TL:DR; Has anyone here successfully migrated their data & workflow from Logseq to Silverbullet?
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I’ve been using Logseq for a few years and it has been a life saver at work, trying to track the stuff going on - honestly, I’d have burned out if I hadn’t found it.
However, I still haven’t quite got all the things organised and I feel Logseq’s development is taking a different track that I don’t want to go down (db, collab, etc)
SilverBullet.md appears to be developing into the solution I’m looking for… although I don’t want a server-client architecture, so I’m running it standalone at the moment.
But, the learning curve feels so steep it’s tending to curve back on itself… or… I’m just too busy to focus on learning it.
I see how the file structure works, but I don’t understand how the templates, journals, etc work (really simple.in Logseq)
It appears to be 1 person developing this with lots of helpers who all seem happy to chip in with some AI generated code in the forum, but no meaty documentation, examples, etc.
If you’ve read this far… is it worth sticking with? Is there an FAQ I’ve missed? Any pointers or encouragement…?
I’ve been using foam with vscode. It’s not programmable like Silverbullet is, though, I don’t think.
Not heard of foam…
I’m not a programmer (as a day job), so I don’t use vscode, which makes me think I’d be learning to use the “wrong” tool for the job (for me), but I’ll take a look, thanks.
Hey, I’ve been using silverbullet for a year or so. The first thing that I will say is that if you don’t care for client/server I would suggest just keep markdown files in a folder, that’s very portable and there are tons of plugins for editors to track that, that’s what I was doing before Silverbullet, and way before that it was org-mode which I still miss a few features sometimes. I’ve never used LogSeq, for any extended period so can’t talk about specifics there.
From my experience these are the things I like about Silverbullet:
- It’s mostly markdown, this means that if I ever have an issue with SB I can just access the files directly
- Client/Server means I can add quick things from my phone/tablet/different computer very easily
- Sync mode means I can edit even when offline and have it sync later
- It is extremely hackable, if you can program you can make it do what you want and it can be amazing at times
And these are some things I dislike about it:
- Syntax doesn’t seem to be stable. I have some old files that don’t draw tables anymore because something changed in the extra syntax they have for queries.
- It is very bare-bones, it doesn’t have the bells and whistles of other larger products and it never will, it’s not what it’s about.
At the end of the day I think it’s a great tool for what it does, but you should understand what it is. If you’re expecting charts, diagrams or similar you will be sorely disappointed. If you expect a solid note taking app I think you’ll be very happy with it.
Thanks for the insight.
I need a UI that I can navigate links between files / topics / dates, so whilst I agree about the editor point (I use Markor for quick notes / edits on my phone), I need to be able to look up points during live meetings.
And to your last points, yes, I’m trying to understand it, but it’s on-ramp is an almost vertical wall for a complete starter like myself… but maybe I’m hitting it too fast
It seams tempting, because Silverbullet does look nice, but unless you want to become a maintainer I would not recommend you adopting it. Every maintainer is always just one step away on losing interest. There can be external factors like job change or internal factors like another interesting project. Both you have no control over and both are totally fine, because the maintainer doesn‘t owe you anything. Also especially in web dev the next breaking update requiring a lot of rework is just around the corner.
TLDR;So try it out, may be have a look at the code, but don‘t make yourself dependent on it.
Thanks, yeah, this is kinda what’s happened with Logseq.
Same here. Silverbullet looks tempting, markdown files and roughly the same feature set as logseq. I tried it out for a few minutes but did not go further.
What holds me back
- there is just one maintainer. What if…
- migration would take some work
- I’m lazy and haven’t tested it out yet
I use logseq and mainly the tagging/ backlink feature (frontmatter and inline) + the usual md language to structure my personal knowledge. Very few queries which I would have to rewrite.
I do not have a real reason to switch away from logseq. It works well enough. There is the occasional full text search search bug which can be circumvented with ripgrep or the like. It takes quite some time to start up - once or twice a day. Otherwise it works.
You say they plan to drop the md support in favour of a DB? Would you please provide a link? Thanks.
Thanks!
For the interested: They’re working on a logseq edition with db backend as a basis for real time collaboration, better performance, data loss prevention during sync.FAQ states:
Are you going to deprecate Markdown files support? No, we’ll continue to support both file-based and database-based graphs, with a long-term goal of achieving seamless two-way sync between the database and markdown files. This will allow you to leverage the benefits of the database version while still being able to use other tools.
It looks like, for the moment the md version is there to stay. I’d very much like that, because syncing with git or syncthing.
I’m not sure how useful the collaboration part will be for me. Other tools would have to make room for it in our workflow (ticket system, wiki).
Yeah, personally, I think they’d gradually make it db first and then markdown will gradually become an import / export function.
And I don’t need colab… my notes are mine. Yeah, there’s a few I share (ie home stuff with my partner), but for work, personal stuff, nope… just me.
But yeah, after ~3 years of almost daily note taking for work, it needs a computer with SSD to find things quickly and can take a while to start on the phone (hence using Markor to edit the .md files directly instead)
To your original post, yeah, single maintainer… but Logseq has how many? And it’s stalled really… from an external viewpoint.
I think SilverBullet has a slow steady pace rather than Logseq’s fast initial pace and then … nothing much since they got lots of investment - which someone will want back.
There’s always org-roam. Wide adoption, plentiful documentation, ports for nvim, etc.
Haven’t tried it yet, but I’m playing with the idea of switching from Logseq to that and I at least the two-way linking works similar afaik.
Ok, not even heard of that one, I’ll take a look. Thanks
