TheBrain v. Obsidian as of May 2021

Posted by TempusFugit
May 5, 2021 at 07:24 AM

I have been away for quite awhile so forgive exhuming any old commentary.

For my PKM needs, I need hub/spoke/node visualization. So for a long time I have used TheBrain (up to v.11)

V.12 seems to suggest that Harlan has “jumped the shark” (US media lingo) meaning TheBrain (application) has gone too far.

While some nice improvements made, it now feels “over-engineered” as if perfunctory features have been added to justify cost of an upgrade.

As such, this forum turned me on to OBSIDIAN which at first glance to offer great flexibility and modularity.

I have not tried *Roam*, (which also seems to be a popular at this dance).

But my key essentials are graph-visualization and local PC operation (don’t trust my data easily to the cloud - absent encryption)

As it is now May 2021, I wonder if I may solicit comments - esp. from anyone who has used TheBrain in the past and may have changed to OBSIDIAN or another graphing PKM solution.

As we all know, changing is a big effort - and another reason why text/md based solutions are also essential.

Also, I am keen to be able to create a topic specific Project to publish to the web. TheBrain does this only via their own Cloud. Unattractive since in v.8 it was possible to publish to one’s own servers.

Comments from this most August body is welcome.

-TF