#Logseq honest review
๐ข #FOSS with AGPL license (in theory)
๐ด In reality it depends on a closed source module responsible for sync, dubious legality and misleading
๐ก Developed almost privately by a Venture Capitals funded company but accepting small contributions on GitHub and donations on OpenCollective
๐ข Store notes in #Markdown (or in less supported #OrgMode) locally
๐ก Forces indented lists in .md files and it doesn’t support normal paragraphs at all
๐ก Introduces syntax that breaks Markdown in a very bad way instead of using code blocks where possible (in Advanced Queries?)
๐ก Based on Electron, NodeJS and NPM
๐ก UI and business logic mixed together, it forces you to always run the whole UI, including for sync
๐ข Available for Linux on FlatHub (unofficially)
๐ด AppImage is the only officially supported way to install on Linux
๐ก No official reproducible builds but unofficial Flatpak ones are reproducible
๐ก Not in F-droid (and the closed source sync feature wouldn’t be allowed there anyway), you have to grab their APK manually or automatically
๐ข Supports Wayland but not by default
๐ข Custom CSS
๐ก Fixed UI, no tabs, no split view
๐ก Multi-window means multiple conflicting whole instances
๐ข Plugins platform
๐ด Plugins marketplace based on GitHub
๐ก Poor integration of plugins especially from UI/UX PoV
๐ข Very interesting concept of PDF annotations
๐ก PDF annotations not stored in the .pdf as standard annotations
๐ก PDF annotations stored in their own .md files with odd names
๐ข LaTeX formulas support
๐ก No native PDF export and in general problematic
๐ก Too many menus, command palettes and other redundant UI elements
๐ข Queries with simple syntax and UI
๐ก Advanced Queries are too often needed
๐ข Datalog query language in Advanced Queries
๐ก Very broken aliases feature
๐ก Inconsistent requirements of capitalize, lowercase etc in query syntax and elsewhere that even break some functionalities
๐ข Macros
๐ก Macros don’t work with most syntax, including Advanced Queries
๐ข Supports HTML and Hiccup syntax
๐ข Supports embedding Web pages using iframes
๐ข Sync is e2e encrypted
๐ด The code for e2e encryption can’t be audited because it is closed source
๐ก Tons of functionalities must be configured by editing a EDN file that it is very easy to break
๐ข Forum based on Discourse
๐ด Use (and abuse) of Discord, even release announcements are made there
๐ก Some Matrix bridges
Concept: 8/10
Execution: 5/10
CC @logseq
Given the points above and the fact I backed #Logseq for a long time but addressing these issues may require years and maybe the project won’t survive anyway that long, what should I do? Move to a simpler but better supported system like #Emacs or wait and hope Logseq team figure out priorities?
Recent “AI” (sigh) native integration in Logseq (using OpenAI according to a GitHub branch of theirs, again zero communication by the team) lower my hopes a lot.
If they take money from people they should make clear what it will be used for.
While a fork won’t be supported financially by most current MacOS/Windows users, there are many possible improvements for those who care about privacy, including the removal of OpenAI integration.
But since Logseq is still under heavy development a patched version would make more sense than a hard fork.
See for example Bromite browser that is based on Chromium for Android but with many privacy-oriented changes.
About Dendron: being tied to VS Code made it too much developer-oriented and couldn’t attract the average PKM users.
I don’t know much about Athens but I think that Logseq being a good and probably better alternative was a driving factor.