These days I find myself making small notes on lots of things because I'm sick of forgetting. Eg: "Haven't used GIMP for 3 years, now how do I make a transparent background again?"
I've just been using simple text files (with VSCode for searching!) but it's getting a bit cumbersome and I'm pretty sure I'd be better off with some other system. Anyone have recommendations? Prefer FOSS.
Ta. Seems like I've been living under a rock in this department. I'll have a look. (See edit above - would love FOSS more than cloudless).
Yeah I can find the alternatives, just that I'm looking for recommendations from people that have used them. Wanna resist trying some specific thing if the overwhelming opinion is that it's gonna waste my time.
Better than evernote? I think i need access of 3 devices now (and dont want to pay of course).
But I need ability to web clipping (and later read it offline). For example during travel first I clip few websites with hotel wifi then read when outside hotel
TiddlyWiki was what I used to used back in highschool. This was before I had access to Office and OneNote.
It looks like the project still lives on and is Open source.
You can read about it on Hackaday
But nowadays I think Obsidian is probably more popular., it's a little more approachable since it uses markdown syntax.
Onenote is getting some AI love though and some people might find having an AI summarize your own content pretty useful.
I'm weirdly working on something like this as I have a large collection of .md files in my working directory which gets sync'd everywhere…
For now it builds a password protected html site with a markdown website generator and some glue code, and syncs to AWS S3.
I wish there was something I could easily install on my home server which I can VPN into from anywhere… but I haven't found any OSS projects that work out of the box (but plenty of SaaS companies who want me to pay ~$10 a month to keep a copy of my data on their servers)
For me,
$ cd ~/notes
$ vim how_to_use_gimp.md
$ git commit -a -m "Gimp stuff"
$ git push
grep is quite useful for searching, and git gets all the notes sync'ed to my devices with all the edit history as well.
Woah, hi Scotty! You're right, sometimes old tools are the best.
Problem for me is accessing via android/the web on my work computer. I don't want (or trust) externals with my personal wiki's… it's an easy problem (which has been solved many times over) -> But i've never seen a simple, comprehensive OSS stack that lets me run on my own hardware.
Good excuse to learn Rust!
Actually I use something like Termux to run a full chrooted alpine distro on my Android phone, and you can easily type away all the commands in a terminal!
@scotty: Unfortunately I need a stock-ish android phone… But your way does appeal to my inner developer…
@zigzagoonmemes: Termux runs on stock Android, no root required. My phone is an old OnePlus 6T with stock OxygenOS — runs perfectly fine.
@scotty: Woah - I figured it was still like the old days… I'll give it a shot, thanks for the education!
This is one of those places where it really helps to have your own domain name.
You don't even need a static IP, (even though it is nice to have your outside-facing traffic go through a VPS instead of directly to your home as an extra measure to limit your visibility)
Many registrars provide an API allowing you to alter your DNS records programatically.
This lets you set up a script that runs periodically (e.g. via cronjob) on your server every 30 minutes or whatever, that updates the DNS entry to point at your public IP.
You can then setup some arbitrary port to listen to the outside world and accept SSH / OpenSSL / Wireguard / etc encrypted tunnels.
Your remote device then just needs to connect to that domain+port using the typical standard public/private key pair based authentication you prefer.
Then you'll either forward the relevant ports over SSH or connect to the tunnel endpoint IP you set to within the RFC standard LAN-only address-space. (The addressing in the range 10.x.x.x are all reserved for local network under the IPv4 standards)
Your actual services such as Git, HTTP, FTP, SCP, etc. can all just connect through the tunnel and never have a single unencrypted byte access the outside world.
It takes a bit of learning to get it all set up but it's certainly possible to do.
Your site devs must love your commit notes :P
Nah. Just use git show — real devs just read diffs, since there ain't time for commit notes.
I mostly use FOSS too and this piece of software doesn't fit that category. However, the free version is more than sufficient for most people's needs…
Notion.
I use discord to organise my life now. Create a discord channel just for yourself (can invite spouse and kids). Create channels for the different categories of notes, I have like shopping list channel, to do list channel, media channel of things I'd like to watch / read, kids school info channel. Super handy.
If you are comfortable with Markdown, try Obsidian. It has clients for all major OS (including android/ios), have plugins etc. Could be synced over it's own cloud (requires subscription), or you can just sync with Google Drive / Dropbox etc - it's just a bunch of md files.
Workflowy and SimpleNote for me, as I prioritise having the same data from any device or web browser without having to muck around with apps (although I do have them installed) - though I mainly use it to jot down little reminders and things too, so just playing text is fine for me.
Thanks folks, went with obsidian, seems to do exactly what I want.
Do you have OneNote? That's quickly become the defacto note taking app for many people at work and being adapted for personal use. Very handy, available across multiple platforms incl mobile, lots of rich features and easy organisation.
You can also use it offline if do not want content in the cloud.