IntroductionSilverBullet is a note-taking application optimized for people with a hacker mindset. We all take notes. There’s a million note taking applications out there. Literally. Wouldn’t it be nice to have one where your notes are more than plain tex
I have not used Joplin, but did write a few high-level thoughts on comparing it to Obsidian and Logseq elsewhere which I’ll just copy and paste here:
I have not used Obsidian nor Logseq as much as I’ve used (or developed) SilverBullet. However here are a few headliners, but the main difference may well be that in SB I’m really assuming that the target audience is technical enough not to be scared by the idea of writing a query, or creating a template.
A few differences with Obsidian: it’s fully open source and it’s a web app that you self host. It’s still markdown files on disk, but that disk is located on your server and they’re accessible from anywhere you have access to that server without having to do convoluted things like setting up (or buy) sync services (like you do have to for both Obsidian and LogSeq).
Obsidian tends to solve everything with plugins, whereas SB has more batteries included (although technically much of this is implemented as plugins that ship with SB itself) specifically: powerful indexing, querying and template support. Obsidian has Dataview and Templater, and some other plugins I think, but they’re developed by a third party.
Another difference difference would be UI minimalism. The number of panes and tabs in Obsidian dizzies me, although I know you can fold or hide all of them. In SB it’s minimal by default.
Compared to LogSeq: logseq is an outliner. You can do outlines in SilverBullet (and I do, a lot, there’s some nice shortcuts for this too: https://silverbullet.md/Outlines). However, SB is more of a wiki than an outliner. You don’t have to write everything in bulleted lists. To me this is important, because I also write my blog posts and other articles in SilverBullet and doing that in an outline is somewhat awkward.
But to be clear: Obsidian and Logseq are both great, and they’re more mature. They’ve been around longer and have bigger communities (so far). Try them out and see what you like.
I’ve used Joplin, logseq, and Obsidian and I’ve switched to this. It’s great for self hosting at home and using at work without having to install apps or applications. I enjoy that it is truly open source and the interface is much cleaner than Joplin and the files on disk are actually more readable unlike Joplin. I love how programmable it is.
For now, Joplin is working fine and there is no scandal yet that makes me move away from it…
Disadvantages I’m seeing at the moment if I switched over to Silverbullet:
Yes, it’s super portable because it’s running in the web browser, but if I have 3 devices and hosted SilverBullet on a 4th device, that device needs to be online all the time to access my notes, right? With Joplin, this is different. I can use Joplin on 3 devices and once a month, I can turn on the device that hosts Joplin Cloud and everything syncs. Making notes when being offline (e.g. at work) when there is no connection to the SilverBullet server seems to be impossible, too, right? Or can the PWA handle this scenario better than I think?
Joplin has a wunderful feature on Android for tablet: You can draw with your pen on your note and it will be embedded as an image in the markdown. This makes Joplin the Nr. 1 for me at the moment.
I’d love to see a comparisson with Joplin and similar…
I have not used Joplin, but did write a few high-level thoughts on comparing it to Obsidian and Logseq elsewhere which I’ll just copy and paste here:
I have not used Obsidian nor Logseq as much as I’ve used (or developed) SilverBullet. However here are a few headliners, but the main difference may well be that in SB I’m really assuming that the target audience is technical enough not to be scared by the idea of writing a query, or creating a template.
A few differences with Obsidian: it’s fully open source and it’s a web app that you self host. It’s still markdown files on disk, but that disk is located on your server and they’re accessible from anywhere you have access to that server without having to do convoluted things like setting up (or buy) sync services (like you do have to for both Obsidian and LogSeq).
Obsidian tends to solve everything with plugins, whereas SB has more batteries included (although technically much of this is implemented as plugins that ship with SB itself) specifically: powerful indexing, querying and template support. Obsidian has Dataview and Templater, and some other plugins I think, but they’re developed by a third party.
Another difference difference would be UI minimalism. The number of panes and tabs in Obsidian dizzies me, although I know you can fold or hide all of them. In SB it’s minimal by default.
Compared to LogSeq: logseq is an outliner. You can do outlines in SilverBullet (and I do, a lot, there’s some nice shortcuts for this too: https://silverbullet.md/Outlines). However, SB is more of a wiki than an outliner. You don’t have to write everything in bulleted lists. To me this is important, because I also write my blog posts and other articles in SilverBullet and doing that in an outline is somewhat awkward.
But to be clear: Obsidian and Logseq are both great, and they’re more mature. They’ve been around longer and have bigger communities (so far). Try them out and see what you like.
You can write long form content in logseq. Shift enter gives you a new line instead of a new bullet.
@ndsvw @zef
I’ve used Joplin, logseq, and Obsidian and I’ve switched to this. It’s great for self hosting at home and using at work without having to install apps or applications. I enjoy that it is truly open source and the interface is much cleaner than Joplin and the files on disk are actually more readable unlike Joplin. I love how programmable it is.
Thanks. Readable files sounds interesting.
Maybe, I’ll give it a shot in the future…
For now, Joplin is working fine and there is no scandal yet that makes me move away from it…
Disadvantages I’m seeing at the moment if I switched over to Silverbullet:
Only the server needs to be online to have access to all your notes.