Simple, Non-Commercial, Open Source Notes  ## Metadata - Author: [[YouTube]] - Full Title: Simple, Non-Commercial, Open Source Notes - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: [note-taking, open-source, productivity] author: [MISSING] source: YouTube reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRpHIa-2XCE date created: 2024-12-19 15:30 --- # 🏷️ Title: Simple, Non-Commercial, Open Source Notes ## 🧰 Action Inbox - [H1] Evaluate current note-taking setup against privacy/ownership criteria — vendor lock-in assessment #privacy - [H2] Test plain text storage compatibility with existing workflow — data portability check #workflow - [H3] Configure chosen tool with minimal viable features — avoid productivity treadmill #implementation ## 🧭 Table of Contents - [📝 Summary](#-summary) - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#️-notes) - [📚 References](#-references) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#️-paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) - [❓ Questions](#-questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) - [💡 Implications](#-implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) - [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) - [🛡️ DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) ### 🔗 References - [Video Source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRpHIa-2XCE) ## 📝 Summary - A comprehensive evaluation of open-source, non-commercial note-taking alternatives to Notion - Focuses on privacy, data ownership, plain text storage, and vendor lock-in avoidance - Reviews 4 main recommendations (Zim, QOwnNotes, Emacs/Org-mode, Neovim) plus runners-up - Emphasizes the productivity paradox of spending too much time optimizing note-taking systems - Bottom line: Choose simple tools that work and avoid endless customization rabbit holes ## 📖 Main Content The creator sought a Notion replacement based on philosophical opposition to big tech data harvesting and venture capital influence. Key requirements included: free/open source, non-commercial development, local storage, plain text format, and fast performance. The evaluation covers traditional desktop apps (Zim, QOwnNotes), power-user text editors (Emacs, Neovim), and various rejected options. A central theme warns against productivity optimization becoming counterproductive—spending more time configuring tools than actually using them for meaningful work. ## 🗒️ Notes #### ⏱️ [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRpHIa-2XCE&t=0) — [H1] Need for Notion replacement - Key idea: Big tech platforms harvest personal data and feed it to advertisers/LLMs - Evidence: "Their employees stealing my nudes and feeding my high quality personal notes to train large language models" #### ⏱️ [01:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRpHIa-2XCE&t=80) — [H2] Core requirements defined - Key idea: Free, non-commercial, open source software prevents vendor capture - Evidence: "Development not beholden to venture capital or prioritize monetizing cloud services" #### ⏱️ [02:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRpHIa-2XCE&t=135) — [H3] Privacy and data ownership priorities - Key idea: Local storage and self-hosting essential for true privacy - Evidence: "No sense giving my data over to another cloud service no matter how private it claims to be" #### ⏱️ [02:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRpHIa-2XCE&t=165) — [H2] Plain text storage requirement - Key idea: Zero vendor lock-in through universal file formats - Evidence: "View my files on everything from Commodore 64 to Amazon Kindle without client software" #### ⏱️ [03:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRpHIa-2XCE&t=190) — [H2] Performance complaints about Notion - Key idea: Notion's slow performance makes it unusable for efficient work - Evidence: "Database view took 24 seconds to load, notion is garbage" #### ⏱️ [04:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRpHIa-2XCE&t=270) — [H3] Rejected popular options - Key idea: Most well-known apps fail open source or plain text criteria - Evidence: Lists Obsidian, OneNote, Evernote, Roam, LogSeq, etc. as eliminated #### ⏱️ [06:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRpHIa-2XCE&t=375) — [H2] Zettlr as fancy markdown editor - Key idea: Beautiful GUI with plain text storage but overly complex interface - Evidence: "Most beautiful program on the list" but "sometimes feels too fancy" #### ⏱️ [08:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRpHIa-2XCE&t=480) — [H1] Zim Desktop Wiki review - Key idea: Hierarchical note organization with rich text editor using plain text storage - Evidence: "Each folder is also a note, organized hierarchically rather than folder structure" #### ⏱️ [10:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRpHIa-2XCE&t=630) — [H1] QOwnNotes detailed evaluation - Key idea: Underrated markdown editor with excellent user experience and customization - Evidence: "Everything worked exactly how I expected, never had to dig through documentation" #### ⏱️ [12:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRpHIa-2XCE&t=765) — [H3] QOwnNotes features highlight - Key idea: Built-in encrypted notes, version history, and NextCloud sync work seamlessly - Evidence: "Put in server IP and credentials, all of this worked automatically" #### ⏱️ [14:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRpHIa-2XCE&t=860) — [H2] Productivity software warning - Key idea: Optimizing tools can become counterproductive time waste - Evidence: "How much time wasted getting notion layout just right, watching productivity videos" #### ⏱️ [16:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRpHIa-2XCE&t=960) — [H1] Emacs and Org-mode introduction - Key idea: Emacs surprisingly accessible for non-developers with Doom Emacs configuration - Evidence: "Totally not intimidating to get started, relatively easy to pick up" #### ⏱️ [18:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRpHIa-2XCE&t=1110) — [H2] Org-mode capabilities showcase - Key idea: Advanced plain text features like programmable tables and agenda systems - Evidence: "Programmable spreadsheet in text form, evaluate expressions and run code" #### ⏱️ [20:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRpHIa-2XCE&t=1245) — [H3] Emacs performance limitations - Key idea: Resource heavy, requires dedicated server hardware for mobile access - Evidence: "Bought $500 Ryzen 7 Mini PC specifically to run heavyweight text editor" #### ⏱️ [23:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRpHIa-2XCE&t=1395) — [H1] Neovim transition and plugin ecosystem - Key idea: Terminal-based ultimate customization with steep learning curve - Evidence: "Many more hours of tutorials and troubleshooting, does less out of the box" ## 📚 References - [Zim Desktop Wiki](http://zim-wiki.org/) - [QOwnNotes](https://www.qownnotes.org/) - [Doom Emacs](https://github.com/doomemacs/doomemacs) - [Neovim](https://neovim.io/) ## 🗣️ Paraphrase - Commercial note-taking apps compromise user privacy and data ownership through vendor lock-in and cloud dependencies - Open source alternatives like Zim and QOwnNotes provide simple, fast interfaces with plain text storage for maximum portability - Power user tools like Emacs org-mode offer incredible functionality but require significant time investment and technical knowledge - The key insight is avoiding productivity optimization becoming counterproductive—choose tools that work and actually use them for real work ## 📰 Newsletter This week's spotlight: escaping the productivity software trap! A developer's journey from Notion to truly open alternatives reveals key insights for WordPress professionals managing documentation, client notes, and project planning. **Key takeaway**: Plain text storage with tools like QOwnNotes or Zim prevents vendor lock-in while maintaining professional workflows. These solutions integrate beautifully with WordPress development—store client requirements, document customizations, and maintain project notes in formats you'll own forever. **Practical benefits**: Local storage, fast performance, and zero subscription fees. Perfect for agencies managing multiple client projects or freelancers building knowledge bases. **Community connection**: Like WordPress's commitment to open source and user freedom, these note-taking alternatives prioritize user ownership over corporate profits. Resources: [Learn WordPress](https://learn.wordpress.org/), [Developer Docs](https://developer.wordpress.org/), [WP-CLI](https://wp-cli.org/) ## ✅ Action Items #### DevRel - Developer advocacy: Demo plain text workflows for technical documentation - Education: Workshop on privacy-first productivity tools for developers - Developer experience: Document integration patterns with code editors - Community management: Survey developer tool preferences and pain points #### OSPO - Policy & Governance: Evaluate internal tooling against open source criteria - Software Inventory: Audit productivity stack for vendor dependencies - Developer Support: Training on privacy-preserving workflow alternatives - Strategic Alignment: KPIs around tool sovereignty and data ownership #### Community - Maintainers: Plain text documentation templates and governance - Contributors: Onboarding guides using accessible open source tools - Sponsors: Transparency reports stored in version-controlled formats #### WordPress - Documentation: Evaluate current toolchain against vendor lock-in risks - Training: Lesson plans on privacy-first productivity workflows - Community: Meetup presentations on open source productivity stacks - Meta: .org infrastructure documentation in portable formats #### The WPCC - Programs: Fellowship materials in plain text, version-controlled formats - Funding: Grant documentation workflows that prioritize transparency #### FAIR - Technical independence: Tool selection criteria emphasizing user control - Governance artifacts: Templates and charters in portable formats ## 🧪 Hypotheses - Plain text storage increases long-term productivity through reduced vendor dependency - Feature minimalism in productivity tools correlates with actual usage vs. configuration time - Open source development models produce more stable note-taking interfaces than VC-funded alternatives - Local storage with self-hosting provides better performance than cloud-based solutions for text editing ### 📊 Methodology - Comparative analysis of startup times, feature bloat, and configuration overhead - Longitudinal study of tool switching frequency among different user types - Survey of actual note usage vs. time spent customizing productivity systems ### ❓ Questions - How do we measure the true cost of vendor lock-in beyond subscription fees? - What's the optimal balance between customization capability and out-of-box usability? - How can open source tools better compete on user experience without compromising principles? ### 🔮 Future Research - Analysis of productivity tool abandonment patterns and switching costs - Development of metrics for measuring "productivity software productivity" - Investigation of community-driven development vs. commercial feature prioritization ### 💡 Implications - Practice: Evaluate current toolchain for unnecessary complexity and vendor dependencies - Policy: Procurement guidelines emphasizing open formats and data portability - Security: Local storage reduces attack surface compared to cloud synchronization - Education: Training on recognizing and avoiding productivity optimization rabbit holes - Funding: Support for sustainable open source productivity tool development ### 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment Reading level estimate: 10th-11th grade (conversational, technical) #### 👀 Visual learners - Present: Screenshots of different interfaces, comparison layouts - Improve: Feature comparison charts, workflow diagrams, file structure visualizations #### 🔊 Aural learners - Present: Video format with clear narration and examples - Improve: Audio-only version for commute listening, podcast-style summary #### 🗣️ Verbal learners - Present: Clear definitions, analogies ("Commodore 64 to Kindle"), examples - Improve: Glossary of technical terms, metaphor-driven explanations #### 🧩 Kinesthetic learners - Present: Step-by-step software trials, hands-on comparisons - Improve: Installation checklists, configuration templates, trial workflows #### 🧠 Logical learners - Present: Systematic evaluation criteria, decision trees for tool selection - Improve: Scoring rubrics, feature matrices, cost-benefit analysis #### 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Social learners - Present: Community discussion prompts, shared experiences - Improve: User forums, collaborative tool evaluations, peer recommendations #### 🧘‍♀️ Solitary learners - Present: Individual exploration guidance, self-assessment questions - Improve: Personal workflow templates, reflection prompts on tool choices #### 🌿 Naturalistic learners - Present: Tool ecosystem analogies, sustainable software development - Improve: Environmental impact comparisons, digital minimalism connections ### 📊 Accessibility Assessment #### Screen reader semantics - Present: Clear heading hierarchy, descriptive interface descriptions - Improve: Alt text for software screenshots, detailed navigation instructions #### Keyboard navigation - Present: Discussion of keyboard-focused tools like Vim/Emacs - Improve: Keyboard shortcut summaries, accessibility features comparison #### Contrast and readability - Present: Mentions of theming and visual customization options - Improve: High contrast theme recommendations, readability assessments #### Text resizing and reflow - Present: Font size adjustment features noted - Improve: Zoom compatibility testing, responsive interface evaluation #### Media and captions - Present: Video format with spoken content - Improve: Full transcript, chapter markers, audio descriptions #### Forms and interactions - Present: Installation and configuration guidance - Improve: Error handling documentation, accessible setup wizards ### 🌍 DEIB Assessment #### Cultural breadth - Present: Universal file format accessibility across devices and regions - Improve: Multi-language interface options, international use cases #### Inclusive language - Present: Generally accessible technical explanations - Improve: Avoid assumptions about technical background, define jargon consistently #### Neurodiversity support - Present: Multiple tool options for different cognitive preferences - Improve: Sensory considerations, attention management features #### Representation - Present: Focus on technical merit over demographics - Improve: Diverse contributor acknowledgment, inclusive community examples #### Psychological safety - Present: Non-judgmental tool comparison approach - Improve: Validation of different productivity approaches, reduced technical gatekeeping ### ✅ Logical Validity #### Strong reasoning - Deductive strength: Privacy premises logically lead to local storage conclusions - Inductive strength: Multiple tool examples support broader patterns about open source quality - Causal reasoning: Clear connection between feature complexity and configuration overhead - Analogical strength: Effective comparisons between text editors and productivity workflows #### Fallacies - False dichotomy: Commercial vs. open source presented as only options, ignoring hybrid models - Ad hominem: Dismisses tools based on funding sources rather than technical merit alone - Appeal to purity: Rejects otherwise suitable tools for ideological rather than practical reasons #### Tone of voice - Overall tone: Conversational and opinionated with technical expertise, occasionally dismissive of mainstream tools ### 🛡️ DARVO Analysis - Deny: No significant denial patterns observed - Attack: Some attacks on commercial software companies and their practices - Reverse victim/offender: No victim/offender reversal patterns - Emotional cues: Strong emotional language about privacy violations and vendor lock-in, but focused on legitimate technical concerns ## 🎯 Conclusion The - Document Tags: [[privacy]] [[workflow]] [[implementation]] - Summary: Simple, Non-Commercial, Open Source Notes - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRpHIa-2XCE Last year, I finally decided I needed aNotion replacement. I was sick of bigtech stealing my data, their employeesstealing my nudes and feeding my highquality, high-value personal notes anddocuments to sell to advertisers ortrain large language models. They're alldoing it. I don't care what their privacypolicy says. One day, they're just gonnaupdate it and it's, "Oh yeah, your data isyours." Except, psych! We're creatingpersonally identified consumer profilesof your internet activity, GPS data, andselling it to advertisers. And yes, eventhough you didn't upload them, Notion hasyour nudes. I don't make the rules. Sobefore I waste your time, I need a Notion replacement for a personal Wiki, notes, todos, and documents; not the 400 otherthings that Notion tries to be. So Ineeded a program that is free,non-commercial, open source. This isphilosophical, and most people don't care,so this might not be the right video foryou. I don't want development to bebeholden to venture capital, prioritizemonetizing a cloud service, or underratedreason build on pointless checkboxfeatures for the sake of marketplacedifferentiation. So if it's run by aBusiness or has a pricing tab on thewebsite, even if it's totally free forpersonal use, it's probably not for me. Like Logseq, it is funded by four milliondollars in venture capital. Cool, get that!I just need to turn my text filesinto slightly more organized text files.I think this is a problem that can besolved without incorporating a business.Extracting value from the solution, localand self-hosted privacy and dataownership is the biggest reason I neededto get off Notion, so there’s no sense ofjust giving my data over to anothercloud service, no matter how private itcurrently claims to be. Storing notes asplain text, I want zero vendor locking.I want to sync my notes using whateverprogram I want. I want to use my ownversion control. I want to be able toview my files on everything from aCommodore 64 to an Amazon Kindle withoutworrying about client software when mynew software inevitably dies. I just wantto dump my notes folder into whateverthe new thing I’m using is, and fast. Notion is the slowest note-takingsoftware I have ever used, and while Isaid this bit, I was going to put in alittle clip of me clicking a link, and itTaking two seconds for the page to load,but instead for drama attic effect, Iwent to click a database view and thepage took 24 seconds to load. Notion isgarbage. All right, some nice-to-havessimple. I don’t need a second brain ordear God, a life operating system withdatabases, kanban charts, whatever endlessfeatures. I just need to store notes,scripts, recipes, travel plans, whatever. Abright future, throwing this out there,because Dendron suddenly ceaseddevelopment in the middle of my search. Encrypted notes, a lot of these projectsare just like, "Oh, encrypt your entirehard drive. We’re not an encryptionproject." Well, guess what? I do encrypt myhard drives, but I do this really weirdthing called decrypting them when I’musing my computer. And I also sync andback up my notes to all sorts of devices,which, yes, should be encrypted, but it’sstill nice to know if I accidentallysync or back up my notes somewherethat’s not encrypted, that personal infoand account numbers and stuff wouldstill be encrypted within my notes. All right, let’s quickly run downeverything that didn’t make the cut soyou don’t think I forgot about yourMy favorite node app is because you're justwatching this video to see if some guyon YouTube ended up doing the samething as you. Leave a thumbs down when Iget to your favorite proprietary orcommercial software: Obsidian, OneNote,Evernote, Rome, Logseq, Typora, Boost Note,Standard Notes, Simple Notes, Notable, whichused to be open source but isn’t anymore. Then there’s mem.ai,Notes Nook, and Google Keep—programs thatdon’t store notes in plain text,like CherryTree, Laverna, Tomboy, and TiddlyWiki. I used to use TiddlyWiki in college. I had no idea that it existed, butthat's cool as hell. And finally, Joplinand Trilium look like two niceoptions if you don’t care that notes arejust stored in a SQLite database. I didconsider all of these, though, and thecase in point is Dendron, which wouldn’thave made my cut anyway, but I loved howDendron stores notes via hierarchicallyorganized file names in a flat directory. This was my favorite method of anyprogram I considered, and I adopted asimilar system myself. Now, you may havenoticed I just threw out almost everynote app you ever considered becausethe non-commercial open sourceplain text notes software scene is aA little bit niche, I ended up with fourprograms that I really like thatprobably suit different people. In theend, I don’t think it matters what youuse, as long as you stick with it and useit to the full potential and get off theproductivity treadmill that you’recurrently on because it’s a disaster. Ipromise. Before that, real quick, threerunners-up did meet all of my criteria. Zettler is a markdown editor with areally fancy editing window. It’s gotthese GUI tables, which save as plaintext, and yes, that is very fancy. It hasthis little hidden folding bar on theleft side of the editing window. As youcan see, everything resizes and recolorsitself. It is a very beautiful program.The only minor issue I even have with itis that sometimes it feels a little bittoo fancy. You’ve got this little windowthat pops up whenever you select text,and sometimes when you try to selectsomething, the text window just tries toguess what you’re trying to selectrather than go where the cursor is. Ihave no idea why programs ever do this. You also have to control-click linksjust because it’s primarily an editingwindow. But super minor nitpicks aside, ifYou are looking for full-featureddesktop software. Zettler is by far themost beautiful program on the list. There's also Vino Note, which wow, 10,000stars on GitHub, and I have never heardof this come up anywhere once. Maybethere are some cool features, but thisreally just seems worse than Zettler tome. This is also a Markdown editor, and ithas a toggle between editing mode andread mode, except on two separatecomputers I couldn't get the read modeto work. You can't follow links fromwithin edit mode, which kind of made itunusable. I mean, this is Linux, so it'sprobably my fault for being a dumb user,but I'm just saying my experience here. And then there's also NB. If you're anerd, this is a single bash script thatruns from the terminal and organizesnotes for you. You can open and edit thenotes in whatever text editor you want. It even has fancy features like linknotes, encrypted notes, and inserting imagesinto notebooks. The only reason it's notfor me is because I can just use pluginsfrom within a text editor to do prettymuch all of this, rather than having torun a separate script alongside it. Alright, Zim, now we're getting to theReally excellent stuff! Zim is as simpleas it gets: a hierarchical list of notes. The editor doesn’t support markdown, butinstead, it has a very snappy Rich TextEditor where you use shortcuts likeControl 1, 2, or 3 to make headings, or Control Ito italicize. Attachments and picturescan just be dragged into the editor like you’dexpect. The files themselves are storedas legible plain text, but it does haveits own weird syntax, and attachments andimages are stored in a separate folder. In Zim, each note is a parent node to thenotes underneath it, meaning the notesare organized hierarchicallyrather than having a folder structure ontop of it. Basically, each folder is alsoa note. This is similar to Notion orDendron, and I personally love it. Butmost apps seem to use the folder orgraph paradigms rather than just purehierarchical notes for some reason. It’s also got all the features you might want,like tags, tables, task lists, journals,and encrypted notes. However, by default, itdoesn’t burden you with any of that crap.All of those features are available as plugins,and you don’t have to dig through GitHubor Google them; they’re right in themenus, and you just enable them with two clicks. Clicks, my biggest gripe is that thetable plugin, while it does allow GUIediting of tables, you can't tab betweencells, which makes it feel ridiculous andclunky. It's also really ugly with thisdefault green theme. You can change thetheme with GTK3 themes, but especially onWindows computers, I tried a bunch andnone of them looked good out of the box.So expect to do manual theming becauseno one is making Zim themes. If you hate software in general, if you can't standseeing a project that you like getbloated over time with pointlessfeatures, if you use Microsoft Outlook atwork and you don't understand how anemail client that you use to do threethings can possibly have so many tabs,menus, ribbons, and buttons, Zim isprobably the program for you. It ispurely what you need to take simplenotes, and anything else is hidden fromyou until you specifically enable it. Zimgenuinely makes me sad we live in aworld without more software like Zim. Alright, if you want something a littlemore featureful and a little bit nicerlooking than Zim, down from the heavenscomes this traditional stupid markdownFirst place goes to Tomboy NG, which has to be theworst-named application on this list. This software is so obscure inthe productivity space that you could barelyfind a YouTube video where someone eventalks about it, let alone an entire videodedicated to it. The Linux Experimentmentioned it for a whole minute once,which I’m positive is the most exposurethis app has ever gotten. The world has beenso consumed by their Notions andObsidian and Vim that there is no roomin anyone’s heart left for a simple,native desktop Markdown notes app. But Ilove this program. It has the snappyeditor with the Markdown preview. Thereis no stupid JavaScript stuff that pops up while you type. It doesn’t try toorganize your notes into logical blocksor guess what you want to select whenyou paste text. There’s not going tobe any weird formatting, and it has atruly customizable interface that can beas dumb and bloated or as minimalist asyou want. Again, I hate menus, buttons,and panels in software that areconstantly on screen but I never use, andyou can literally turn all of it off inQO Notes. For example, it has hierarchicaltags, meaning you navigate to a folder. And you’ve got all your notes here, andthen you can click through your taghierarchy to narrow down which of thosenotes you want to see. This is apparentlya killer feature to some people. I don’teven use tags; not for me. It’s gone. Thenavigation has separate foldernavigation and notes navigation pane, sofirst, you go to the folder that hasnotes within it, and then in a separatepanel, you click the note within thatfolder. I’m more used to a singletree, where you know everything appearsin the same pane, but like I guess Icould get used to this. But then I go tosettings, and I go to experimental, and there’s literally one setting, and itmakes the navigation look exactly how Iwant it to. It’s like the program isreading my mind. Up top, there’s anincredibly convenient encrypted notesfeature that’s easier to use than thevast majority of these apps. Thank you,and look at this: I’m synced to my nextCloud Server, and I can just check andrestore version history for every note.Does Obsidian even do this so nicely? Andif it does, don’t tell me. Yeah, you canuse Git to do this manually, but this isso convenient. And I mean, this is Linux. You can't dismiss a notification withoutopening the terminal and checking StackOverflow, but I just put in my server IPand credentials into settings and all ofthis just worked automatically. Noproblems. Maybe it's just years ofsoftware abuse that I’ve dealt with, butI just didn’t expect this feature towork with one click. I know thisis a minor thing, but this program islike whatever the opposite of "Death by aThousand Cuts" is; all these good themesare built right in. It doesn’t come witha crappy light and a crappy dark themeand like you have to go to GitHub to finda real theme; you could just pickMonokai, a real welcome change afterlooking at Zim. Like, hey, I still love Zim,but I don’t know, guys, maybe build inlike one dark theme that’s not green. Nothing gets in my way with Qo Notes;nothing pops up, nothing slows down,nothing acts in an unexpected way.There’s nothing I don’t want that Ican’t just simply hide. If I right-clicka note, I can open it in my file manager.V Note has that, but Zim and Zettlerdon’t. It’s not make or break, but it’s afive-second convenience. If I presscontrol and mouse wheel up and down. Increases or decreases the font size,which is exactly what I would expect itto do. For comparison, Zim does nothing;Zettler does nothing, and Vino works thesame way, but it scrolls the text at thesame time. So it's annoying, and yetguessing hotkeys is maybe not the bestmetric of software quality, but I don’tknow, man, when you download someone’sbootleg free GitHub project andeverything just works exactly how youwould expect, it just feels a littlemagical. The minor issues I have with itare inherent to any markdown editor. Thesplit view for markdown editors justfeels like a fundamental design problem with markdown in general. It is just thisreally weird thing. The editor doesn’thave as many fancy rich text features; itwill change your font size and colors,but you can’t display images in line. Soyou will need to look at the previewpane to see images. It does have thislittle table editor, though, and that’skind of nice. I kind of feel like thesame way as this Reddit post: Am Imissing something? Why don’t the simplemarkdown editors come up more in lists ofproductivity tools? Surely there arepeople who just need to take some notes. And don't need to spend their livesoptimizing productivity software into alife operating system. What happened tothose Apple Notes people? Surely thereare people who have seen the light, andthey're overcomplicating theirproductivity workflows. Right? Big thumbsup to Qo Notes! I know it doesn't lookvery distinct from a lot of otherMarkdown programs, but I can't emphasizeenough how I never had to dig throughdocumentation. I never had to search theweb to solve an issue, and everythingworked exactly how I expected it to. Now,before I continue, I'm about to talkabout Emacs and Neovim, and I very muchbelieve it's possible to cross the pointwhere futzing with your productivitysoftware outweighs the benefit of doingso. How much time have you wasted gettingyour Notion layout just right? Backgroundpictures here, columns just so, cute icons?Maybe you've wasted time refactoringyour Obsidian graph, moving index pagesaround, fixing and changing backlinks,trying some stupid system you saw onYouTube that works for someone else. Youare wasting time right now watchinga video about productivity. This is notproductivity. I don't care that you're onYour morning run and you just put thisrandom video on in the background. The fact that you're here means you areprone to this if you genuinely careabout being productive. Emacs and Vim are[ \_\_ ] I have spent many, many hoursdoing random things like shaving a fewmilliseconds off my boot-up time,optimizing key bindings, ortroubleshooting random GitHub extensionsthat purport to make my life ever soslightly easier. Literally, while I wasrecording footage for this video, I foundthere was a breaking change in Emacs Orgmode since I last used it, so I had toroll back to an earlier version of Orgmode, which involves pinning the oldversion of Org, deleting a directory,and re-running an install script. Thankfully,smart people on GitHub already figuredthis out for me, and this isn't common,but this is stupid troubleshooting crapthat's not your fault that you'll haveto deal with if you don't just use QOwnnodes. This is besides the initialinvestment of just learning how to usethese if you're not a softwaredeveloper. If you already live in theseeditors and you have your hyper-optimized configs, you're probablyI was already taking notes with them, so youdon't need my experience from this video. Unlike probably most people watchingthis, who care about things like free andopen-source software, I'm not a softwaredeveloper, so I'm coming from theperspective of someone who mainly usesthese text editors for notes and tasksrather than someone who completely livesin them for their job. So if you're anormal person who actually needs to beproductive, you kind of don't want this—the learning curve, thetroubleshooting, the endless tweaking. Like seriously, just use Zim. But thatbeing said, these are obviously the mostpersonal, customizable, and by far themost fun pieces of software on this list.Fun is not a productivity metric, butlife is short. Last year I had no ideawhat Emacs actually was. I saw people onHacker News touting Org mode, which justlooked like a way to fold bulleted lists,but otherwise I thought it was just someterminal text editor for Boomer diehards who use weird 1970s key bindings.As someone who has never even consideredEmacs a sensible piece of software touse in the 21st century, Emacs...really. The program is a GUI program, which I didn'teven know, because it’s so text-based.Mouse support is totally reasonable withEmacs, and it’s an intended feature, althoughyour nerd friends will still make fun ofyou for that. But it works fine, and theGUI allows for things like switchingbetween fonts, font sizes, and inlineimages — no stupid secondary markdownwindow required. Having a terminalversion of the app with most of the samefeatures means I can SSH into my homeserver and run it from any device. Havingthe text-based GUI, but also a terminalversion really gives you the best ofboth worlds. Now, I use Doom Emacs, which basically gives you Vim key bindings andeasy to modify configuration and a nicetheme, because I mean, I’m not crazy — Emacskinda sucks. But Doom Emacs makes it superusable out of the box. I did watch liketen hours of tutorials on how to set upEmacs from scratch, and then after allthat, I ditched my scratch config andkept using Doom Emacs. So what is Org mode?I don’t even know, man. It’s anotherrabbit hole on top of Emacs. It has allthe things you think it has:automatically bulleting lists, checkboxes, headings, folding. The link between files creates headings andother files; it has its own schedulingand agenda system. You can put dates anddeadlines on tasks, and it will show youyour whole agenda. This isn’t some Emacsto-do list feature that’s separate fromyour document; your agenda is built fromthe to-do list and deadline syntax inyour document. Everything in org mode isbuilt from the plain text in thedocument. It is like a dream come true. And the tables! Oh my God, the tables! Youjust start typing your content and putbars around cells, and it automaticallyformats the table for you. Tab and ShiftTab to move around and create separatorswith just two characters. Just this superintuitive syntax for things likealignment. I said Zettler is the programfor tables, but if you’re committed tothe way of plain text, I have never had abetter time making tables. And it’s notjust the formatting; you can evaluateexpressions, you can run code, you cancrunch data from within your orgdocument. It’s a programmable spreadsheetin text form. This is where org mode wentfrom okay, so it’s basically a Markdowneditor with some really nice tables toorg mode, which is a being of unlimited power. And I'm staring into the abyss ofpossibility, and I don't even know whereto start. I realize these superfancy features, like running code fromwithin a text document, are totallydefeating the purpose of vendor lock-in.But also, Emacs has been around for 50years, so maybe this one program gets apass. And on top of all of this, there'sthe Plug-In, or Org Roam as in Roam Research;this gives you backlinks in your graph,which I kind of question the truenecessity of, but maybe it's your thing.But it also gives you this reallyconvenient note capture buffer withdifferent note templates. I've got onetemplate that puts hierarchical notesinto the correct spot in the hierarchy,and then another template that storesunorganized notes in a separate directory. My system is chaos, but youknow, shut up, your system is too. Youdon't even have a system; you're watchinga YouTube video on notes apps. Anotherthing I really like about Org Roam is itstores every note with a uniqueidentifier. This means that you can linkto any file regardless of where it is inthe directory structure or its file name.So if you like to organize your notes,Into directories, or you find yourselfrenaming them, it's never going to messup your links. And I guess if any plug-indevelopers are watching this, just dothis. Why do I have to worry about whatchanging my file name or moving my filemight do to all my links? Just use thisunique identifier. It is so much better. I've lamented complicated, overlyfeatureful software earlier in thisvideo, and Emacs is objectivelycomplicated and overly featureful. Butit's also Willy Wonka's chocolatefactory for editing text. It just feelsmagical and unlimited because it's sotext-focused, but the GUI allows forthings that a terminal couldn't do. Unexpectedly, it was totally notintimidating to get started with. I foundEmacs relatively easy to pick up,considering Emacs's reputation forstupid key bindings. And I was only oneof those occasional Vim users beforethis. It wasn't some grueling learningcurve like switching your keyboardlayout. If you're this deep into YouTube,watching a video about open-sourcesoftware, you either know it already oryou're motivated enough to learn how touse Emacs. If Emacs has a main issue, it'sNot exactly snappy, no issues on my highspec Linux desktop. On Windows, it was a littlebit chunkier on my underpowered workissued Lenovo Windows 11 laptop; it wasslow. There's no two ways about it. Firefox can be slow. We all still loveFirefox, but it wasn't great. And on myphone, it sucked. And I'm not talkingabout some app I literally justinstalled, doomy Max on my phone, whichsurprisingly worked without any issues,except that it's garbage and youshouldn't do that. So, I figured my bestbet was to install doomy Max on my homeserver, so that if I'm on a slow device, Icould just SSH into my server and run itfrom there. Except that it doesn't runwell on a Raspberry Pi either. Now, youthink you see where this is going. Thisis where he's going to say he switchedto Vim because it's faster? No, no, Ibought a 500 Ryzen 7 Mini PC alongsidemy Raspberry Pi, and I specificallyoverspecced it to make sure it would runEmacs as smoothly as possible. This thingcan play AAA video games. What did you buy your home server for? Home automation,virtualization, storage? Yeah, I bought itto run a heavyweight text editor. Emacsrules! I'm telling you guys, it's notFor old nerds, it is a totally coolprogram for normal people. I’ve realizedthat Outburst does not make me soundlike a normal person. Alright, as much asI love Emacs, I find myself using a widevariety of computers, and I found myselfSSH-ing into that Home Server a lot. Whileit’s super cool that there’s a terminalversion of Emacs that basically has allthe same features as the GUI version,when like 75% of the time I’m missingthings like images, fonts, and font sizes,I’m starting to wonder why I’m goingthrough all this effort to run basicallya terminal program most of the time. Which, of course, is what led me to Neovim.Ladies and gentlemen, we have officiallyreached the point in the video where Ican make the thumbnail. I switched fromEmacs to Neovim, and 5,000 people willwatch it just to have their pre-existingopinion validated. Neovim is, of course,just a text editor, and it’s as far fromNotion as we can get. We’re giving upfancy things like fonts and images offthe bat. Now there are some workaroundsto get some kind of image support, likewith NBE, but this is a terminal program,so that stuff is obviously not firstclass. Is that you're probably not reallydeciding which plugins you're going touse for notes. You're going to use thebuilt-in org mode, or you're just goingto get the org roam plugin that goeswith org mode. With Vim, not only is thereVim versus Neovim, but conservatively,let's say Vimwiki, Wikivim, TaskWiki,Vimwikiki, neuron.vim, neuron.nvim,different project Vim detu no Tor Vim,notes, Vim table mode, New York Vim, orgmode, and Vim org mode.The list goes on and on with projectsthat don't have as easily guessablenames, and you've got Markdown, org syntax,Vimwiki syntax, Norik syntax. There are alot more options and a lot more partialimplementations, whereas org mode is sortof this monolithic, complete thing. Anyway,my notes look like this. Now I have trulyachieved my goal of turning my textfiles into slightly more organized textfiles. I'm not going to pump any particular plugins because they share alot of functionality. What really mattersis how easy it is to create, link, andsearch notes, and basically all of themare good at that, with some differencesin their accoutrements. I ended up usingnew org, which is not at all a veryMature plug-in, and some might sayneedlessly reinventing the wheel byintroducing its own syntax. But I reallydidn't want to use an Org mode pluginthat had one or two missingfeatures or differences from Emacs andthen just say, "Well, this sucks," comparedto really Max. So instead, I'm using anunfinished plugin, so it's really easy tomake excuses when it's missingfunctionality. Also, it has the best logoby far. You guys, don't make your softwarechoices based on logos. Zimphone notes—what year is it? Log seek it. Looks like a paw print—stupid. AndObsidian? Wait, what? This logo hasreactive reflections; is that even legalin graphic design? Alright, screw the restof this video. I'm going back to Obsidian,but for real, I think there are enoughother YouTube videos going over what Vimplugins make the greatest system ever.I'm a big fan of hierarchicallyorganized index pages with numericidentifiers. You'll notice that what Iwas doing in Vim was simplified from thefancy table I tried to make in Emacs. Iwas really into Emacs tables when I wasusing that, but my pages are numberedlike 202.1a, and that's my trip notes. For the Colorado Trail 200, it is hobbies.202 is backpacking. 202.1 is trips.The first trip on the Colorado Trail this way,the files organize themselveshierarchically by file name and eachnote has a unique ID. But again, personalnote-taking systems are nonsense. You dothings that I think are a pointlesswaste of time. I do things you think areincorrectly structured and are destroying mylife. Everyone has a personal system; allof us take notes wrong. You know, what doyour quote-unquote modified system do? Casting system as if every note-takingsystem ever devised isn’t just aslightly different way of organizingblurbs of text. So, is Neovim good?Yeah. Have I achieved my goal ofdistraction-free, fast, simple notes?That is obviously never going to becommercialized. Absolutely. Yes. Does thismean this is the most productivesoftware I could be using? No. I findNeovim harder to configure than Emacs. To be clear, EnvChad and DoomyMax,which are both text editor distributionsfor dummies, there’s been anotherlearning curve, and that means many morehours of tutorials and troubleshooting. Neovim does less out of the box thanAnything else? So, I have to find andconfigure more plugins; things in Neovimalso seem to change a lot. Two years ago,people were using VimScriptconfiguration files. Now everyone usesLua configuration files. Vimplug used tobe the package manager of choice, and itwas Packer, and now it's lazy. Theorganization plugin I use, Neorg, isn'teven finished, so I have to followdevelopment to see if I like any of thefuture features or if I stick my nose upat it, call it bloated, and have to gofind something else. So, I have my perfectsimple note system with a turbulentoverly customizable piece of software, butagain, it's fun. Life is short; we all haveour weaknesses. It's a weird trade-off. Myfirst recommendation to someone off thestreet would probably just be to use Zim. My mom is never going to wrap her headaround Neovim, and even if she does, she'snot going to keep up with it over time.Something's gonna break. The search forperfect software, when I already haveperfectly fine software, has neverstopped. You know how it goes. Just lookat how long this video is. Neovim iscertainly as simple, fast, and usable as Icould ever want, and Vim is super popular. And it will be supported in some formforever. But when you have perfection, whynot search for something better for noreason? My next plan is getting rid ofEnvy Chad, which is a Neovim-based configthat I ended up not really needing. Emacsdoes not resemble software a human beingwould use out of the box. Doom Emacs makesEmacs totally sane and usable. Neovim, onthe other hand, already resembles ausable text editor, and the Envy Chadconfiguration directory structure is alot more work and reading to understand.For example, I don’t need tabs in DoomEmacs; I just open init.el, find the tabsmodule, and comment it out. In NVChad, I goto lua/custom/plugins.lua, and I have tofind wherever the exact name of theplugin is documented in NVChad docs andthen set enabled to false. So yeah, stupid. The user just has to read the docs, but Ionly used Envy Chad to begin withbecause I found Doom Emacs so incrediblyuseful. And on Neovim, I think it would beeasier to actually just roll my ownconfig than to turn off all the features Idon’t need with one of these baseconfigs. I also looked at simpler editorsthat software developers seem to turntheir noses up at, simply because it’s notVim Cocoon is a really interesting modaleditor that's almost like if Vim's normaland visual modes were combined, and thekey mappings were reversed. It emphasizesa limited scope, so it doesn't includethings like window management, filemanagement, or IDE features. However, it doeshave a small Wiki and table plug-in. Ireally like its philosophy of just beinga text editor rather than an entiredevelopment platform. There's alsoHelix, which seems like Cocoon with somemore developer functionalities built in, but itdoesn't support plugins yet, so it's notreally under consideration right now. Learning and switching to such a similar,yet unique program would certainly notpay productivity dividends. However, there's apart of my brain nagging me that Cocoonis part of a very small class of texteditors that actually follow theUnix philosophy of doing one thing well,rather than becoming a shambling mass offeatures. To be clear, though, Vim is asuper useful and usable shambling massof features. I even looked at superbare-bones hipster editors like Viz andNeat VI. Neat VI is something like 6,000lines of C code, and you could forgetabout unnecessary features like mouseSupport or opening multiple files, but itdoes have a key mapping that opens afile path under the cursor. I mean,this sure isn’t Vimwicky, but this isdangerously close to the core of areally simple linked note system. We havegone too far down the rabbit hole. I justkind of wanted to take you here for the sake of it. It’s kind of hilarious that avideo that started with the words "I needa notion replacement" took us to the mosthipster text editors out there, likeCocoon and Neat VI. But if you want to bethe coolest, most suckless, most minimalelite note-taking hacker out there, Idon’t know how it’s possible to get moreminimal than Neat VI. You’d just be usingEd at that point, or God forbid, anotebook. But, and this isn’t engagementbait, just look at my channel. There’s nosubscribers; this obviously is nevergetting monetized. If you have gone someultra-minimalist software route that’snot just like one text file, I’m reallyinterested to know what’s actuallyusable for you. Anyway, I hate software; Ihate computers; I hate note-taking. Thefact that I even like four entireprograms in a single category ofsoftware, and I didn’t just end up as one. Of those single giant text file people,it is astounding to me; you should try anduse any of these or, I don't know, leavean angry comment about me dismissing log.Seek, this video is way too long, I know.This script started months ago as an odeto qo notes being such an underdiscussed note-taking platform. Then thescript shifted to, wait, Emax is actuallya great piece of software for regularpeople. The script ended up as a, Iguess I'm just using Vim plugins likeevery other nerd to take notes. This videois kind of a zazzlest finale,because there are already tons of popularvideos from Linux nerds and softwaredivs about how great Vim is. Alright, bye. Good luck in your search. Do I have hopefor you? No. If you watch this whole video,you are lost. You're just gonna click thesidebar and click another productivityvideo. You're gonna tweak your systemmore; you're not actually going to useyour notes and get things done. Amir, yes,Amir, I'm talking to you. This is yourwake-up call: stop watching these YouTubevideos and get some actual work done., Simple, Non-Commercial, Open Source Notes, YouTube, 01ka8ez0bp78zt8xjkmvtd3yte.