This also works well for small organizations. Both GitHub and GitLab are able to render org files, with some minor limitations. Hence, a simple repository full of org files is already a wiki. Even local links just work, with zero dependencies.
It's possible to transform org files into HTML with some CI task to get support for all org features. But I have found this a bit of an overkill. I don't need most org features. The basics are already great: outlines, timestamps, hyperlinks, tables and footnotes.
You can achieve more or less the same things with Markdown as well.
This is truly the era of the memex.
On Mac I use Ulysses. I get the benefits described here while still having a fast, native app with excellent UX.
I have Mac for work, and Linux for personal and an Android phone. That means Ulysses on Mac, ThiefMD on Linux, and Markor on Android, all synced with syncthings. Native apps on different OSes is the best solution I've been able to come across.
A single cross platform app would be preferable, but the last time I used Obsidian it was slow, heavy, bloated, with a pretty ugly UI, likely in part due to running on electron.
I do agree though, they do themselves no favours with that ugly black / purple website. They need a much better, much prettier default.
All that aside, I'm delighted with my switch to Obsidian. Just an amazing tool, and total reassurance that it's just markdown with all the benefits that brings. So glad to be rid of Evernote...!
If Obsidian went away, I'd still have a bunch of text files that I understood, and I'd know that I could find things tagged with #foo by using grep, that the [[links]] just mean to open links.md, that an image should be opened in a browser, etc.
Best practice for tags is just include them in the plain text file, and inline images in Obsidian is like Derek said — just keep them in your folder structures just like your text.
You'll be able to get access to it in 20 years, even if not in a shiny UX friendly way. Which is more than can be said for some of the really old notes I took in proprietary pieces of software.
$50/year puts you next to some good developer tools, that already do markdown pretty well, and I just don’t see the point of writing notes if they’re not also for work.
I’m sure it’s worth it once you have 100s or 1000s of notes by i somehow feel like it’s a bit of a too big pill to swallow in the beginning.
> You need to pay for Obsidian if and only if you use it for revenue-generating, work-related activities in a company that has two or more people. Get a commercial license for each user if that's the case. Non-profit organizations do not need commercial licenses.
If it doesn't help your work or a free markdown editor provides you the same value, you have your answer.
As I use it for my job I consider it worth the 50 bucks. I still would prefer it to bee FOSS, though (and be willing to pay, anyway) - as then I knew even the software might be still around when the company behind it is gone.
A lot of utility with obsidian comes from the plugins from the community (e.g. excalidraw) and even though they might store their stuff also on your disk as text files, the utility of that eco system is gone as soon as one switches (or changes, or requires a different file format for the text files or whatnot)
I really wish Obsidian, or something like it, worked well for teams. Maybe it's on their roadmap, I'm not sure.
It is open source and everything is stored locally but not in markdown files. You can self-host the desktop app to share notes.
Also, is real time collaboration a game changer or a gimmick?
I used to think the former, but was questioning it recently.
What would be lost with syncthing + obsidian for your team or maybe something that does autocommit like fossil for probable conflicts?
The real time is not as real time as, say, Google Docs. There's a lot of lag.
But yes, realtime collaboration is a critical feature for documents that can be used during meetings (and IMO ~no meetings should be held without documents).
The other critical feature is comments, which I assume Obsidian does not have support for (they would be very nontrivial to represent in markdown).
https://gist.github.com/rattrayalex/2e4f934045aabc4caeeab249...
You can have a disk hierarchy if you desire, or trust that search will find you what you are looking for. For me search works fairly well and if I need something extra I can just grep/sed/awk.
Plus it has the features that a simple text editor will not have: displaying images, live preview, relationships between topics, etc. It even has a Vim mode!