[mirages]

Is it me or am I the only one who took a good 3 mins to figure what this app is for ?

Sorry I don't want to sound disrespectul but I didn't found an quick and easy parsable description. If I would show this my parents, I wouldn't be sure if they could guess. :/

"Obsidian is a powerful and extensible knowledge base" ?????

[hbn]

The other replies aren't very helpful imo

It's essentially an app for taking notes and jotting down ideas, and you write them in markdown. You can link references to other notes within a note to link up ideas.

Here's a 12 minute demo that should give you an idea:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgbLb6QCK88

I'm not that quite in-depth with my usage of it. I essentially use it as a scratchpad for a few notes for work. But it does the job

[VoodooJuJu]

The reason for this is these "second brain" and "personal knowledge management" apps are rather cultish and aren't really intended for an audience outside of those already in the know - that is, the circuit of cycling through all these different apps and "productivity" games.

A similar app, Roam Research, is the same story as Obsidian, only a few chapters ahead. Roam's marketing campaign actually referred to itself and its users as a literal cult.

Ultimately, like self help, it's all just more of the same - cashgrabs that make people feel like they're improving or achieving, with every self help quip they consoom, with every "second brain" note they take.

Ultimately, they're just games for wasting time - "tool games" [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33135227

[chucky123]

Agree, I've also seen this is a rising sentiment on Twitter these days.

These tools are technologically great, but they are not 10x better than notepad.exe

The marketing and hype around these tools are self perpetuating. Some twitter guru will post about these tools and get kickback or an increase in followers. People who pay for tools post about their experience online so they can signal to other people who have paid for this tool that yes, they now belong to the cool kids club too.

And there are content creators who's income depends on these tools. They will 'review' these tools, post a review online and unknown to most people, they will be getting some money for this review under the table.

I've also seen that this is all mostly limited to tech folks who consume too much of their info from Twitter and Youtube. None of my offline friends know about Obsidian, Roam, or the zillion productivity tools that are being produced.

[realfeel78]

"These tools are technologically great, but they are not 10x better than notepad.exe."

That's cap. Obsidian is many, many times more powerful and useful than notepad.exe. It's a completely different class of product. It's virtually an operating system unto itself.

[meltyness]

We can only aspire to be as perfect as you, and your:

- blanket admonishment of others' efforts towards creativity and developing insights

which you already have and that can come only from inside your great mind.

Please fluoresce and share your brilliant illuminating light of self-made intelligence and inspiration upon us, the sheep-like, turf-sprawled, vibrating masses.

[realfeel78]

Have you even tried using it?

[tailspin2019]

I'm very aware of Obsidian, having used it on and off since the early days, but I would agree that the wording on the linked page (for the 1.0 release) seems to make an assumption that the reader already knows what Obsidian is:

> Obsidian 1.0, the all-new Obsidian.

> A brand new look. A fresh way to browse. An exciting new start.

You could also be misled into thinking this is the home page.

The actual home page does a better job of getting to the point of what Obsidian is:

https://obsidian.md

(And BTW, I recommend Obsidian, it's excellent)

[foolfoolz]

is it a browser

[tailspin2019]

No

[UI_at_80x24]

No it wasn't just you. The best I could understand was that it was a note-taking app that outputs in markup.

[Macha]

Yes, it is a markdown notes application. This is the core, think Notion but local-first (Sync is a paid extra, or you can use Syncthing or Git to DIY sync).

You can build much more complicated systems with it (I also have it as my todo app and have it pulling out todos from all my notes and prioritising them), or you can use it as a slightly nicer version of using vs code with a folder of markdown files, which was my precious system (there's also Dendron, which is the same idea but as a vs code plugin).

[UI_at_80x24]

haha, thank-you for trying to help, but ALL of the examples you used are nothing that I'm familiar with.

So I'm thinking that this is a _ME_ problem and not necessarily a 'Product Description' problem.

After installing it, and typing in a few things I notice that it's similar to ZIM (another desktop wiki app) on the surface.

I also appreciate that you corrected my misuse of "markup" when I should have said markdown without making me feel like an idiot.

[ycombinator_acc]

You weren't wrong in your use though. Markdown is one of the markup languages.

Also yes Obsidian is pretty much a wiki.

[altilunium]

Obsidian is a "personal wiki". Why we might need a personal wiki? Because installing a local MediaWiki instance is quite a hassle and organizing your personal notes by using [[WikiLink]] structure is so wholesome.

[StupidOne]

My thoughts exactly. It sounds cool and I will try it, but even at this moment I'm not sure how is this different then for example OneNote.

Again, don't want to sound disrespectful and I will definitely try the tool.

[yucky]

As a former OneNote user who moved to Obsidian, I would say it's like comparing a go kart and luxury sedan. They both technically get you where you're going if you try hard enough. And if you're not going very far maybe all you need is a go kart.

My obsidian has turned into a personal Wikipedia and it's crazy how much it's improved my efficiency.

[KaoruAoiShiho]

Can you explain what it has that onenote, evernote, notion etc doesn't?

[yucky]

Never used Notion. I only toyed around with Evernote years ago and remember it being a cluttered mess. One Note worked alright for basic notes but I noticed I rarely referred back to them. With Obsidian, maybe it's because I put the time into my configuration but I have templates for different types of notes, a tagging system that works great for grouping and reference, and the internal linking really ties everything together.

[BOOSTERHIDROGEN]

Mind sharing your setup and process ?

[TuringTest]

> I'm not sure how is this different then for example OneNote

The main difference is that your notes are stored in a readable plain text format.

But if you are interested in an open format, you may as well go the full route and use the similar open-source app logseq instead.

[1] https://logseq.com/

[Macha]

I feel Dendron is practically the more equivalent open source tool, logseq is a more opinionated tool, being focused on the bulleted sequential use case that it actually feels relatively different to use

[veidr]

It's basically a Markdown editor, except not for a single document, but a collection — which might be all your documents.

Or some subset(s) sure, fine. It's flexible. But the huge value is more readily apparent when it is all the documents (for some meaningul value of "all").

[mirzap]

It is pretty straightforward - tool for creating personal knowledge base https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_knowledge_base

[dmans0n]

If they would simply move "An IDE for your notes" from the "About" page to the top fold of the front page, we'd all have had a much better time.

[poisonarena]

its not just you, I think they could have written an about page that explains what it is more clearly. Seems neat though, maybe could replace my "stickies" app

[DMell]

Interesting - the homepage is pretty straightforward.

[Vrondi]

No, it really isn't if you're not already into this type of app (and the recent trendy buzzwords around them). What it is: A note taking app using plain text files and giving great organization views. Nowhere on the main page does it say note taking app. Nowhere. You have to scroll to find "tend your notes like a gardener" as a clue that this is a note taking app. Anyone who hasn't looked at this space for more than 1-2 years will not know that "knowledge base" is investor-speak for "fancy note taking app".

[mastax]

Not that it makes much difference, but "knowledge base" is a much older term than 1-2 years. The Microsoft knowledge base is the first thing that came to mind, which started in 2003. Tools like Lotus Notes were using the term before that, but I can't find exactly when.

This google trends graph confirms my suspicion that it was a more common term back then: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=K...

Out of curiosity I tried to find older references. There are references using this definition back to at least 1995. Beyond that it's trickier because apparently "knowledge base" was used to describe the knowledge available to an AI system during the expert systems era, which is a somewhat different definition. e.g. Lehnert 1977: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED150955.pdf

[shinryuu]

Think a journal / notes application on steroids.

[simlevesque]

What part of that sentence don't you understand ? It seems straightforward to me.

[QuackingTheQ]

knowledge base is buzzwordy. it's a very elaborate (and good!) note taking app.

[TuringTest]

This recent breed of note-taking tools (Obsidian, Notion, logseq, Roam Research) are aimed at enabling a style of personal knowledge base known as networked thinking, which attempts to facilitate the emergent creation of new knowledge by connecting related ideas in your notes.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Vester#Networked_Thin...

[realfeel78]

Of those, Roam and Logseq definitely are, but Obsidian and Notion are much more open-ended in how they can be used, although I think the Obsidian community online does tend to overindex for that kind of usage.

[simlevesque]

Would you call a private wiki a note taking app ?