What you disliked about Logseq? Are you good at self-organizing (were you before)?
While the initial experience is super confusing and I barely knew what that tool is supposed to do, later on it turned out to be the first tool that helped me keep some structure in my notes.
I love note taking but I'm horrible at it, chaotic and inconsistent. Daily notes plus the way logseq easily links articles gave me some decent notes. I even left those to my colleagues when I switched jobs and even plain markdown files were useful for them.
Logseq is "Everything plus the kitchen sink" when compared to Obsidian out of the box.
For me, I already have a daily planning and project management tool, and it's called Pagico. What I needed is a note taking application. Simple, down to earth, knowledge base. A successor to Zim wiki, I may say.
That thing is Obsidian. I tried to resist to moving it for so long because it's closed source, but it creates value and extracts structure and knowledge from your Markdown files, locally and super-fast, without bogging you down.
Also, logseq's webpage is very ambiguous. Tons of promises, no screenshots, you enter the live demo, it looks like a simple web page.
In short, Logseq feels too big, feels too hard to start with, and demands too much at the first impression. If failed to get me, and I failed to get it.
In which way does Obsidian "create value and extract structure and knowledge from your Markdown files"?
I tried it a few months ago because of all the hype, and from a quick try I didn't see anything useful that my current choice (Joplin) didn't have, but from what you are saying, maybe I didn't try for long enough?
I like Joplin, one of its strong points being that it's open source, but I'd be willing to switch if an alternative really adds value.
> In which way does Obsidian "create value and extract structure and knowledge from your Markdown files"?
It's search is extremely fast, plus with a bit of metadata, you can pack tons of information into a standard markdown file.
Moreover, when you start to add more and more knowledge, you start to connect notes to each other, which creates a Zettelkasten-like connected notes web. I write gigantic notes generally, but even they have connections, and again the searching for linking is so instant, you can write at the speed of thought.
I have a simple tree note organization scheme, and Obsidian can handle it extremely well, plus files are open on the filesystem. I can unleash another tool on top of that file tree, if I want to edit or analyze them.
I still use Evernote for some personal notes, and Joplin is just the same thing, and its limitations on file/note organization is very limiting for my needs.
Lastly, Obsidian vaults are completely isolated from each other, so the vault which I manage my small digital garden is completely isolated from my work vault. They are on different places, sycned differently, can have different plugins, etc. This is a very nice feature.
TL;DR: Obsidian is a pure "knowledge/documentation" management tool and allows for creation at the speed of thought. It's unobtrusive and Markdown metadata is extremely powerful. Also leveraging internote-connections supercharges Obsidian.
I tried logseq and obsidian and I'd argue the opposite, obsidian does everything while logseq is good at structuring your text and querying it.
The thing i missed the most is the outline style, where every block can be queried and nested bloxks inherit tags from parent blocks. Huge for note taking
I think that's a fair take, and I believe everybody's brain works a little differently.
This is why I'm a big believer of horses for courses approach about everything in life. If logseq works better for you, more power to you. I believe and love huge text files with tons information, so Obsidian and similar tools works better for me.
Sorry I shouldn't have come through as "obsidian is worse", that's not the intent, my point was mostly about "obsidian does everything because it has plugins".
I do have a reason for avoiding obsidian, which is the one I outlined, but your case is totally legit AND a good reason for choosing obsidian over logseq.
The outline vs non-outline is really the big difference between the two. I'm not sure if it's possible to have both approaches in a single editor given the huge difference in behavior
Hey, I didn’t read your comment as “obsidian is worse”, but “logseq’s way of operation/thinking fits me better”.
Yes, Obsidian has tons of plugins, but I use exactly none of them. The features they add is immense, but I need none of them, because I just write tons of long text files, not dissimilar to old, long text files ubiquitous on the web in the early days (think https://computer.rip style writings, but as technical docs).
The difference between the two is very fundamental as you say, one has an internal database while the other runs on simple Markdown files with minimal extra data on top (except search and index Obsidian keeps internally per vault).
Again, there’s no hard feelings, just a hat tip to the diversity of our brains, way of thinking and creativity of people for devising these different ideas regarding knowledge management. :)
I have neither said it replicates ZK nor I use it as a ZK tool. It's wiki-like, yes, and ZK is not a simple "web of notes". However Obsidian's management of notes and links make it more advanced than a simple Wiki-Like application.
It's less linear than a Zim Wiki like desktop wiki, but more linear than a "cloud of floating notes" approach of TiddlyWiki.
I like Obsidian on the Desktop and not much on the phone where I like iA Writer. As I manage the files and synced, I can use anything to access the files. I can use iA Writer on the Mobile and still access my files, while I edit that on Obsidian on the Desktop. Sometimes, I just open the whole folder in Sublime Text and start editing it or use Draw/Excalidraw to work on something. Obsidian being the primary but I'm not limited.
My reasoning is to approach contents as data-first with tools on the top. Obsidian happens to be one such brilliant tool for now.
> In short, Logseq feels too big, feels too hard to start with, and demands too much at the first impression. If failed to get me, and I failed to get it.
This is interesting, because it wasn't my experience at all. I migrated from Roam to Logseq after I realized I didn't use enough of the fancier features to justify the price. Basically I open Logseq, take notes in my daily journal, and tag blocks so that I can easily pull them up by topic/person/etc later. That's all it took for me to get started, and also as far as I've felt the need to go. For better or worse I have no idea what other "kitchen sink" features it has.
I think, because the reason is what we want from our tools is different. I already use a much sophisticated tool for my tasks, and project planning (Pagico), and what I want is a bona fide desktop wiki which I want to store my technical research and howto docs (and share them in my digital garden).
This is what Obsidian is. If I wanted something to organize my tasks and other things, I'd take a much different route.
What I'm aiming to get is akin to these: [0] & [1]
Logseq is great, but I definitely agree that everything around it (docs, website, ...) is terrible. They really need to rework their marketing pitch and give proper docs. Right now you have docs scattered across 3 websites, and the only useful one is made in Logseq itself, which isn't a good system for scaling documentation.
The sad part is that the tool is really underrated.
You don't need to even think where to put notes.
All that overwhelm that all the folks are speaking about, just start writing in your daily page, when you look back -> you have a clear link.
It actually kills ambiguity without having folders and having too much un-needed structure (obviously use-case varies).
Logseq doesn't need plugins because a lot of it is already in-built (tasks, block-references, in-built queries).
It reminds me of the discussion when people praise Next.js for all the packages, and ecosystem but its not a feature, there is a reason people building these.
I think an application's usefulness depends on how much you align with its design and mindset it brings to the table.
For some people, stuffing pages into a notebook (a-la Evernote/Joplin) is fine. I use Evernote, and it's fine for most things.
However when things start to get crowded, this model breaks down. I also don't like shoving things into an application and meta-sort it with tags and whatnot. I like structured work, because I can put clutter aside in the structure and focus on what I'm working on.
Also, having the files as plain Markdown files is a plus for me, even if it doesn't have the block references. As I already said, I need Obsidian for document and knowhow management, and glorified text files are what I exactly want.
While the initial experience is super confusing and I barely knew what that tool is supposed to do, later on it turned out to be the first tool that helped me keep some structure in my notes.
I love note taking but I'm horrible at it, chaotic and inconsistent. Daily notes plus the way logseq easily links articles gave me some decent notes. I even left those to my colleagues when I switched jobs and even plain markdown files were useful for them.