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 ?
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.
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
As a proton user I am keeping my eye on this and hopeing I will get access to this.
Same.
+1 for StandardNotes. It’s been a wonderful product.
How about Notesnook? https://notesnook.com
Open source and end to end encrypted
This is what I landed on, really happy with it. Sync super fast, keeps adding features, clean UI, great WYSIWYG rich text, and dead simple imports. Plus they regularly do discounts, so even the low cost gets lower. Way better than the headache of SN or whatever else is out there
Joplin is pretty good or organizing notes.
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 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.
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
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?
As for a generic notes platform my favorite is crypt.ee
It’s paid but they give you 100mb “free forever”, which is more than enough for a whole lot of text-based notes.
Best part is it works like Google docs where there is an offline cache so you don’t have to sit there and stare at it for 10 seconds waiting for it to decrypt.
They’re centered in Estonia.
As for hand-written notes, I like RNote but don’t really use it much, as I can’t get my Wacom or Lenovo or MS pens to work on Linux. But there’s nothing that comes close to OneNote in that regard.
Thank you I will have to check it out as I am using only office for my google doc replament.
That’s fine as well, just be sure to keep your documents backed up. I keep some presentations and spreadsheets on LibreOffice/Nextcloud.
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.
Hit the selfhosted community, this is an on-going conversation there with pretty much every note taking app being discussed.
As an aside, while OneNote is proprietary, if you use the full app it doesn’t require OneDrive. If you only use it on a PC, it can sync locally with other PCs - I’ve used it this way for 15 years.
Nextcloud notes if you have a Nextcloud instance
OrgNote. The project is still quite raw but the developer works hard and the overall idea and philosophy behind the project is perfect for me. Fully compatible with emacs org-roam, most probably compatible with logseq. There is a “fully managed” free version with PGP support or an option for a self-hosted server.
Project: https://github.com/Artawower/orgnote Manifesto: https://github.com/Artawower/orgnote/wiki#manifesto
I will look into this is the relates to org mode?
Look into a static website built with Hugo. You’ll be creating pages in markdown like obsidian. You can host it locally so there’s no privacy concerns.
If you want it externally facing then there are some options but you’ll need to find a site to host your static website and who you’re comfortable with their privacy policy.
