Fastmail is my favorite. I tried Proton but the android app is awful. Tuta seems decent, if a bit messy. But Fastmail got my money for 2 reasons:
Do you have a Gigabyte motherboard in your PC? I’m battling the same with Pop!_OS that is related to Gigabyte mobos of a certain model. There is a fix, but I havent been able to get it to work and haven’t had time to find out why.
Specifically the B550 model(s).
I dumped Proton because the apps are awful on Android. Particularly the Mail app (even the new one. Prepaid for 3 years, didn’t cancel fast enough, now I have store credit for a company I don’t want to support. Neat!
Awful app
That’s where I went. Happy with my choice. Almost 2 years now.
I was poking around the Raspberry imager utility and they had RISC OS, which is and old operating system that was apparently fairly popular in the UK, but I’d never heard of it in the US. I loaded it up on my Pi 1 and had fun exploring it. Not exactly useful, but cool to mess with: RISC OS
Seafile. It’s super fast and lightweight. There are some caveats though:
Data is stored in git-like chunks on the server side. There is Seafuse and Sea drive functions that you can leverage to “assemble” the data on server side for backups. I personally use rclone mount, then backup.
Paywall hiding some features. The community edition is free but is missing some features that pro has. Pro edition is free for 3 or less users.
Documentation isn’t great. The forum is active so that’s helpful, but some of the docs take some time to understand
Chinese owned. As far as I can tell, there is no call home for a self hosted server, so I don’t think it’s a worry in that case.
All that said, I like it much better than Syncthing for it’s selective sync. All files on each client are synced to the server. But unlike Syncthing, it doesn’t sync all data with each client. This is vital for me with some devices with small storage drives, so I would t want all files to sync. Yet I can still reach to the server from any client and pull data from any other client. Syncthing has an ignore flag, but that seemed way more trouble to setup than just sticking with Seafile.
I work from home, so the last thing I want to do on my leisure time is sit at the same desk I’ve sat at for the last 8 hrs. So I lounge on the couch and play through my huge steam deck library. It is not a cheap device, to be sure. But I felt it was absolutely worth it for me.
Portables are the best for this, imo. Steam Deck or a used 3DS are my choices. The latter is easy to mod and play all sorts of games including the gigantic DS/3DS library.
I find both systems clutch for the suspend function. Lets you pick right back up where you were. I will say the 3ds is much better at this with clamshell design that suspends on closing the lid and it’s battery life in suspend is fantastic!
I also find stress relief games. Mindless 3rd person action games for me. Mad Max was great because I could drive around picking fights or crashing stuff. The Batman Arkham games and the Shadow of Mordor games are other great examples for me. I have not found any relaxing “cozy” games that work for me. Nothing has really grabbed my attention enough to stick with.
Pretty big caveat to that though. Joplin names the individual text files some huge hexadecimal value, unlike Obsidian (and maybe Loseq). And it appends some meta data in the file itself.
I personally felt this was unacceptable for my use case. And if Logseq’s android app wasn’t so bad, is be using it instead of Obsidian.
Was going to say the same. Obsidian has very little proprietary stuff in it, other than maybe some plugins users may elect to use. Other than that, it’s just folders full of markdown files.
Same here. Works well.
Seafile is great…with caveats that seem to bother people away from it:
Files are stored as git-like chunks on the server
Features behind a paywall for more than 3 users (Pro vs Comminity versions)
Documentation can be very confusing at times
Item 1 can be mitigated by utilizing tools like Rclone to mount the files on the server, reassembling the chunks, then back up and unmount when done. Item 2 isn’t a deal breaker for me.
It is super fast and reliable in my experience. I specify wanted the selective sync because my stupid MacBook has a tiny SSD, but I still wanted access to files from other device libraries.
I’ve tried 'em all. And I am always on the lookout for new apps that can do what I want. So far, Obsidian is the best.
Joplin: adds meta data to your text files making it nearly impossible to find anything outside of Joplin unless you export
Logseq: the closest substitute to Obsidian. The android app is almost unusable in my testing. And it’s an outlined based note app, so it requires a different mindset
Silverbullet: such a neat project. The PWA runs great on every device I’ve tried it on. That said, I find it hard to navigate and will require more learning to take full advantage of its features
Nextcloud Notes: decent if you already have an instance running. Not worth it just for Notes though. It’s very spartan, feature-wise
Quillpad: the closest Google Keep alternative I’ve found so far. Does require Nextcloud insurance to sync though. At least currently.
Acreom: very cool project. Similar to Obsidian and Logseq. Local first…unless you’re on mobile, then you are required to have an account and use their sync.
Notesnook: has great features but does not store the notes on plain text (due to encryption), which is a deal breaker for my use case
Memos: very easy to selfhost. Think of it like a personal twitter feed. Stores entries in a db file, so it’s out for me
I tested others, and many didnt last long enough in my testing to even be worth writing about. I find Obsidian’s folder hierarchy easier to fit around how my brain works. And the plain text files in folders, maintaining the hierarchy, is a killer feature for me. Lots of folks self host a sync solution. And I want to but am currently paying for their basic sync plan of $5/mo.
Something to think about, if it’s important to you. I went through this same journey. I had been using Day one, which is a beautiful app. But I began considering what would happen to those entries when I’m dead and gone. It’s important that my wife and kids can read through the years if the desire. That lead me in a search for something that has the most “future proof” journaling approach. Something that would still be easily readable without a bunch of exporting or conversion should the company go out of business.
Obsidian is one of many apps that at its core, is simple text files in folders on your local machine(s). As others have said you can self host rather than paying for their home grown sync solution. I’ve tried Joplin, Logseq, Trillium, Memos, and I’m sure there are others I’m forgetting. They have all had some level of dealbreaker for me. Like Logseq has a horrible android app. Memos stores entries inside a database, so not easily retrievable. And Joplin adds meta data to the contents of your text files as well as screwing up the file/folder names to something that isn’t human readable. So I’ve stuck with Obsidian. It’s not open source, but the file format is platform agnostic and can be read by just about any computer or mobile device made in decades.
That said, you won’t get the calendar features with dates/locations of photos like you mentioned unless someone has made a plugin for it.
I’ve found the PWA adequate for my phone usage. I found a custom CSS that is sort of a Gruvbox that I really like.
Miniflux is great. I use Wallabag as my read it later app and selfhost both on a cheap VPS. They’re tightly integrated but Miniflux supports several other integrations
Honestly it seems like Obsidian is the one matching most of your criteria. $4/mo isn’t bad for a bullet proof sync solution with version history, imo. I also have my vault backed up on each client locally for extra protection.
I’d love to suggest Logseq because FOSS, but man does the android app suck.
That said, I find Obsidian really lacks in the simple to-do/checklist function. So I use Quillpad synced to my Nextcloud server for Google Keep-like functionality. Everything else goes into Obsidian.
I have spent so much time professionally in Windows over the years that when I decided to switch it had to look nothing like it. So Mint is out. Kde as a whole really. Vanilla gnome looks kinda sterile to me. So I ended up with Pop!_OS and have been happy so far.