Hey everyone,

I am looking for an alternative for OneNote for Linux. A clone would be perfect, the interface of it and the ability to paste pictures into a very wide notes field is great. Please help me!

  • loiakdsf@discuss.tchncs.de
    14·
    2 years ago

    As your description is rather short and does not really restrict the “recommendation space”, I’ll start the round of recommendations with Joplin

    • klangcola@reddthat.com
      4·
      2 years ago

      Joplin also has a great web-clipper through a companion addon in Firefox (and I assume also Chromium)

      Joplin is great in many ways, and I do use it to some degree, but there’s a few things that irks me.

      • Notes and attachments being stored in a database and referenced by a cryptic UID instead of plain files with human readable names makes integration with other apps impossible. And it’s bad for data portability
      • On Android I’ve never been able to get it to background sync. I need to keep Joplin in the foreground. The second I switch to another app it stops syncing
      • On sync conflicts it’ll just use the newest note as master and overwrite older changes. Luckily if you realise it happened you can use the history feature to get back lost changes. Typical scenario for me is to add much more stuff to a shopping list while on desktop. 30minutes later open the app on Android while shopping to tick off an item. Realize all the recently added items from desktop are gone to the ether (stored in history on the desktop and other synced devices)

      Hopefully these sync issues are some rare bug for me. I’ve tried all the usual “battery saving” tricks in android, but still Joplin will not background sync. Other apps like DavX5 sync fine. Are anybody else here having luck with Joplin on mobile?

      • chri5@kbin.social
        3·
        2 years ago

        As far as I know it’s a known limitation. Joplin just does not have background sync. It’s ok for my use case but the initial sync can take a long time depending on your database size. Other than that, I’m happy with Joplin.

      • mori@kbin.social
        1·
        2 years ago

        I had to stop using it when it nuked one of my notebooks due to a conflict. I’m still not sure exactly what caused it; but I had to go into the DB, reassign the pages that were not completely deleted (orphaned?) to a new notebook, and cry about the few that weren’t recoverable.

      • SilkenTofu@readit.buzz
        1·
        2 years ago

        I believe you can export joplin notebooks in several different widely compatible file types. So you have full portability, although perhaps not full interoperability (I use it in an encrypted form anyway so I couldn’t integrate any other apps).

        Sync conflicts send the replaced version to a dedicated conflicts notebook, in my experience.

    • lebushjr@kbin.social
      3·
      2 years ago

      I used Joplin on Windows and iPhone - syncing (encrypted) using a OneDrive account. So far working well.

    • 1337@1337lemmy.com
      2·
      2 years ago

      Do you use Joplin? I’ve heard about it a ton but I can’t figure out when I’d ever use it. I use Bookstack for a Wiki and then I have an empty (besides myself) Matrix room that I use for quick notes or something I need to send from my phone to a different device. And then I also have Nextcloud and could just use docs there. I love self hosting open source apps but I struggle to see how often I’d use Joplin (or any note app) over other options. I’m hoping you or somebody can finally make something click for me.

      • loiakdsf@discuss.tchncs.de
        1·
        2 years ago

        I tried it once but didn’t see the use of it, but I saw it recommended often and I can see why, because it is nice to sync notes with your phone, if you need it there. I personally am a fan of the suckless/KISS mentality and just use syncthing to sync my plain markdown notes between devices.

        one thing that annoyed me, though, was that the markdown editor in joplin always inserted some weird blank lines or spacings. That might not be relevant or even obvious for someone who just uses the rich text formatting editor, but I mostly used the plain text editor and eventually asked myself what joplin is basically useful for in my use case, as I already had syncthing in place and I could just use any plain text editor of my choice. So for me the benefit of hierarchically structuring my notes was not worth the extra program on my computer/phone, especially considering that syncthing and vim/codium are programs specifically created for the use case that joplin tries to merge into a single product. But I might be an extreme case, as I have also replaced Nextcloud with Filebrowser and Syncthing, so take my words with a grain of salt.

        TLDR: Joplin is a great program and I can recommend it, it is just not suited for fans of the KISS mentality.

        • dart@lemmy.fmhy.ml
          2·
          2 years ago

          I tried Joplin, but found it more cumbersome than just directly using markdown files, and rw them with Markor on Android. On Linux, I will just directly rw the markdown files in vim, or vscode if I want to get fancy.

      • flatbield@beehaw.org
        1·
        2 years ago

        I primarily have Joplin for my phone. I do have it on my computer just so I can edit stuff that I want on my phone. I sync it between all of my devices via my Nextcloud instance. Works great.