I've no problem with using LibreOffice for most of my document needs, but i haven't found a good substitute for microsoft's OneNote yet. I mainly use it to plan my RPG games and it helps a lot. What alternatives are there for organizing notes on linux, with similar features to those that OneNote provides?
I am surprised that no one has mentioned Rnote yet.
It is my favourite newly-created program for Linux. It is a relatively new app which supports annotating files and taking handwritten notes. You can import PDFs, set the page size to infinite or a fixed size (something OneNote can't do), adjust the background to display grids or lines or dots or nothing with any spacing you like, input text with your keyboard, .... It is available on Flathub for easy installation.
The only major downside is the following: Disclaimer: The file format is still unstable. It might change and break compatibility between versions.
For text-based notes I use Obsidian.
It isn't open source, but it writes standard markdown files to disk, so I can switch programs whenever I like and I am not locked into the Obsidian ecosystem with my notes. That was the main reason why I decided against using Joplin, especially after my experience with converting recipes from Nextcloud Cookbook to markdown ...
In general I am always trying to find a simple file-based solution for whatever I need to do. I want to be able to sync it with Syncthing instead of something fancier that requires a centralised web server or even relies on a cloud service.
Did you know that you can even sync your note using git and thus a git remote server for syncing? It even works with iOS 😃
I'm not sure what features of OneNote you are talking about, but maybe logseq will suit your needs.
You might look at these relative newcomers to this category of app...with some caveats for why I haven't switched from Obsidian.
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Acreom - Not open source yet, but planned. Flat markdown files like Obsidian and Logseq. Dealbreaker for me is that in order to use the app on Android, you have to sign in with Google, Apple, or Github and use their cloud for sync. I'm trying to convince the dev to allow their "local first" mantra to permeate all versions of the app regardless of platform. He is very receptive, so we'll see. If they do, I can see myself switching to Acreom instead of continuing with Obsidian. But that's the beauty of open file format, you can pack up and leave very easily!
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Notesnook - Is FOSS. But not self-hostable yet. That is on their roadmap. Potential dealbreaker is that it doesn't support markdown, rather shortcuts that behave similar to markdown syntax. As a result of that and their E2EE, the file format is not as open as Obsidian and others that use simple .md files.
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This came up a few days ago in another community, and it sounds like the poster may have actually had a similar use-case to your own.
I want to like libre office, but every time I have tried to use it, it ended up crashing eventually
Obsidian could work, its a markdown editor but I doesn't have any handwriting or drawing support, also its sync feature costs money but you can use nextcloud or github to sync your stuff anyway. An opensource alternative would be logseq but I prefer Obsidian
10+ years ago there was something called Basket Note Pads that had the same blank canvas style note taking that onenote has now.
My heart broke in two when the project died because the metaphor wasn't popular at the time. It'd be so well positioned if it had stayed in development until today.
I've tried Joplin, Logseq, and Obsidian. The best one was Obsidian but it's not FOSS and is getting bloated over time.
I'm settling on zk now. This small command line utility solves almost all of the note managing needs for me.
Double links and tags make me forget about these "infinite free board" functionalities in OneNote: turns out they tend to be used inefficiently. Graphical sketches can be embedded in markdown or linked to a drawn picture.The best thing about zk is that its notes consist of plain text and no extra tracking data is required outside of the file (unlike any others above), which means it's absolutely free to pair it with / move on to other tools when needed, or working temporarily without the support of it.
Siyuan is probably the most advanced note taking app out there right now. Affine.pro is also a good one Appflowy is also good. All are FOSS.
Rnote is currently the best for handwritten notes in my opinion, but its organization is minimal. I have never found a 1:1 replacement for OneNote, but luckily I no longer need it desperately like I did a decade ago.
Some which I can think out of my head are : Joplin Trillium Logseq Notion Obsidian Anytype
If you need to draw, I would look into notion and obsidian.
I'm new to windows as a service desk guy and one note is the only thing I have available. I just wish I knew how to get the best out of it for templates I throw into notes and incidents.
I was asking a similar question a few months ago, and my search turned up Joplin. It's a free, open source app that works across multiple platforms and can sync data through a cloud service, either through Joplin's own cloud storage or through a third-party cloud storage like Dropbox.
https://joplinapp.org/
