Due to the increase in age and the influence of life, people will come into contact with more and more new things and knowledge, and the brain will become somewhat chaotic. I can't guarantee that my thinking will always maintain a high-intensity online state.
Therefore, I decided to organize a personal knowledge base and sort out the fragments and thoughts in my brain. I will record them in the form of notes and text. However, I have been looking for such a tool recently, comparing various options, but I haven't found one that truly meets my needs.
It would be best to have a self-built note-taking system because today I wrote a private note on Yuque, and maybe because the content was slightly sensitive, it was censored and I was accused of violating the rules.
Yuque is currently the tool I am most satisfied with, but my enthusiasm for it has suddenly decreased a lot. I'm afraid that one day all the notes in my account will be deleted at once, and I will feel very desperate.
Next, I will continue to compare various options and ultimately choose a platform or a self-built note-taking system.
Blogs are written for others to read, while notes are for my own reference, including plans, to-do lists, and other private content. There are also drafts of some articles and fragmented records, so they are not suitable for being placed on a blog.
In terms of functionality, I also have high requirements, such as drag and drop, forms, dropdown menus, cards, etc., which are all features that I need. Privacy and security are also important to me.
That's all for now. I will continue my search slowly.
Updated on May 3, 2022
After a week of trying and deploying, I finally decided to use Obsidian. It can be privately deployed using Docker, and local backups can be made. It also offers the option of paid subscriptions and backups to the official server, which are two choices that can be made simultaneously, and I think they meet my needs very well.
The main reason is that I was impressed by Obsidian's features and appearance. The interface is clean and beautiful, and the functionality is not bloated. It has exactly what I need, without any unnecessary buttons. It meets my personal needs for note-taking and personal knowledge base. It supports bidirectional linking, although I don't need it at the moment. It also supports importing and exporting in Markdown format.
I have gradually migrated my other notes to Obsidian, but currently, the only drawback seems to be that it does not support sharing. This is also a certain requirement of mine, and I am looking for a solution, but it is not a big problem.
Obsidian has impressed me with many details. When copying a single article, it provides a format for directly copying to other platforms, eliminating the need for manual adjustments.
As for security, a global authentication password can be set, but individual articles cannot be encrypted.
Updated on May 18, 2022
Half a month has passed, and I have gradually migrated away from Obsidian for various reasons. On the one hand, I have some doubts about the security and stability of the files. On the other hand, there are issues with synchronization, which is both costly and time-consuming.
Therefore, I chose a better software - Obsidian. Its powerful community, numerous plugins, and extensibility are the reasons why I chose it.
In comparison, it is more like the VSCode of the note-taking world, with many advantages. It is lightweight, extensible, and has many plugins. It can be synchronized across multiple platforms using Joplin Cloud, allowing seamless switching between my work computer and personal computer.
Updated on June 18, 2022
After using Obsidian for a month, I would like to share my experience. Overall, it is very suitable for someone like me who records text. It is particularly friendly to Markdown syntax, and the formatting can be customized according to my preferences. It also comes with some plugins that expand my usage.
In terms of security, it is great to have local and offline capabilities. I can synchronize using a sync drive according to my needs or set up a self-hosted WebDAV service. It is also very stable.
As for data migration, there is no need to worry at all. The data is essentially in Markdown format. If I am disappointed with Obsidian and no longer use it, or if there is a better choice, I can simply copy the folders, which is very convenient.
However, this only applies to pure files. If there are metadata and attributes involved, Obsidian is not the best choice. Because it is a collection of small files, it is different from a typical database.
It is difficult to manage a large number of small files, and there will be performance issues in the long run. Consistency is also a problem. Consistency cannot be ensured without reindexing, but reindexing is difficult to improve performance for a large number of small files.
I can understand Ah Jun's concerns. However, we have different perspectives on note-taking. He hopes to create a fragmented structure and build his own knowledge framework using bidirectional linking. On the other hand, I need something like a wiki, where I can categorize the knowledge I acquire and search based on keywords, tags, titles, and content.
These are different directions, so it is normal to choose different software.