Tools I use: Joplin 📔
In 2021, there are a lot of great tools, both online and offline, that are available for technical note taking and knowledge management. In this post I will describe how I use Joplin to meet both my note and wiki needs.
#notes #notetaking #wiki #knowledgemanagement
Requirements
Some of my personal requirements in a note taking application.
- offline first
- markdown support
- export to pdf, html
- ability to sync to a variety of sources
- package available on GNU/Linux
- low resistance note taking
- folder, subfolder, tagging organisation paradigm
- some cross platform support
Joplin Workflow
The main layout for this application is divided into:
- notebooks (and subnotebooks)
- individual notes (notes or todo format)
- the editor, and the preview pane
That's pretty much it! It lets me focus and get to creating notes, categories, and tags quickly and without any resistance. What do I mean by resistance? Well, not having to do this in a browser is a plus. Also not having to share markdown authoring with with my IDE is also a bonus.
Some examples of my notebooks:
- programming
- cybersecurity
- blog
- ideas
- scratchpad
Sync/Backup
- I sync my joplin files via
rsyncto my NAS on my local network regularly. - Joplin also supports S3 sync. I plan to set up cloud-based sync to Backblaze B2 as a secondary storage for my notes as well. The cost for this should be a few cents a month to store. B2 has server-side encryption similar to S3.
- Stay tuned for a tutorial on this!
Shortcomings
- No git support – since Joplin uses a sqlite database, it is not able to sync with git. Hopefully that can be added in the future!
- Open source, community developed – whilst overall this is a positive, it also means there are some limitations on how and when new things get implemented.