worry. You can even self-host Standard Notes if you don’t trust their cloud service: https://standardnotes.com/help/self-hosting/getting-started
I am a fan of Standard Notes, but crypt.ee is also solid as far as I know.
I will look into crypt.we thanks.
Obsidian, but I’m not competent to comment regarding their privacy. You can air gap the install and have it on an isolated machine.
It’s hella customizable, and there is broad support specifically for using it with TTRPGs.
On linux for the Obsidian Flatpak, you can deny it having internet and filesystem permissions using Flatseal.
Oh perfect I am very new to Linux so didn’t even really know about flatseal is there any guides or videos how to use flatseal?
For taking campaign notes, bookstack might be an option. It is specifically organized in a book, chapter, page hierarchy.
I also use it for my journal and to do list just because I already used it. Probably not as full featured as obsidian though
Logseq or Orgzly Revived
Have you looked at World Anvil? It’s been a long time and I don’t remember what the free vs. paid tier comparisons were, but I thought it was pretty slick.
Edit: Didn’t realise the community I’m in. I have no idea the privacy state of World Anvil but I’ll edit if I come across it.
I am unsure of their privacy but I find their site a bit too clunky.
