I’ve no problem with using LibreOffice for most of my document needs, but i haven’t found a good substitute for microsoft’s OneNote yet. I mainly use it to plan my RPG games and it helps a lot. What alternatives are there for organizing notes on linux, with similar features to those that OneNote provides?
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I am surprised that no one has mentioned Rnote yet.
It is my favourite newly-created program for Linux. It is a relatively new app which supports annotating files and taking handwritten notes. You can import PDFs, set the page size to infinite or a fixed size (something OneNote can’t do), adjust the background to display grids or lines or dots or nothing with any spacing you like, input text with your keyboard, … It is available on Flathub for easy installation.
The only major downside is the following: Disclaimer: The file format is still unstable. It might change and break compatibility between versions.
For text-based notes I use Obsidian.
It isn’t open source, but it writes standard markdown files to disk, so I can switch programs whenever I like and I am not locked into the Obsidian ecosystem with my notes. That was the main reason why I decided against using Joplin, especially after my experience with converting recipes from Nextcloud Cookbook to markdown …
In general I am always trying to find a simple file-based solution for whatever I need to do. I want to be able to sync it with Syncthing instead of something fancier that requires a centralised web server or even relies on a cloud service.
Did you know that you can even sync your note using git and thus a git remote server for syncing? It even works with iOS 😃
Synching works but if you have a server, Obsidian live sync is fantastic and seamless.
Actually that’s one of the main reasons I use Syncthing: It doesn’t need a server, as it is a peer-to-peer architecture. Unlike a centralised solution (cloud storage, Nextcloud, etc.) devices sync directly with each other. If they are on the same local network, you get to enjoy the full bandwidth of your local network. If they need to sync over a long distance over the internet, you are limited by the upload and download speeds of your internet provider, just like with centralised storage.
I have a server that serves as an introducer, so I don’t have to connect each device with every other device manually. But the server doesn’t need to be available once all devices are connected with each other.
Syncing continues to work without it for as long as I don’t reinstall any of the other devices. And even if I’d reinstall a device, I could delegate any other device to be the introducer or connect the devices manually with each other. It really is quite robust and fail-safe.
Amkng all note taking apps, FOSS or not, online and offline, Obsidian still holds the top spot unmatched. I don’t even dislike to admit it anymore. It’s just that good and really has almost everything.
You might want to explain the features of OneNote, particularly the exact ones that you want. I get the impression that most people don’t know its organization structure.
My short input: it’s not just note taking. It’s has a tiered level of organization for the notes to categorize and quickly move about. The example I read was like it’s set up like you have multiple binders, with dividers in each, and pages (notes) within those. The page is very open ended, you can add text boxes in any spot, mixed with pics in any spot.
Your input is very accurate. Being able to write notes freely anywhere on the page, draw on it, attach images, links, etc is a big part of it, but one of the most important things to me is organizing different pages into dividers/binders like you said.
I set up various sections for quests, locations, npcs, etc, for my rpg worlds, and need it to be well organized and be able to link to different sections within the same binder. I also like to color code everything.
You should check out Affine.pro then. It’s FOSS and you can draw anywhere, it’s one of their selling points.
Thank you.
We are encouraged to use the Microsoft office suite if tools at work, and I still haven’t figured out how to use OneNote to improve my life.
I use onenote at work for all my notes. tabs and individual pages let me organize things so nothing is too long to scroll and find what I need. I can put text, screenshot, and hyperlink (to another part of one note or outside link), and a link to a pdf or excel file. I can add check boxes to whichever line items.
once I’ve got a nice set of notes, I can share either the entire notebook, the section, or just that page with the next person. or if they’re a bit of a luddite, I can print it out and maintain format (mostly). the most recent version broke emailing a page, but if you’re still running an older version of one note, it embeds it, with formatting, without being a pdf.
got something you need to paste in all the time? I’ve got one page where each text box is one copy/paste comment. clicking the header automatically selects all the text in just that box.
like OP, I tend to use one note at home for D&D, but if I can find something just as good I’m happy to try it. work leaves me with MS Office.
I looked at Joplin and Obsidian for the kind of notetaking I do and settled on Obsidian. To be honest, both have more features than I use. I like Obsidian because it’s based on Markdown, so you’re not tied to some oddball file format. But you should try them out and see which one fits your work style.
Joplin also uses markdown, and it has the advantage of being open source.
…in a database file. That and the awful android app had me look elsewhere. Too bad really, FOSS and self host options with it are great.
And can sync to webDAV
I recently settled on Obsidian too. It’s proprietary software, but the text files themselves are in simple markdown and readable in a text editor. Additionally, you can sync across multiple devices using their paid service (which works flawlessly for everything) or set up sync yourself for free if you know how to host a couchdb instance yourself (works perfectly for everything except iOS, apparently).
The plugin support was baked in from the start so it’s extremely flexible.
I wasn’t worried about it being proprietary until I saw the founder reasoning for not having the source be open under a nonpermissive licence.
https://obsidian.rocks/why-isnt-obsidian-open-source/
I decided to go with logseq because of it.
It also syncs with all my devices using my own servers, instead of needing to trust obsidian/logseq.
That’s fair, the privacy concerns are not ultimately addressable with a closed-source application. I can encrypt communication and the db itself since I am self-hosting it, but ultimately I’m using the obsidian app on desktop and mobile so I don’t know where the data is going unless I specifically manage it’s network usage etc which is a ton of extra work.
I haven’t actually started taking notes with obsidian yet, I just got it setup. But the plugin support is…massive. IDK.
You can also use SyncThing, works great.
Yes I probably should have implemented that, but the Obsidian plugin implementation (“Self-hosted Live sync”) appears to work almost shockingly well. I was amazed by how easy it was to setup . Setting up a couchdb instance took more time than getting sync going across all my devices, and couchdb wasn’t that hard either.
I think that’s the part I had a hard time w. The db setup. I’m only good at postgres and sqllite.
Thanks for the suggestions! I’ll see which one works best for me.
I use logseq and notesnook.
Setup Trilium and use the Firefox extension to save screenshots or the whole page to it automatically which I love.
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There’s a program called cherrytree that I think is very underrated. It’s probably not a 1:1 replacement for OneNote but I recommend checking it out in case it fulfills a similar but different need.
You might look at these relative newcomers to this category of app…with some caveats for why I haven’t switched from Obsidian.
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Acreom - Not open source yet, but planned. Flat markdown files like Obsidian and Logseq. Dealbreaker for me is that in order to use the app on Android, you have to sign in with Google, Apple, or Github and use their cloud for sync. I’m trying to convince the dev to allow their “local first” mantra to permeate all versions of the app regardless of platform. He is very receptive, so we’ll see. If they do, I can see myself switching to Acreom instead of continuing with Obsidian. But that’s the beauty of open file format, you can pack up and leave very easily!
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Notesnook - Is FOSS. But not self-hostable yet. That is on their roadmap. Potential dealbreaker is that it doesn’t support markdown, rather shortcuts that behave similar to markdown syntax. As a result of that and their E2EE, the file format is not as open as Obsidian and others that use simple .md files.
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Here’s an Obsidian RPG Video: https://youtube.com/search?q=obsidian+rpg
Joplin is very advanced
I want to like libre office, but every time I have tried to use it, it ended up crashing eventually
This came up a few days ago in another community, and it sounds like the poster may have actually had a similar use-case to your own.
Joplin self hosted on a NextCloud instance!
Only because self hosting is satisfying and fun. You can have your Joplin notes synced on OneDrive as well.
On the windows side of things (at my job) i dumped onenote for cherry tree. Its on portable apps website.
Not sure for linux. I run linux at home but only need one note- like programs at work.
+1 for Cherrytree, I can even recommend it on Linux. The tree structure makes it so much better to sort things than OneNote with the limited depth.
