Tag Archive for 'Zettelkästen'

QOwnNotes and Zettelkästen

Published on December 17, 2025 in Computing Notes.

I love Joplin, but Joplin seems more like an incredible file cabinet and set of bookshelves. It is possible to link from one note to another, but a Joplin icon appears by that link in the text. It can also be cumbersome to navigate between multiple documents while working on one. Joplin recently added the ability to open documents in a child window which really makes the problem wonderful. QOwnNotes includes an excellent Markdown Cheatsheet that one can open in a tab. I am looking for a solution for the extensive file cabinet, and one for the rough drafting. QOwnNotes syncs with Nextcloud.

chmod +x QOwnNotes-x86_64.AppImage

This .AppImage file not extract via the normal method. Running the AppImage works, but an extraction to squash-fs fails as it leaves nothing in the folders. It is necessary to run it directly from the .AppImage file.

When creating new notes, they automatically receive file names like Note 2025-12-17 20h10s34. From this, I remove the word note and add a title and tags so that the name may serve me well in the future.

A local mirror of the source is available on this website. A local mirror of the AppImage file for version 25.12.6 is available on this website. The developers release the source and binaries on Github. The web companion for Firefox and LibreWolf is online, as is the Chrome extension. The web companion features seem to require more scripting than I am comfortable with for them to work. The number of Linux distributions for which for which one may download via official repositories is very impressive. Zettlr remains prettier and more fun to type in, but QOwnNotes builds documents that are ready for a simple copy-paste into the WordPress editor for publishing.

Nothing can replace Joplin. Joplin recognizes the reference style links of QOwnNotes, and the preview with preformatted text fields for code copy-pastes perfectly into WordPress. Joplin is a definite winner. Especially with the MDI interface.

I tried all these apps, and settled back on Joplin, but Zettler is fun to type in. Zettlr is for making a book, and Joplin is for making a reference library. All of this experimentation leads to me deciding to use Joplin better. Zettlr makes it easy to link existing notes by simply starting to type. The readability feature in Zettlr is also very helpful and helps me focus. Joplin can also use Zettlr’s footnote features.

This entry may have meandered a bit. I have settled on Joplin or organizing and remembering and and Zettlr for crafting. I will post completed pieces via Joplin preview to WordPress.

This post used Joplin 3.4.12 on Debian 12 and Zettlr 3.6.0.

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Picking a tool for zettelkasten

Published on December 15, 2025 in Computing Notes.

It is a very challenging thing to pick a tool to invest time into building a personal knowledgebase. I have used numerous tools over the years and collected a huge number of documents and notes. Logseq integrates with Zotero which might prove useful due the gigabytes of material that I have stored there. My plan was always to start writing sometime in the future. All of that material would be analyzed, quoted, and used to support some argument.

Zettlr offers the most typerwriter like view, and lacks some of the more advanced features. It is therefore the one that I am going to select for document construction. The simplicity and feature set of the program has proven itself conducive to my needs.

Joplin will continue to play a role as a my giant syncronized and backed up file cabinet.

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Discovering Zettelkästen

Published on December 14, 2025 in Computing Notes.
I discovered Trilium.  The license is great.  The software is mind-blowing.   I found it as part of my desire to migrate away from Obsidian. They have a repository at https://github.com/TriliumNext/Trilium.

Via an advertisement there, I discovered https://www.warp.dev/code which looks like an most incredible resource.   That may be how applications like Trillium have such incredible documentation and coding. There are 271 contributors, and the documentation and features are incredible and beyond anything else I have seen in a note taking application. This piece of software and the mind blowing quality of the documentation and feature sets has made me reconsider Deepin with the local integration and Deepin IDE.

The problem is that the Trillium notes are in a database, whereas Obsidian’s are in mark down. I discovered Zettlr, whose notes are also in Markdown, and discuss that below..

I discovered https://www.zettlr.com/ from a discussion at https://www.xda-developers.com/found-open-source-app-like-obsidian-except-its-better/.

From that, I discovered Zettelkästen. More specifically, I learned what it was via Zettlr. The Zettelkasten method involves cross-referencing one’s knowledge base so that one can find relationships between concepts and create a living knowledgebase with minimal forgetfulness.1 Zettlr contains the ability to insert snippets using variables for the date, time, and unique ID numbers. This is something that I had been trying to do of my own accord using various applications over the years.

Obsidian has a great preview that one can use to directly copy to blogs and product great entries with links intact. It looks like Obsidian took Trilium’s preview and Zettlr’s markdown and file management to create their application. All three share a very similar sidebar and navigation motif.

I consider Obsidian to be like many Minecraft modification developers in recent years. They take a lot of permissively licensed opensource software and then wrap it in an all rights reserved vague statement and do not share any code or redistribution rights. Many minecraft mods say all rights reserved, which is not really a license. They incorporate and link other libraries. Java itself uses a classpath exception so they do not become GPL because of that, however when the mods rely on other libraries that are GPL, such as other mods, and then hide behind “all rights reserved” it really breaks my heart. One would think they would want their mods available at many different sites and not only the website they uploaded them too.

Electron is MIT licensed. This is not an accusation. This is my opinion. I suspect Obsidian used Trilium notes and possibly Zettlr code and is not compliant with the GPL. That is my opinion only. Trilium notes even comes with server software. The Obsidian Webclipper is great. Yet it irritates me to no end that an open source foundation, like Electron, and possibly some of the precursors of Obsidian, made the way to a piece of software that says you cannot even redistribute the binaries. They could go out of business, but with binaries around, people could use that great software for ages. The situation is contrary to the Linux ethos. I could be wrong, and they pulled their code from Memos, which has a very similiar interface. The Memos code is at https://github.com/usememos/memos. Memos is another project sponsored by Warp. I am not accusing Obsidian. Logseq is another GPL project with a great deal of similar features and buttons, and is available at https://github.com/logseq/logseq.

I am stating that it is very strange, and perhaps some AI agents are using GPL code and the downstream products are not GPL as they should be, but that is my opinion only.

  1. https://docs.zettlr.com/en/advanced/zkn-method/, retrieved December 14 2025
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