cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/1386745
Anytype has finally followed through on their promise and open sourced their repositories. Self hosting is now possible though there is no docker container available.
This is a major step forward for all PKMS and I wholeheartedly congratulate them.
btw Anytype is free, even their included sync service, which is the best of any offline-first style PKMS I have experienced. Anytype is top 3 PKMS for me, followed by Logseq and SiYuan. They’re in good company and now it’s only going to improve!
Resources:
Is there a description of what this is and what it is for for dumdums? I don’t really get what it is from the website.
Same - I’m very curious as to what it is and how it’s used.
I hate the jargon used in some of these app descriptions.
example: “Enhance workflow with integrated collaboration and intelligent software agents to automate your processes.”
WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU DO
This is how I feel about so many things I try to read up on.
It’s a note taking app. A bit like logseq but 100% open source.
I just wish collaboration wasn’t a year away.
Is logseq not open source?
logseq is open source, but not their sync backend. You can use syncthing, but I would prefer that the native sync would be open.
Interesting, didn’t know that. Thank you!
Just to clarify the entire Logseq app is open source including the sync mechanism, the server backend to receive the sync endpoint and store the data isn’t. I use Syncthing (FOSS and cross platform) to sync noted between my devices.
It’s quite similar to Obsidian, if you’re familiar with that.
It’s a notetaking app that lets you visualize how your notes are related to each other, and gives you plenty of options for formatting.
It’s quite neat to play around with, but probably overkill for daily note taking, unless you appreciate the UX.
Also seems to have a lot of Notion elements to it as well
It’s a more advanced note taking app, like apple notes, logseq, obsidian, notion, etc. aka PKMS (Personal Knowledge Management System).
Thanks. Also to everyone else that replied. I’ve put it in my list of things to test out if I ever get time
It’s a direct competitor to Notion, but also other knowledge management apps (Obsidian, Evernote, etc.)
I couldn’t find a good one on their site so I downloaded the app. It’s a fancy notes app with templates for a bunch of different things. The hook seems to be the decentralized sync system.
What’s that? Something like Notion, but self-hosted?
Yes, I think that’s it. Their website really don’t make it easy to figure out…
It’s like an apple advertising, lol
Now imagine the app… I just installed it, it’s UI is SO freaking confusing.
Right - I wanted to like Notion but you can’t use it without an internet connection. That’s when I found Anytype and really liked it. It’s offline first too, so no worrying about not being able to open your notes on a flight. Or in a tunnel, etc.
Obsidian is the answer imo
It looks interesting as an app, but in context of self-hosting there are couple of speed bumps:
- The server side is quite complicated. (compared to Joplin for example) It’s multiple services and it also needs Mongo, Redis and S3. Makes sense for them to do it this way to be able to scale up, but for few users hosted locally it’s quite a lot of moving parts.
- You need to compile client apps to self-host. This effectively kills this as an option on iOS.
Oof yeah if you can’t use their app store client with a selfhosted instance then that’s a major barrier. You’d have to use xcode to build and sideload it, so yeah effectively killing ios. I think that’ll come up in the self hosting discussion as that’s a pretty major omission. I assume that will be easy enough to remedy in the near future
To be fair, the onboarding experience in the app is impressively good. It’s extremely straightforward with no unnecessary buttons or steps. So I kind of see why they might be hesitant to add complexity by supporting self-hosted backend as an option.
I just tested it and it looks amazing. I wonder if there are any templates for a Bullet Journal. This software is insane feature-wise, a lot of things to play with.
I’d definitely suggest Logseq over Anytype for a bullet journal type use case - and the good news is since they’re both free you can still use anytype for anything else. I’m currently a logseq backer and it’s my main, but I discovered SiYuan recently and it’s absolutely fantastic as well. I had been using Anytype before I switched to logseq but it lacks transclusion.
IMO Anytype is better for managing projects while Logseq is better for your typical PKMS, creating a knowledge base and journaling. In terms of task management, logseq edges out anytype though they both have pros and cons, but nothing you can’t work around.
Wow, last time I checked logseq it was not that good. I hope they introduce their Logseq Sync eventually.
I didn’t like it the first time I used it either. I’m a backer to get access to the sync beta. I would say that anytype’s sync is far superior - I can type stuff on two different devices in the same line and it very easily handles the multiple inputs nearly simultaneously. Logseq doesn’t do such a good job - there’s a lot of work to do there. SiYuan is the worst of all for syncing and also the most expensive.
Just because source is available does not mean it’s an open source license. It’s still proprietary, free to use for non-commercial use only.
How does this compare to obsidian or logseq? It looks interesting, but I’m also assuming it doesn’t store data as plaintext files
That’s right - I’m not sure the format, and their markdown export is honestly pretty garbage. Though Logseq I believe is moving to a db type infrastructure as well though you will always have the choice to store in plaintext.
I prefer Anytype to Obsdiain, and I prefer Logseq to both, though primarily because logseq has transclusion support and anytype doesn’t appear to be putting that in their priorities. If transclusion isn’t important to you, Anytype is really great. It has a OOP kinda philosophy where everything is a type or a relation between types. And each type can have several templates - let’s say I create a type called journal. I can make several templates - a daily journal, a meditation journal, a therapy journal, etc. Then I can use sets and inline sets to show all journal entries of a particular type.
Speaking of Journals, I prefer how logseq handles it, with daily notes and a daily note template. I still have main repositories of notes, which I embed in my daily note template, and then I have my daily musings for just quick notes and stuff. I also have a page that queries all of the daily musings from all of my daily journals - essentially extracting the more fleeting stuff from my daily notes.
I recommend also looking at SiYuan.
Though in terms of price, Anytype is currently king as it’s completely free
Transclusion is somewhat important to me so thanks for pointing out that Anytype doesn’t support it. It does still look interesting though, so I’ll at least try it out.
I haven’t tried logseq much yet either, but it did seem more org-like than anything else which was pretty appealing to me. I was mostly just waiting to see how it matures and for it to get a good mobile app. Obsidian impressed me by supporting basically the same plugins on mobile and desktop (meaning I can use a 3rd party sync plugin on both), but there are parts I don’t like about it.
SiYuan
Thanks for this recommendation, it’s the first I’ve seen SiYuan but it looks pretty good too. I added it to my ever-growing list to try!
My top 3 PKMS of the mountain of PKMS I’ve tried are 1. Logseq, 2. SiYuan, 3. Anytype. I do like Obsidian’s ability to use plugins on mobile, but the mobile experience isn’t as good any of these 3. I will say that Anytype’s mobile experience is the best. Logseq is very buggy to the point where it’s almost unusable, and they’re slow to release fixes on that front. I think the best thing they have is allowing to swipe to adjust indentation like Apple notes. That alone makes me like it more than the rest tbh. I’ve tried Obsidian a couple times but their transclusion is really half baked. Logseq does have lots of improvements in the pipeline though, which is why I’m sticking with it over SiYuan. And if Anytype were to ever include transclusion, I’d probably switch back to it.
Wow, thank you for this! AT will become my next PKMS, their features plan are dope and in line with their philosophy about freedom and humanity. Never thought PKMS reach the deep understanding as this…
@MonkCanatella Oh, this looks good!
My current solution is VSCode with Dendron and Excalidraw self-hosted using coder.com’s code-server. It’s not perfect, but fits well enough for me as a knowledge management system.
If someone repackages AnyType as a web app I can self-host in a similar way, I’ll be over the moon.
There’s a discussion going on right now about packaging using docker compose. I’m not certain about the possibilities for a webapp. I think it’s built on electron which is essentially just a chromium tab disguised as a native app. If that’s the case it would be very easy to make a web interface
What’s the weird fetish with open source projects deliberately choosing closed source corporate-hosted proprietary public Git hosting sites?
I think it’s just the default that people are used to. It has some good features as well but I think it’s really just because it’s the most well known.
Those sites are often more fit for purpose. And more familiar to users.
@Dirk @MonkCanatella yeah… It’s a fetish. Not a weird thing to say at all.
