Note taking app for students or teachers

[Jason]

I've been taking notes for a course I'm doing. And I like some formatting but not too much. A word processor is too much, a simple notepad is too little. I found Joplin and quite like it. Along with the basics like headings, bold, italics, code formatting, automatic saves, it will also sync to dropbox, OneDrive and others. It'd be great for teachers or students but really great for anybody that needs to use it.

[ssfc72]

Thanks for the info on the Joplin program, Jason.

[Jason]

I should have mentioned the link for getting it. It doesn't seem to be in the Ubuntu repos unless I have a setting wrong somewhere. I moved back to Linux Lite so I haven't gotten everything configured the way I like it yet.

It's also cross-platform with versions for Windows, Linux, macOS, Android and iOS. There is a web clipper to save pages from your browsing (for Firefox and Chrome, probably works with derivatives, too). There's even a terminal version of the app that also works on FreeBSD! There's basic features on their main page and more advanced info on the same download page as above.

As well, I just realized it's Open Source so you can feel good about using it.

[Jason]

A word of warning. This course I mentioned started with me using Joplin and then I switched to using Zim Desktop Wiki about a third into it.

Okay, now when I back up the home directory, I don't generally back up everything. I mean .cache, for instance, doesn't sound like it's something I need to back up. The .config directory I can see backing up if I'm concerned with keeping my program settings and that's what it sounds like files in that folder do. I don't care that much about backing up program configurations.

Well, guess what? Joplin stores its notes in .config (specifically in .config/joplin-desktop/). But as I said above, I don't back up the .config directory. So, after a distro re-install and restoring my backup files, I open Joplin and my notes up to that point were gone! Ugh. If I hadn't switched to Zim then, I would have lost my notes for the entire course so there's that, I suppose. I was using the notes for review in preparation for the certification exam and I no longer have access to the course materials to make new notes. Putting personal data files in .config seems counter-intuitive, at least, to me.

But I've learned something. Just back up everything in your home directory, well except perhaps your Downloads folder, especially if it has Linux ISOs in it! Because who knows where these pesky programs will store their files. The application I switched to, Zim, asks you upfront where you want to put the notes.

[fox]

Ouch! That hurts.

[Jason]

Ouch! That hurts.

It certainly did! I was able to find a few notes somewhere else as I had made some review notes I just discovered. And they contained notes from some parts of the course when I still had access to it. So not all is lost.