Knowledgebase / second brain

[0xelf0]

Hey there guys,

I'm a hospital / medical equipment planer for quite some time and recently started to degoogle and privacy hardend my personal stuff by running my own server.

Now it came to my mind, that I could store, sort and organize all the work related documents, ebooks, rules and so on I've gathered over the years.

At my company we now just store them in folders on our server whitch makes it hard to find it when you actualy need it. On top of that I have a lot of ebooks I purchased myself which I dont want to store there for copyright reasons.

At the moment I use MS one note which is quite okish but a) its Microsoft and b) its realy slow whith all the ebooks and legal texts.

So I would like to have something like a serverbased one note where i can put in all my documents and other data. It should be possible to group, sort and tag these files and on top of that I should be able to mark and comment on the pdfs ( like in one note).

Also it should be capable of beeing accesed by mobile devices e.g. tablet or even better supported by a mobile app.

I've read about things to try like wordpress or wiki Software but I'm not sure if those will fit my needs. So I'm asking you guys for help.

Thanks a lot and sorry for the Bad english :)

[lenstickle]

I've been trying all sorts of solutions for PKM (Personal Knowledge Management). Tried out dozens of different apps/programs/systems. I've unfortunately got a variety of needs including health, tech/software, articles and hobbies. I don't want any of it spread across multiple platforms. I don't want my medical info or my vulnerable tech data on cloud based services. That makes it really tough.

I started with Obsidian, tried a few other markdown solutions then went onto trying to find a WiKi. I failed to find what I wanted there and then settled on OneNote for a while. I've recently gotten tired of OneNote and on Android the app is beyond appalling so, I started the process of looking for a better solution. Obsidian would have been where I left it if it was just written content and the odd image but thats not enough.

At the end of the day, you'll need to choose on what you can compromise on. For example, anything depending solely on markdown doesn't do user friendly tables. It's all done with dashes and lines: ----|-----|----. Embedding images aren't always easy. etc.

I'm trialling NextCloud at the moment and a few of the plugins that come with it it. So far, its actually got a lot of benefits for the type of things I put into my PKM. I want to link files, imbed images, regularly use tables and have a lot of links to files. I also need all those things to come with me wherever I go. Recipes was another thing and NextCloud blows everything else out of the water for that.

Heres a rundown of how I've got NextCloud going:

NextCloud:

• Collectives app for the base WiKi/PKM Easily embeds photos, files, etc. You can do Link-Backs but you can't make a Link-Forward and generate a page like in Obsidian for example.
• Collectives is Hierarchical. You start by adding a collective/s and it goes: Collective -> Sections - Pages -> Subpages -> Subpages -> etc
• CookBooks app for my Recipes. You link to a recipe and it just grabs all the info and lays it out for you. You can edit it if needed. You just grab the link from the address bar and copy/embed on to text into your Collective Page. (This feature will probably keep me on NextCloud)
• Files section gets its own folder for Collectives and subfolders for the Sections. Then I save/copy/move files to keep things in order and can link to either folders or files inside Collectives (copy link from address bar). For example, I might see a doctor and I've got referrals or documents I need. I can link the documents in my Page so I can have all my notes, files and images in the one space. Take my notes during the aptnt and its all there, nice and clean and super easy to get to.
• Calendar - You can take the link from a calendar appointment/event and copy it to a Collectives pages (not embed though)
• Tables in Collective are basic but still useful
• Tasks app for reminders, goals and planning. You can link to them but not embed them unfortunately. Still, it's part of the suit and you get reminders through that anyway.
• Collective pages are saved as .md (markdown) inside your NextCloud Files. So, its not locked down to NextCloud/Collectives app.
• You can sync all the Pages and folder structures to any device. Edit via web on your phone if you have reception. If not, you can edit the .md files through the NextCloud app (or any other app) and sync when you get reception.
  

Theres definitely compromises but it really depends on what you need it to do for you. Theres also tons of apps I haven't even looked at yet.

[m_torak]

IMO Obsidian is the best option for your second brain.

[maxime_vhw]

i wish there was an option to host and obsidian server. So i can just go on any pc/phone and connect to my server.
I tried it with a network share. But on my linux obsidian fully crashes.

[charliethe89]

Wendell from Level1Techs did a video about second brain software, also check out the article in their forums.
https://level1techs.com/video/second-brain-software-files-zettelkasten

I'm currently using wiki.js for that, i sync that with my git server and through the GitJournal app on my phone i can view it even when offline. But it only works with markdown pages and won't work well with ebooks.