I wrote a forum post called "Three Choices New Users Need to Make" that is designed to help new users get used to working with Personal Knowledge Managers (PKMs) like Logseq and understand some of the options available for organizing your notes in Logseq.

https://discuss.logseq.com/t/three-choices-new-users-need-to-make/3411

Nice primer on set up. You're correct that these decisions will help with other apps as well. Thanks for sharing.

Steve

To add to this, the Keep Productive channel on YouTube recently uploaded a fairly comprehensive 50-minute long 'Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Logseq - Getting Started'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asEesjv0kTs

It was created by Dario daSilva, who has a Logseq-and PKM-focused YouTube channel of his own with a lot of content

https://www.youtube.com/c/OneStutteringMind

Nice one! I confess I find LogSeq intriguing but baffling – your primer should be very helpful!

Luhmann wrote:

I wrote a forum post called "Three Choices New Users Need to Make" that
is designed to help new users get used to working with Personal
Knowledge Managers (PKMs) like Logseq and understand some of the options
available for organizing your notes in Logseq.

https://discuss.logseq.com/t/three-choices-new-users-need-to-make/3411

I think the takeaway I got from the 30 or so minutes I got through is that Logseq has some privacy and other advantages (eg Markdown as default) over similar apps like Obsidian, but none of these apps are really easy enough for most users to easily decipher more than the minimum. Without constant use I think you're apt to forget a lot, and without some disciplined delving into the app (and long or multi-part user-created videos) you won't learn of the full benefits.

Logseq also seemingly has UX inconsistencies in it. For example, in the first few minutes of the video we're repeatedly told how double-brackets and tags are "the same," the main difference being that you can have multi-word tags with spaces in them only if you use the double-brackets. (Whereupon the example shown uses *both*.) If that's really true, there is no reason to have tags at all in the app: the double-brackets already do double-duty as tags, so why not promote that as a defining, and simplifying, advantage over competing apps?

I think there is tremendous potential for block- and page-embeds but I've never been particularly enamored of the Graph, which quickly becomes a useless Byzantine muddle, and which seems more like a gimmick. So I'm still looking for an app with local data (and syncing between Mac/iOS) that simplifies note-taking and outlining without needing literally hours of learning and prep to understand.

It seems to me that giong forward the most popular apps will end up being notes/writing apps which add linking while focusing on simplicity and WYSIWYG. Not a lot of those right now, but I think Bear for example is a solid, beautiful and powerful app which has done this, and is pretty affordable at $15/yr for Mac/iOS sync. (A shame I dislike writing in the choice of 7 fonts available inside the app.)

I haven't CRIMP'd as much as I should have. I installed Obsidian on a little Windows box I have. In principle Obsidian seems awesome, but it doesn't quite suit my fancy.

I don't think proves a case one way or the other, though. There is probably more value in a reasonably flexible tool that responds well to peculiarities in workflow than in a specific app for a specific way of note-taking, or planning.

satis wrote:

that Logseq has some privacy and other advantages (eg Markdown as
default) over similar apps like Obsidian

I'm not sure about the privacy (Obsidian is entirely local unless you choose to put it online) or the markdown (Obsidian only works on markdown).

Logseq has the advantage, for some people, of being open source and a block-based outlining database whereas Obsidian only works with markdown files.

Obsidian has the advantage, for some people, of very active plugin development thorough its API (despite being open source and heavily funded, Logseq is nowhere near as vibrant)

satis wrote:

It seems to me that giong forward the most popular apps will end up
being notes/writing apps which add linking while focusing on simplicity
and WYSIWYG.

I've switched to writing all my notes in Tangent Notes. It's relatively early stage but performance is very solid.
Uses Obsidian syntax, and like Obsidian, it works with folders (workspaces/vaults) of .md files. It doesn't have a fraction of the features of Obsidian, but they are all available by using Obsidian on the same folders. I actually use Obsidian more since using Tangent (I'd been switching away toward rich text apps because they suited my required workflows better).

It has a nice (optional) card presentation of the files in a folder (it's my preferred view) a simple, straightforward and usable(!) graph and has a different underlying editor (Typewriter as in Dabble instead of Codemirror). Also has an option for word processor Enter behaviour (Enter=New paragraph; shift-Enter= new line).

Also, unlike Obsidian, you can select and open a file directly using file explorer and it will open it in the relevant workspace or, if one does not yet exist, make a workspace out of the folder. I have switched from using the program's file explorer 99% of the time and work from my preferred explorers (XYplorer, Directory Opus, One Commander and Q-Dir) together with my indexed search programs. This has the advantage of being both faster and more powerful than Obsidian's equivalent (even with added plugins) and also enabling me to work seamlessly with other file formats (eg docx and pdf) as the search programs and explorers work with those too.

I find it much nicer to write in than Obsidian (less distracting, less to maintain and update) and it seems to encourage thoughtful note-taking and linking instead of the automation regarded as desirable in the Obsidian community.

Dormouse wrote:

I'm not sure about the privacy (Obsidian is entirely local unless you
choose to put it online) or the markdown (Obsidian only works on
markdown).

I take your point about privacy. I thought there was more of a difference but apparently not.

Obsidian uses Markdown but the files themselves are not .md. What’s interesting about LogSeq is that the app design gives you the flexibility of Roam (essentially a monolithic databse/ writing app) when linking between individual blocks but also doesn’t function as an online database but as a folder full of Markdown files. And Logseq will show you live Markdown rendering while Obsidian makes you switch between edit and preview modes, and offers live editable block embeddings (obsidian embeddings can only serve as a reference). It's like the best of both Roam/Obsidian worlds.

Logseq is also open source (a difference for some folks, though not necessarily an advantage to me).

Most importantly for those of us in this forum Logseq's experience (like Roam's) is that at heart it's an outliner app, with a block-based paradigm, while Obsidian is a page-based writing app. (Obsidian can use block headings but you can't edit them in other files - you can embed them with ![[..^..] but it's just the reference.) For people who live inside outliners or think in outliner form I think Logseq is generally more appealing.

Tangent Notes seems neat but I'm not trusting an app that's at v0.34beta.

satis wrote:

Obsidian uses Markdown but the files themselves are not .md.

??? - Obsidian works on .md files

satis wrote:

Tangent Notes seems neat but I'm not trusting an app that's at
v0.34beta.

That's fair enough, but it's more stable than Logseq and doesn't have the breaking changes of Obsidian.
Mostly the v is about the present absence of features that many would regard as 'essential'.

Most importantly for those of us in this forum Logseq's experience (like
Roam's) is that at heart it's an outliner app, with a block-based
paradigm, while Obsidian is a page-based writing app. (Obsidian can use
block headings but you can't edit them in other files - you can embed
them with ![[..^..] but it's just the reference.) For people who live
inside outliners or think in outliner form I think Logseq is generally
more appealing.

Yes, Logseq is an outliner and Obsidian isn't, although Obsidian can contain outlines just as Logseq can work with folders of markdown files. And the markdown headings mean that Obsidian files can work as outlines (and blocks) though only six deep - and a outliner export through OPML will condense to a single .md file. And with embeds it's easy to construct a very deep outline structure using multiple files.

But a block-based database outliner certainly is a very different design to a folder of markdown files.

Yes, fundamentally they come from two different paradigms. For me I'd rather build out from a high quality outliner than have a page-pased app that has some outlining in it - strange that Dynalist's dev didn't build Obsidian on its outliner.

My desktop machine has so many documents (more 4500+ epubs and 15,000+ pdfs alone), and I depend on sophisticated searches with HoudahSpot and Devonsphere. The writing apps I use like Ulysses have sophisticated searching, and one of Logseq's advantages over its competition is its query abilities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iuy5A9LJiVE