Need advice about Tomboy notes and note apps in general
I'm looking for some advice on what note programs people recommend. Not a basic text editor, but something capable of doing some basic categorizing, chronological sorting, that sort of thing. I've used Evernote most recently, but I'm becoming less and less of a fan. I don't need cloud sync necessarily, although device sync could be handy. A pleasant UI (not fettered with extraneous crap) would be nice, but aesthetic appeal takes a backseat to navigation and stability. Target OS is mostly likely going to be windows 10.
What are you experiences with note apps, what are your favorites?
(A bit of context for anyone interested)
Years ago, I used tomboy notes in Ubuntu for keeping track of timesheets/daily logs. It seemed like a good program to set up for my step dad to use as well. A few years later, Tomboy notes petered out without much fanfare. I've kept his laptop running with that setup for as long as I could, but the hardware is just getting worn out (it's about 10 years old now).
So! Time to get him an upgrade. This time around, I don't think I'm gonna set up up with Linux. He isn't really up to the task of doing his own troubleshooting in linux (i.e. when an automatic update breaks something), and I haven't even been keeping up on Linux for the past few years myself. So I'm probably going to set him up on a Windows machine.
I should be able to export the tomboy notes database fairly easy, but it would be a huge load off my mind if I could settle on a decent program to migrate to first.
Thanks in advance for any input!
Currently Google Keep, but I’d like to move away from it.
I’m trying Mozilla/Firefox Notes right now. It’s very barebones, but the technology is there. I already use Firefox Sync, so once it gets more features, I’ll likely switch to it entirely.
I personally use Simplenote. It has a tag system, cloud sync and it's cross platform (there's an app for iOS, android, Linux, windows and windows 10), you can also use it from the browser.
Thanks! Even looks like there might a be script on GitHub I can use to export the tomboy notes to it. I'll definitely be checking this out!
You're welcome :)
It depends how many features you need.
I personally don't need much more than text editing, so I just create a
notes/directory and organise it all into subdirectories in there. I can name the files appropriately, and sort them based upon date created or date modified (that's baked into every OS).If it's a larger note that needs some faux-formatting, I change the extension to
.mdand use Markdown.If I want to encrypt a note, I just use gpg.
You can have this directory backed up by whatever backup approach you're already using (...you should have one anyway!).
This, to me, is the most flexible approach. It's similar to how I've come to prefer
passto password managers; in essence, it's the exact same approach with a small CLI app atop that utilises gpg underneath for encryption.I use Joplin and sync it with NextCloud, everything works well. You can sync it with GDrive, Dropbox also. It has inbuilt e2ee (if enabled), which will encrypt your file before uploading it online.