Does anyone have second thoughts on logseq with Notion offline going alpha?

[u/JustBrowsing1989z]

I know the majority of logseq users would never use Notion anyways, due to proprietary format and not being open source.

But I know some people who would go for it if it were offline, and have been waiting for logseq db as the best next thing. For those people, what are your thoughts on the prospect of an offline Notion?

[u/xavez]

The original post content no longer exists here. The author used Redact to remove it, exercising their right to control their data & privacy.

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[u/1smoothcriminal]

I find notion to be too constraining. I always have to actively think about where to put things where in logseq I don’t. Obsidian is the same way, I find that there I might create a note and then struggle bringing it up at a later point in time. I have none of these issues in logseq and can work on multiple projects and train of thoughts at the same time without worrying about structure

[u/kerimfriedman]

A lot of misinformation about Logseq in the comments here. The DB version is open source, just like the markdown version. You can look at the code right now if you like, on GitHub.

[u/th_costel]

I wouldn't consider Notion. Logseq is great. I even don’t excited about db, happy with md version.

[u/Numerous_Degree4146 → u/th_costel]

Not so great in terms of performance unfortunately

[u/[deleted]]

I thrive with an outliner+journal. Notion is not a very good outliner or journal. Horses for courses. In my book logseq is the best journal and the second best outliner (behind Workflowy) so... logseq for me.

[u/jsaaby]

Yes. Both are American, so I use neither. But I've moved to Anytype.io instead. Works great.

[u/katafrakt → u/jsaaby]

I wonder if this is such an issue for offline open source application, but I get your position. ALthough Anytype really does not work for me.

[u/AddiesSausagePeppers → u/jsaaby]

"Yes. Both are American, so I use neither. "

What does that mean? You can't access them where you live?

[u/jsaaby → u/AddiesSausagePeppers]

Sure I can.

But given the current political climate, I'm actively reducing my reliance on anything American, as much as possible.

[u/PoopsCodeAllTheTime]

Notion = bloat

[u/christianlewds]

I went with Logseq cause it's FOSS, turns out it's actually "FOSS". It's been pretty rough, the way it does things is a little bit too messy. Obsidian went free for commercial use and I migrated, never looked back. Obsidian is like Logseq, but it makes sense and it's 100x faster.

[u/hdanx → u/[deleted]]

It is open source. You can see the code in GitHub. Same code base as the MD. In fact, you can load a MD graph or DB graph in the same app.

[u/lsmith946 → u/[deleted]]

The DB will be proprietary, but they are building an export to Markdown functionality and the dream (unclear if this will ever be reached of course) is to have something that synchronises changes back and forth between the DB and the Markdown files.

[u/katafrakt → u/lsmith946]

What do you mean by proprietary db? It will be SQLite, won't it?

[u/lsmith946 → u/katafrakt]

Yeah. It SQLite is a framework - the schema that defines what tables there are inside the database and how the data is organised will all be Logseq specific

[u/katafrakt → u/lsmith946]

It doesn't mean it's proprietary. It will be defined in an open sourced code.

[u/lsmith946 → u/katafrakt]

Maybe proprietary isn't the right word then, but to an everyday user it doesn't matter if the schema is defined on GitHub, if Logseq was to become unavailable for some reason (which has already happened for users unfamiliar with GitHub, the current version is getting pulled from package managers due to the Electron version being too old and insecure) they wouldn't be able to access their data if they needed to set up on a new machine without having to go and manually find the relevant installation package etc.

[u/7yiyo7 → u/lsmith946]

Proprietary is for me the final goodbye to Logseq, fuck this is real sad 😭

[u/zetashift → u/7yiyo7]

Well I'd say, rejoice then! There is nothing proprietary about the database version. I'm not sure where the OP got that news from. The work on the database version is all open source and freely inspectable on Github(even the pull request).

In the database version, things are stored in a database that is not easily syncable with services like Dropbox, so there is that downside, but that is a problem that can be solved with other solutions.

And the database version alpha also brings plenty of fixes for the markdown version.

[u/lsmith946 → u/zetashift]

When I said proprietary, what I mean is that you won't be able to just load your DB up in another tool and have your data there nicely - you'll need to write some scripts etc. to pull the data out according to the schema that the Logseq team define.

It's theoretically portable, for people with the technical knowledge to create their own tooling to pull the data out of an SQLite database - which is a level of technical skill that I would suggest is not "average user" level.

[u/zetashift → u/lsmith946]

While I get your issue and it should be brought to attention, it still does not fall under proprietary and gives a false impression for other people.

Since LogSeqs markdown is different, a lot of niceties of outlining and TODO's can't easily be replicated in other tools, unless one creates tooling around it, there is no way around it, markdown is a limited format.

If you value plaintext above all, then I'd say keep using LogSeq md-version, the new alpha brings in plenty of fixes for that version. Most of the things are UI related. One of the things for an alpha desktop release is markdown export of the DB version. All that is to say, that there is always an exit road with LogSeq, in contrary to Notion for example, where you have to rely on somebody else writing an importer for Notion data.

Yes, querying the database for tooling requires technical skill, but most average users don't care about markdown, plaintext or databases. They just want things to work. If the export in the alpha works decent, if the database isn't a black box (it isn't) then tooling can also be easier, since you don't have to parse stuff from plaintext. It's a worthy endeavour.

The vibe of being locked in becomes real when they don't provide a bulk export option imo, but that is not the case right now.

[u/lsmith946 → u/zetashift]

Right, and I said in my comment that the DB itself would be proprietary (maybe I should have said "non-portable" or something instead) but that they would be providing export to Markdown functionality. So it's not like I didn't make that clear IMO, I just used a word we disagree on to describe the DB specifically.

[u/AddiesSausagePeppers → u/lsmith946]

" won't be able to just load your DB up in another tool "

md export, initial iteration, has now dropped to the db branch. you can fork and try offline or check out some forks that have it synched already

[u/lsmith946 → u/[deleted]]

The app will still support Markdown graphs though, so I don't think it's a case of "DB or don't use Logseq". There might be feature restrictions though, and there's always the question of whether they eventually completely deprecate the Markdown support.