I was looking at Boostnote earlier: https://boostnote.io/

+1 Boostnote! It's one of the few open source notebook apps I've used that I've actually enjoyed!

Looks nice. Can sync to all devices where you've installed it, via Dropbox.

Not opensource but hard to beat Quiver: http://happenapps.com/

Edit: I take that back, Boostnote looks pretty good!

I'm not that concerned about Quiver not being open source, as its note storage format is simple & documented json. Should there be a reason to move away from Quiver, it would be pretty simple to construct a way of transferring notes (assuming the destination is as transparent). In the meantime, it's quite a pleasure to use: very fast, well-presented, and with carefully-considered interactions.

I must give Boostnote a try. On the face of it, I would think an engineering notebook, to be used daily for large amounts of stuff, would be a paradigmatic case for a native app like Quiver rather than electron. But then there's Atom & vscode so maybe not? And I'm a bit uncomfortable with Boostnote's copyright transfer for pull requests (https://github.com/BoostIO/Boostnote/blob/master/contributin...). But then again, I pay little attention to copyright matters so perhaps just haven't noticed if this is common in open source. And it's clearly nevertheless more open than Quiver.

I've just given boostnote a quick tour, as a Quiver user I'm not so sure boostnotes is quite there yet, at least on feature parity.

There seems to be some UI slowdown on my machine too, whereas Quiver doesn't seem to suffer from that at all, and I have like 200+ note files in my Quiver repository!

A plain paper notebook. I’ve tried everything and nothing works as well.

This is true and somewhat infuriating.

I have a $700 computer in my pocket and the best way to write a grocery list is on a post-it found in the kitchen drawer.

I think it comes down to the human interface of a touch screen being slow, frustrating, and generally inefficient.

It's amazing that we have accepted this user interface for as long as we have. Imagine if touching your paper notebook the wrong way could accidentally erase it or share it with your mom.

> share it with your mom

O horror!

Get a Samsung Note 8. Use wacom pen to take notes. Carrying around dead trees is archaic.

Reminds me of the anecdote about the Russians using a pencil in space (vs. a $1000 pen specifically designed to work in weightlessness).

Snopes: FALSE

http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp

Not to mention throwing away my iPhone and all the software I bought for it to go to something completely different. Seriously, a pocket notebook can record info much more efficiently and effectively, more rich information than any device.

... and your 700-dollar pocket computer is probably not much better than the 200-dollar one that you ditched a couple of years ago. We buy things not because we need them, but because we want them. (Why we want them is another story.)

I mainly upgrade my phone for the camera upgrades, if I'm being honest with myself.

I always carry a Wacom tablet with my laptop specifically for drawing diagrams and notes without interface limitations.

I also use paper. So there are two of us. 8x11 notebook of quarter-inch graph paper.

Useful for taking notes wither portrait (in meetings) or landscape (in front of a computer). Also graph paper obviously helps with sketches and dividing up the page on the fly.

OneNote works wonders for me.

This. The ability to quickly capture and annotate screenshots and the setup of multiple notebooks makes this my most-used (and most loved) Office application.

+1. It's not open source but I haven't found anything else that even comes close.

A folder of text files.

Sounds stupid but I've yet to find a better tool.

I'll use Org-Mode if things get more complicated, but nothing beats plain text.

I mean org-mode is just easily readable plain text for the most part... Only has the potential to get ugly when you do odd or advanced stuff. The basic structure is just asterisk prefixed text.

Yes, this is me. I just open up sublime text, and within the second jot down whatever stuff I want. Nothing beats it.

I do use notes.app, evernote for complex writing stuff though.

I've tried everything including wikis. I've been using a mind map for the past ten years (freemind/freeplane). Nothing beats it. It's fast and a screen has two scrollable dimensions so why not use them. Easy to start disorganised and refactor later. Really easy to just hide noise without losing it completely. Second to a mind map is plain text but its limited if you want to embed diagrams or cross-link.

I use tiddlywiki, which is opensource. It's been recommended by many HN comments in the past. It works pretty well. You can store a copy on dropbox, and use android/ios apps to sync it. The web interface on a computer is really great. The mobile apps are not as great, though (clunky around syncing it).

I use sublime text and imported a directory of journal files as project. These files are of markdown and you can search sithin the project.

But this setup is somehow clunky because there is no tracking if a ceratain topic/headline already exists, linking is not possible, etC

I just set up gitlab private repo with .md files for my notes so I can edit/read those on my android phone (pocket git + droid edit) or whatever other computer I setup an clone repo.

I've used wikis like Mediawiki and blogs like Jekyll to great effect for this purpose.