Always fun to see these original comments in a HN thread. If you write this on Twitter you can get hundreds of retweets, hurry before someone else writes the tweet!

Jokes aside, Obsidian being a Electron application is not a issue. The app starts in under 3 seconds for me, barely uses any RAM and CPU usage remains stable and low.

If you want to actually contribute anything to this thread, feel free to give feedback on specific issues you find, that it's using too much CPU or whatever. But as it stands, you're not really adding much here.

  > The app starts in under 3 seconds for me

For me that would be a showstopper. 3 seconds to open my notes app? I would have already lost my train of thought.

:wq

It takes me about 15 seconds to boot my computer. But do I need to start the computer each time I do something on it? No, I leave it on.

Similarly goes for other things you use but takes "too long time" to open, leave the thing open and you just have to switch windows to access it.

And if you think Obsidian is a note taking app, then yeah, it's not the right tool for you, continue using Vi/m. But once you grow out of it, you'll need a knowledge base instead, and for that, Obsidian is lightweight.

I see your point, thanks.

You may also use any other note taking app as your default brain dump and use Obsidian as your editor tool to work your notes afterwords. Just for note taking anything would work its markdown/text. Where obsidian wins is backlinking information and all the wonderful community plugins that's been appearing.

My problem with Electron apps is that they don't seem to support window decorations under Wayland on Linux. I'm trying Logseq (https://github.com/logseq/logseq ) right now, and like any Electron app on Wayland, you have to start it via "Logseq --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform --ozone-platform=wayland" but that still doesn't give you window decorations (like titlebar, minimize button, etc)

For me, it definitely adds something to the conversation. I simply much prefer native apps to Electron-based apps, and I'm not the only one. The original comment thus saves me time.

For obsidian it is a significant advantage because you can have plugins that e.g. render a markdown task lists as a Kanban board.

It seems to fall into the vs-code category of being sufficiently well optimized, but if you wanted to deal with millions of files then some popular plugins (queries on tasklists in all files, aggregating data into diagrams, etc) probably would get slow.

Good point, I hadn't thought about that.

5 words contibution: vim runs on my server. 4 words contribution: mosh, tmux, vim, rsync 3 words contribution: no mouse needed

Jokes aside: if they wanted feedback on what's wrong with it they'd have made it free software.

My issue is that I want to run just one browser on my system. And one that I choose, Chrome/chromium is not the one.

Aside from that I refuse to support writing desktop apps in Javascript, because it is slower than equivalent app written in C/C++.

Compare telegram client to slack client. Which one is more snappy?

Users are boiled like frogs, millisecond wait here and there. And suddenly any action on ui takes 1 or 20 seconds. And you get frustrated.

If obsidian is a webapp I prefer to use it as such, not hide it in electron.

Obsidian may be Electron, but it doesn’t feel like it to me. It’s fast, smooth, and I’ve never noticed excessive memory usage. I think its quality exceeds most fully native apps, especially on Linux.

Last I heard it was built entirely by two people (and two cats). What’s a better way to build a high quality native-ish application targeting 5 platforms with a team of 2?

Yes. I use Fedora 34 and I completely agree. Obsidian is very smooth. I admire logseq but it is buggy and slow (although I will periodically monitor their development) and I can't see myself using it atleast for now (Not sure if it's due to OS).

Obsidian benefits from being an electron app because it has allowed people to create many plugins that provide useful UIs and these plugins likely wouldn't exist otherwise.

(That said, there are non-Electron alternatives like Tauri coming along that use the native webview to accomplish essentially the same thing.)

It runs very performant for me. I use it daily at work.

And as is typical for Electron apps, it installs in some non-standard location (C:\Users...) on Windows, without even giving you the option to change it.

Thanks for double-checking that. If you're on a machine with tight specs, then avoiding Electron is probably wise.

I feel like I'm the only one mentioning vim-wiki here. But, vim-wiki?

Or its lighter-weight alternative, wiki.vim