this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2023
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Do you know any open source alternatives to Notion? I found a few FOSS apps, but they all lack most of Notion features

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[–] PrecisePangolin@lemmy.ml 15 points 1 year ago

Possibly Logseq fits your purposes.

[–] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 12 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It's not FOSS, but Obsidian operates on a folder of plain markdown files, so it's at least easy to try.

[–] DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

IMO a folder of markdown files is the way. Interoperable with so many things.

[–] whysofurious@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 year ago

Totally agree. I’m moving away from Obsidian but I’ll never be thankful enough to that software for getting me used to local .md files. I find it just way way better than any other solution.

[–] hallettj 3 points 1 year ago

This is what I use. Or if you don't need image/PDF embedding or mobile support then VimWiki is a similar solution that is FOSS.

[–] xtapa@feddit.de 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But Foam is. It's roughly the same as obsidian and it really helps structure my work.

[–] whysofurious@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I never manage to get into foam coming from Obsidian, possibly because I use VSCode/Codium for coding, so it’s hard for my brain to adapt and appreciate all the pkm things (same reason Dendron didn’t stick either). Plus I’ll admit I’m getting used to the live preview thing. Sorry if I ask, do you use it for note taking or general work management?

[–] xtapa@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I am using it as both. I try to adapt Zettelkasten with todos, inbox and a personal knowledgebase, but also try to manage my Meeting notes, Project information etc. I loved the idea of Obsidian, but wanted to use FOSS stuff, but damn, Obsidian is great and I always feel a little annoyed by Foam+VS Code because it constantly fucks up my tabs layout, closes the graph and, coming from Notion too, is not as fluent.

@SurpriseCandid8978@lemmy.ca mentioned Anytype and I tried it this morning, but I cannot wrap my head around how to properly implement Zettelkasten and something like a folder structure so I think I'll drop it, even though I was really interestet.

A coworker gave me a tour of Obisian just now and the features it has make it hard to avoid.

[–] whysofurious@sopuli.xyz 1 points 11 months ago

Coming back super later to this, and I agree with your sentiment. Thanks for explaining :) I tried Anytype but the fact that pages are not plain text files is bothering me (I think obsidian kind of spolied me). If you settle on obsidian, for project management in obsidian I tweaked this https://github.com/duoani/obsidian-gtd (not my repo, the js scripts need a small update iirc), which was what I was looking for in a project management system.

I am still waiting for https://silverbullet.md to mature a little bit more and I’ll try to switch to it (foss+obsidian like many useful features as core plugins)

[–] Wander@yiffit.net 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Joplin I think, or Trillium but that one could be less user friendly.

[–] Fitik@fedia.io 3 points 1 year ago

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll check it out!

[–] SurpriseCandid8978@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)
[–] witchergeraltofrivia@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

This looks really nice. Thanks!

[–] SurpriseCandid8978@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Report back if you get a chance to try it. I find the learning curve and is struggling to get a hang of it but I want to get a hang of it lol

[–] witchergeraltofrivia@lemm.ee 2 points 10 months ago

It's bit hard to wrap my head around it. I think I'll give joplin a try, if that doesn't work out then maybe I'll give anytype another go.

[–] xtapa@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago

I tried it and somehow I cannot wrap my head around how this works. My head wants folder structure.

[–] grooving@lemmy.studio 1 points 1 year ago

I tried anytype and moved to logseq because in anytype I couldn't reorder blocks.

[–] whysofurious@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

https://github.com/AppFlowy-IO/AppFlowy is built to be an alternative to Notion. They jumped on the AI wagon as well and their website is more corporate-like that I remembered, but you might give it a shot :)

[–] anzo@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

There's affine.pro too which seems similar

[–] kherge 2 points 1 year ago

I have been looking for a while now. The closest I have ever been was Anytype, but it is not as user friendly or refined as Notion because it is still in active development.

[–] edumerco@social.coop 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

@Fitik
2 possible paths forward:

+ Dokuwiki with some plugins for templates and lists and tables. On a web server.

+ Org-mode and Org-roam (a looot more than Notion). Local.

Maybe TidlyWiki, but I don't know it personally.

How much do you need real-time collaboration?
:)

[–] Fitik@fedia.io 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I don't need real time collaboration at all, but I would prefer synchronization between my devices

Thanks for suggestions!

[–] edumerco@social.coop 1 points 3 months ago

@Fitik
Then both mentioned options could work. They are different in the balance between simplicity (#dokuwiki is easier) and power (#org-mode has #emacs behind).
Both have huge ecosystems, great documentation, vibrant communities and are rock solid. Dokuwiki is accessible on a website (in the net or in your machine) and org-mode mostly on your machine but it is super easy to replicate or export for use in many devices.
I"ll happily expand if you choose any of those, :)