Onenote alternatives

Hey all, I'm a Linux baby and just discovered all my Onenote notes for DnD aren't transferable to my new machine 🙃

I've seen a few alternatives, specifically Joplin, mentioned, but what I'm looking for is an editor that lets me move notes all around or type in random places like Onenote. I found Spiral, but it's not my favorite, though it does have what I need so far, if at a very bare and basic level.

Can anyone recommend anything with the 'type anywhere' functionality? I'm not even wholly invested in it being FOSS, but this seemed like the best place to ask. Thanks y'all

54 comments

Not FOSS but I see so many YouTubers that DM talk about Obsidian for notes. I use it and love it myself, just not for DnD stuff.
Logseq and Joplin are FOSS and are often brought up. Joplins android app is garbage, if that matters to you.
Acreom isn't FOSS yet, but it's on the roadmap and I liked that one.
Notesnook is FOSS but has some features behind a paywall that might be deal breakers for some folks.
- It doesn't look like any of those have the basic feature of placing things where you want inside a page like onenote does.
  
  My big takeaway from this thread is that, wow, people actually use that feature. I use OneNote at work, and I absolutely loathe that if I click a bit too low, I end up outside my note.
  
  Logseq has a "whiteboard" feature which is the closest I've seen.
  OneNote has been the only tool Ive failed to find a close alternative to, which is a shame because I hate the new simplified versions of OneNote.
  I will say though, the linking available on Obsidian and Logseq is fantastic for d&d notes and worth ditching OneNote anyway (for me it was at least).
  
  I haven't used One Note but Obsidian lets you make canvases which you can freely place things on, kind of like a cork board.
  
  Obsidian does… sorta. They call it “canvas”. But I think it’s more for visually connecting notes to other notes, not to connect different things within a given note.
  
  I'm not sure what OneNote's feature does, but in Logseq you can make a whiteboard and embed other pages and text boxes.
  
  You can use the excalidraw plugin maybe? I guess I'm not understanding the placement work flow you're speaking of. All the options I listed are free so you can download and try them. Big feature of Obsidian is the plugin marketplace. But hey, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work.
- I'm planning on switching from Joplin to Logseq
  based on the stalled development and lack of support for mods on Joplin it seems like Logseq is the best path forward to getting a FOSS version of Obsidian and Onenote
  
  Being platform agnostic was important to me, which is what lead me to Obsidian in the first place. Joplin stores the markdown files in a SQL db that requires additional steps to export or convert. I believe Logseq also does flat Markdown like Obsidian, but it just didn't click with me for some reason.
Good luck, people are just going to recommend bare bones note apps that use markdown or something and don't allow placing things where you want them.
I've looked and looked and nothing comes close to Onenote.
- Obsidian effectively let's you do it through window panes. Literally lay out any content in any fashion. There are trade-offs but the graph view makes up for a good portion I think.
  
  Obsidian supports canvases now, which seems very much like OneNote.
- I wouldn't say barebones, but you're right in there is no direct alternative to OneNote I have ever found. It remains the product I haven't been able to directly replace.
  A lot of the products people will suggest are very feature rich, just not all the same features as OneNote. For me, the ability to draw on the page freestyle with a stylus is what I love about OneNote. So easy to annotate notes. But linking and plugins are things others have which I love that OneNote lacks.
Obsidian is my favourite. It's not FOSS, but it is totally plaintext-based, which is close to just as good.
+1 for logseq and its whiteboard. It's the reason I switched. +It's blocks(notes/paragraphs) can be reordeded. You can pay for sync between your phone and PC. But you can use sync thing which is free and once you set it up it's pretty much set and forget. I tried obsidian and anytype, but logseq just clicked for me.
+You can write with a stylus on the whiteboard if that's your thing.
- This is what I came here to recommend. Logseq is amaze balls and it's completely free and libre unless you want to donate to the project to use their built in sync.
  I pay for it since I use it on 5 devices, 2 of which I can't install things on. Logseq doesn't need Admin rights to install since it's always a portable app, but syncing is complicated without Admin rights on a device.
  Plus, it's a small team with an ethical business model building this product in beta; I'd probably donate anyway to help ensure it keeps getting development.
Maybe check out xournal++, has the type anywhere functionality
- This is the answer. Joplin and obsidian are excellent for markdown notes, but theyr arent suitable for "jot whatever, anywhere".
- also has pressure sensitive pen support
I'm still using Obsidian (free but not FOSS) mainly because of the wealth of plugins. QOwnNotes was another good option I used before. I really liked Logseq, but the deal-breaker for me was its approach to primarily being an outliner - and that modified all the paragraphs of my markdown notes as they become referenced blocks (otherwise it is great). I like to stick to standard markdown for portability to any future app.
If you're used to the OneNote desktop, try OneNote web.
I maintain my RPG groups' notebooks and have stuck with OneNote throughout - especially because it's easy to share access through the web application.
I really really liked this guy's video on note taking apps
https://youtu.be/XRpHIa-2XCE?si=eUMH1T7eezu_6v-V
It slowly spirals completely off the rails, in a great way
Notesnook
Go for the pain tier (even though it's FOSS) 100% worth it.
- Think I might skip the pain tier 😆
  
  Ahh autocorrect 🤦
Maybe note taking isn't the best direction. Moving stuff around is more design... Maybe something like draw.io charts? Or even one of the slide apps?
You can still use OneNote online or mobile.
I wasn't able to find anything even close so I just keep using One Note https://onenote.com/
Works without any issues in Firefox.
As someone who is writing with a pen I use "write". I think you can also type on a keyboard but moving things around as you want is definitely possible.
I use nextcloud notes. They are .md and work wonderfully imo. You can either edit them through nc or through the editor on linux (or vs code on windows). Tried obsidian, never got into it and its not open source.
- Doesn't allow moving sections around inside a note.
  
  I‘m not sure I understand what you mean. If I wanted to move a section I would cut and paste it. What alternative don’t I know about?
I used to use BasKet (a KDE program) for this, don't know if it is still alive.
Apart from Logseq's whiteboard feature, do consider checking out logseq's actual workflow (adding stuff in journal etc.). It does have a learning curve, but you might end up liking it more than Onenote's.
I already answered, but I'm curious if anyone else can speak to using Tiddlywiki for purposes of DnD notes. It's always intrigued me as an app, but my brain doesn't seem to want to get along with it apparently.
You can also just run Onenote in a virtual machine.
There are some good alternatives in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8accXNcwjs
Try Evernote maybe?

54 comments