[lanamo]

Have a look at the German software 'The Archive' https://zettelkasten.de/the-archive , this might be what you are looking for. It is not overloaded with fancy features and is text/markdown based. Enables you to focus on your actual notes and ideas and how to connect and inter-act with them, instead of getting lost in fancy diagrams.

Their user forum is in English and is THE best ressource regarding all things Zettelkasten. https://forum.zettelkasten.de Niklas Luhmann, the inventor of the Zettelkasten system, was German, after all :)

[zolland]

I tried out The Archive, definitely a good option! My guidelines are very similar to theirs but to be honest I think I value the speed and power of my Vim setup too much to use any other text editor... so maybe the setup I described above is only relevant to people who want to also edit notes in their preferred editor lol

Although, I do think I have a small gripe with the Zettelkestan method. I don't see the point in having a large collection of small notes with unique identifiers. If I have a random thought, I will write it in a physical notebook accepting it's mortality. If I want to immortalize it, I flesh out the thought and transfer it either to it's own file, or add the small bit of info to a relevant file.

Even if I did want to jot down every small thought or idea of mine in my notes directory, the manageability difference between a single long file (for say all my small thoughts) vs. a ton of small files seems marginal to me. I do personally prefer the former though.

When your main method for searching relies on powerful content scanning (grep) and connections (tags/direct links) it doesn't really matter where the content lives. If the search is powerful and the connections are strong, everything is easily discoverable.