I am looking for an alternative for OneNote for Linux. A clone would be perfect, the interface of it and the ability to paste pictures into a very wide notes field is great. Please help me!
Joplin also has a great web-clipper through a companion addon in Firefox (and I assume also Chromium)
Joplin is great in many ways, and I do use it to some degree, but there's a few things that irks me.
Notes and attachments being stored in a database and referenced by a cryptic UID instead of plain files with human readable names makes integration with other apps impossible. And it's bad for data portability
On Android I've never been able to get it to background sync. I need to keep Joplin in the foreground. The second I switch to another app it stops syncing
On sync conflicts it'll just use the newest note as master and overwrite older changes. Luckily if you realise it happened you can use the history feature to get back lost changes. Typical scenario for me is to add much more stuff to a shopping list while on desktop. 30minutes later open the app on Android while shopping to tick off an item. Realize all the recently added items from desktop are gone to the ether (stored in history on the desktop and other synced devices)
Hopefully these sync issues are some rare bug for me. I've tried all the usual "battery saving" tricks in android, but still Joplin will not background sync. Other apps like DavX5 sync fine. Are anybody else here having luck with Joplin on mobile?
I believe you can export joplin notebooks in several different widely compatible file types. So you have full portability, although perhaps not full interoperability (I use it in an encrypted form anyway so I couldn't integrate any other apps).
Sync conflicts send the replaced version to a dedicated conflicts notebook, in my experience.
As far as I know it's a known limitation. Joplin just does not have background sync. It's ok for my use case but the initial sync can take a long time depending on your database size. Other than that, I'm happy with Joplin.
I had to stop using it when it nuked one of my notebooks due to a conflict. I'm still not sure exactly what caused it; but I had to go into the DB, reassign the pages that were not completely deleted (orphaned?) to a new notebook, and cry about the few that weren't recoverable.
Check out Obsidian! The canvas feature is very similar to onenote snd obsidian in general is the best notwtaking app/ personal knowledge management system in existence
Obsidian is what I use mostly, it syncs great with syncthing across all my devices. It doesn't have drawing support, so whenever I need to doodle something I end up in samsung notes again.
You can, but there is no form of exporting your handwritten notes. There's also sort of a tendency to "bend" what you've just written a bit after you lift your stylus. Like it's vectorizing and slightly correcting the path you just drew.
I have had moderate success using the built-in Scribble feature to convey my handwriting into text in the main editor. It's not super great but is serviceable. It's real opinionated about when and where new paragraphs should appear.
You can export excalidraw files as images or svgs. My main issue has been subpar support for Samsung pens, which is in part due to Samsung requiring an SDK to detect button presses or gestures... which means hitting the toolbar button to erase stuff
It tends freeze and mess up your writing when it autosaves. Not much of an issue if you set it to every 5 minutes, but annoying at the 15 second default.
Lastly, large drawings have performance issues. A few "pages" of notes and you can start to see the renderer struggle to track your pen correctly.
Tbh I'm probably just going to use another app and export images into my obsidian repo.
Ah, if Obsidian would've supported hand written notes using a stylus or something, I would've switched instantly. It's sad cause I don't want to keep using Samsung Notes tbh, but it feels like my best option so far.
@Stronk +1 for Obsidian! I love it. It's definitely different than OneNote. Notion may actually be a better fit for you, but I encourage everyone to check out Obsidian just to see if it's for you! Excellent software.
For my needs, Joplin was a good open source alternative.
Between the two I went with Obsidian because, while the apps are closed-source, the data is accessible. All your notes are just stored in plaintext (with markdown) as simple files in a directory structure.
Joplin, in contrast, uses a SQLite database which adds a layer of complexity.
Yep, Joplin is great too, that's what I use currently! I also like that it has built-in syncing with nextcloud and dropbox; as far as I know, obsidian only has their own paid-for syncing (unless you sync externally like the person below using syncthing)
This was one of the main selling features for me (before I tried it and experienced all the other killer features). I've experienced a bad case of vendor-lock before where it was hell to export my data. So having it all available in plain text at all times is really reassuring.
It's good for creating interconnected articles on your desktop. No mobile version though, so it's more of a knowledge base that a notes app.
Attachments and links to external files work beautifully. WYSIWYG editor, all articles stores as plain text files with zim wiki syntax, attachments are plain files in folders
Technically OneNote online in office 365 is also an option
I'm using it both for notes at work (software development) as well as a separate graph for my own thoughts, ideas, todos, pretty much everything. Using Syncthing to sync my graphs between devices works pretty well, though it's had a bit of a learning curve in getting it set up.
Oh same, I use Google keep for personal organisation and one note for actual note taking on my tablet. Google keep has an unofficial API that you can use to script it. I wish there was an open source alternative to it though tbf. I honestly don't understand where Google derives profit from it is it's just short incongruous scraps of text
I switched to OneNote a few years ago and was going crazy trying to find a bunch of notes I took .. turns out they were all in Keep happily noting away.
Keep was great but I find the OneNote structure and flexibility a bit more useful.
I dunno if this is weird or what but personally I can't stand markdown editors. It's 2023 and Microsoft Word is a fairly polished thing that I expect replicated in some way in my note taking app.
Currently I'm using Notion and it's pretty nice. Free for students too which is great.
I was using Wiki.js which was nice but a bit clunky and I ran into a few showstopper bugs that I couldn't bother fixing.
Different strokes for different folks, but I wish markdown was in everything. I love the simplicity of it and how easy it is to bold, italicize, make a header, etc. while typing. I'll take markdown over docs or word any day of the week.
@Maxcoffee that's understandable. My boss also hates Markdown. It's not for everyone. I like how lightweight it is, how many things support it, the inline formatting, portability, etc.
Like I said though, it's definitely not for everyone.
My biggest pet peeves is partial support for markdown.
Big fan of Obsidian. Especially for written notes. If you are working with a lot of images I'd give its canvas feature a try. I'm not using it personally, but I think it might fit the bill.
I dont use canvas, but I deal with plenty of images and screenshots. I usually just have a topic top level folder that contains notes and a nested media folder that I store the images in and link to them
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