I don’t use some of them nearly enough, but I really like Zim Wiki on desktop/laptop for the ability to link to different files in my notes. For on the go, I tend to use Joplin right now as I like that it’s open source & relatively easy to sync between my PC & phone.
I’ve dabbled a little with TiddlyWiki, but I feel like I need to learn more to really customize it more to my tastes. I’ve also been meaning to try running DokuWiki from a flash drive, as I like the wiki format a lot, but I feel like it may be a bit overkill.
I’ve seen some mention of Evernote & Obsidian here, but I’ve not used those personally. Also sorry if personal wikis are out of scope for this community, they’re just among the first to come to mind when I read the name & sidebar!
Personal Wikis fit right in, if you ask me! I too tried out a wiki first (wiki.js) and it was really nice, but somehow obsidian felt “right” to me. No Web Browser to open, local files, offline access. It lowers the barriers a lot and I can quickly open it, write down a word I’d like to remember, and close it again. It is basically a wonderful PKMS but also my favourite quick note App.
That’s one of the elements of Zim Wiki I really like, no browser, local files, offline access too. The downside being that there’s no mobile version (so far as I’m aware), and there’s some other limits, but for a desktop/laptop personal wiki, it’s been great to me.
That said, thanks to Joplin being cross-platform, it sees more use on my end, which I imagine is similar for folks using Obsidian (alongside other formatting options it provides).
The best thing about Obsidian is it follows your flow, not the other way around. I moved from Joplin (for 2 reasons, No plugins in mobile and no metadata mechanism) and luckily I moved early before making too many notes to migrate.
I wanted to learn TiddlyWiki but I wanted to be able to edit from my iOS device. As far as I remember, I needed an app to do that, one that wasn’t officially supported. So I went to Obsidian instead. I appreciate that it stores notes on your device so you are not locked in in case anything happens. And that I have an officially supported iOS app.
