I am searching for the best option for organising my personal knowledge, secure and always available.
My requirements: -Selfhosted -Open Source -Login protection (OIDC would be a dream) -Collaboration on notes would be awesome -Not limited to one device e.g. using it on multiple devices like the phone and laptop -No lock in (if it works with md. files in the backend that’s perfect) -Zotero integration would be fancy
I tried different solution and the, slowest, but the simplest is actually Nextcloud Notes. I just hate the interface and the small width of the writing window.
What I also liked for that use case was outline - which is just to complicated and way to demanding to setup and maintain as I want to solely rely on it. But that’s the closest to the features I mentioned for me. I once brokenit for like 2 months which made me switch to NC Notes - where I am not really happy.
There are a lot of nice tools but coming to open source it gets thin…
Also there are a lot of nice tools like Logseq and Zettelkasten which are impressive but limited to a device or to a cloud drive where you have to make sure it synced…
How do you organize your notes and personal knowledge in your Homelab setup? Which tools do you use - and do you collaborate on notes?
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Obsidian fits on your needs, im using it with icloud for syncing
My journey:
Joplin -> Trilium Notes -> Logseq -> Obsidian
I find Obsidian the most powerfull, because of the PlugIn system and full compatiblity with Android and iPad.
And I realized, it’s a stupid idea to have a “knowledge base” in a Docker setup, if you need this knowledge base also for debugging or reinstall your Homelab. So the local installation of Obsidian togeter with Synchting gives you always access to your knowledge, even if the server are down.
However, none of the above have collaborate features. But don’t need it.
I just hate the interface and the small width of the writing window.
You know that you can just edit the notes files with any texteditor you like on any system that is, at least, capable of webdav? I edit my notes with my iphone on the default “notes” app, as example.
I’ll throw hedgedoc in the mix. We use it for TONS of work at my small company. I wish it had better search, and organize sticky notes. I’m praying the new version comes out. Anyway we love it with all its flaws.
Outline, has OICD, sharing and more. Downside: No apps, only web.
I just use Obsidian with Synchthing to sync devices
Joplin could be an option. It can sync either off a cloud drive like Dropbox, or to a server. There is a Joplin cloud which is pretty inexpensive, or you can self host. Joplin can do encryption locally (E2E) before syncing.
Joplin does abstract away the notes files, but its all stored as markdown and the export will give you your notes in a nice human readable folder+file structure.
I use Obsidian mostly but also sometimes memos:
I set up a VSCode server on my Raspberry Pi, run rclone bisync every half hour which syncs text files with a designated folder on my Synology NAS, and I can have access to all my notes, which are all text files.
Trillium works nice, only bad thing compared to obsidian is that the files are not stored as plain text, but otherwise it’s preeeety feature rich.
I use Obsidian with self-hosted live-sync from here: https://github.com/vrtmrz/obsidian-livesync/
Basically you have a couchDB hosted in your homelab to store your obsidian data and then the obsidian self hosted live sync plugin that runs on your devices connects to your self hosted database and sync your notes there in an optimized. I tried both this and sincronizing via github and I prefer this, because is faster and less intrusive
Outline recently added support for local storage instead of S3. Authentication is the only other common self-hosted pain point, but given you’re looking for OIDC anyway, I don’t see why it wouldn’t be a viable option.
Check this out I just found out about it it’s open source self hosted and free
https://www.usememos.com/Another vote for Joplin with Joplin self hosted server . Works very well for me and the family plus the added benefit is if you want to share notes with external folks that don’t have joplin, you can do that as well.