mjotad

Hi MountainDweller, The solution I have settled on is Obsidian. Linux is fully supported, and the "database" is local. I put database in quotes because your notes are stored as normal files rather than in a monolithic database file. For me this is an advantage, as notes are accessible using different editors should I so wish. The notes are formatted in markdown. It's a format which seems to attract an almost evangelical following for some reason. While I'm not such a big fan of it, it has the benefit of being open and universal, and is a good basis for conversion to other formats if I move on from Obsidian at any point. At the moment I use the freely available Syncthing to synchronise notes between two Linux laptops, my NAS, a couple of Chromebooks (running it under Crostini), and my android mobile phone. It has worked perfectly so far. I could see myself paying for the Obsidian subscription service at some point in the future in order to support the company, but the current solution is fine. The mobile app is a little bit more basic than the desktop client, but works well to access my notes on the move. It's rather slow to start up, though, which discourages me from using it for quick note creation. When I saw the effective abandonment of the Evernote Linux Beta programme back in March, I took the decision to prepare for the inevitable and move my notes out. I backed up each notebook in Enex format, and used the Yarle tool to convert each notebook to a folder full of markdown notes. These imported very easily to Obsidian, with remarkably little loss of formatting or data. I think that of about 8000 total notes, maybe a dozen lost information in the conversion. I started trying to learn Obsidian and adapt my workflow to it (and vice-versa). Within a couple of weeks I had taken the decision to put no new content into Evernote. There is a learning curve to Obsidian, and it's easy to feel a bit overwhelmed initially. There are uncountable blogs and tutorials and YouTube videos all recommending hundreds of different plug-ins and themes and configurations and workflows. You can and should ignore almost all of this to start with. Keep it simple and try to just get stuff done rather than being distracted by all the shiny new toys. I have ended up with about six or seven plugins which make life a bit easier and make it a little closer to how I used Evernote. I am probably at least as productive as I was with Evernote, although I do miss the ease and slickness of the last Evernote linux clients.

Thanks for the suggestions. I have, previously, used the legacy windows client in a VM to allow backups, before the linux beta was available. Problems with this: it's a sizeable overhead in disk space and memory just to use Evernote, and one of the places where I used the linux client was in crostini under ChromeOS where a windows VM isn't feasible. The github project is a good tool, but there is no guarantee that Bending Spoons won't make changes to the API that stop it working. For me one of the absolute requirements of a service is the existence of an officially provided and supported method of getting my data out of it in reuseable form. This, amongst other things, is why I've never bothered trialling services like Nimbus. As a "hardcore Linuxer", who hasn't used Windows for more than twenty years, I'm accustomed to hacks and compromises to use Evernote in a Linux environment: running the windows client under Wine, using a VM, using Nixnote or various unofficial frontends for the web client, and accepting that some of its functionality just isn't available to me. With the very cheap grandfathered Premium subscription that I've had, I've been willing to put up with that. At the much higher price that I would have been paying from the end of October, I would expect the same level of access to my data as other users. Since that isn't on the new Evernote's roadmap, I have regretfully had to find an alternative. There are plenty of them which offer equal support to Linux, Windows, and Mac users. I am fortunate to have a found a solution which I've been able to adapt to my needs, but truthfully I would much rather have been able to stay with Evernote, higher prices notwithstanding.

1. Ability to export/backup notes Less importantly, 2. Import folders

This is wrong. The last version released to beta testers was 10.53.2, well after the Bending Spoons takeover. In somewhat shoddy fashion, they didn't bother updating the supposed latest version shown in the sub-forum description beyond 10.29, but releases continued nonetheless.

This feels a little like a chronicle of a death foretold, after seven months of no updates and no communication about the Linux client. I think the decision is a great pity, but it is good to finally have a definitive and official statement on the matter. For me this removes my last doubts about letting my subscription lapse when it comes up for renewal in October, after twelve years. I'm not willing to put more information into a system that won't give me an official method to export it if I so wish. Nor do I wish to have to pay the same (increased) price as Windows and Mac users in order to receive a more limited level of access to my notes. I will say that it seems to show a limited view of what "cross-platform" means, and to be throwing away one of the clear tangible benefits of having made the switch to the common Electron framework for V10, with all the ructions that that caused. Still, at the least the situation is clear, and there are plenty of alternatives which do see the value in being truly cross-platform.

Yep, that's probably all correct. I drew my conclusions a couple of months back and exported all my notes to Obsidian. Haven't been putting anything new into Evernote since then, because I don't want to waste time and effort if the Linux client is going to be abandoned. It's a real shame though, because the Linux beta has been excellent and reliable for at least a year and a half now.

This argument gets trotted out frequently, although it's based on statistics with a fairly questionable methodology behind them. However, there are quite a number of applications competing in the same space, developed by much smaller and less well funded teams, who find it worthwhile and possible to include Linux within their definition of "multi-platform". Upnote, Notesnook, Obsidian, and quite a few others. So there is a market there to be served, and with the use of a common platform since V10, many fewer reasons not to serve it. And whatever EN traditionally does or doesn't do, their attitude towards customers who are committed enough to the product to particpate in a beta programme, leaving them hanging with zero information or feedback is just poor business practice and lacking in common courtesy.

Yes. I'm sure we're a very small proportion of Evernote users. Maybe the proportion would be larger if we actually had an official client. And your description sounds to me more like an alpha release. A beta would surely be pre-production. In any event, I'm sure that at the moment the priorities for Bending Spoons are elsewhere. But it would take them what, all of half an hour to make a post in the forums saying "We're really busy with other stuff at the moment, please be patient and we'll get around to you". No updates, no engagement, no roadmap. Not a great way to treat customers.

It's on 10.53.2 at the moment. No updates for a couple of months. As a full-time Linux user I'm not happy to have to settle for the web version. It may be understandable that it's low priority. What is harder to understand or forgive is the total lack of engagement from Evernote/Bending Spoons in the Linux Beta forum. Just on grounds of simple courtesy, even if it's to say "we don't see an official Linux client in our roadmap" or "please be patient, we don't have the resources to do everything at the moment".

For others who might be thinking of going the same route, you can achieve multi-platform syncing without paying for Obsidian sync using Syncthing, if you're willing to invest a little time and effort in setting it up. I've had no problems in syncing between two laptops, a Chromebook, a NAS, and an Android phone. A couple of months back, in the face of no communication from Bending Spoons and no engagement from Evernote in the Linux Beta forum, I exported my notes from Evernote to Obsidian as a precautionary measure. The initial learning curve was steep, and I'm not a markdown zealot so there are things I miss from Evernote's editor, particularly the easy handling of tables. On the whole though, for my use cases, I feel as though I have gained more than I have lost. My Evernote subscription runs until October, but at the moment I don't see myself renewing it (after ten years or so).

And in that comment I hear the echo of those who turned up on the Linux client request threads to insist that Linux desktop market was too tiny to possibly be of any interest, and that in any event "everyone knew" that Linux users would never pay for software or services. You doubt if there would be enough potential Chromebook users to make it viable? Fair enough, and maybe not. Not much of a reason for those with an interest in it not to make their interest known, though.

The low spec Chromebooks are cheap, certainly, but a fair number of higher spec models fetch north of €1000, and some even go up to twice that. I'm using one with an i7 processor, 16Gb of ram and a 512Gb SSD. But even on an older, low spec chromebook I have with a Celeron processor, the Linux Beta desktop client works fine. I don't particularly want to evangelise for Chromebooks, they just happen to fit in with my needs for personal use. For professional use I have a full Linux install. But still seeing them dismissed by those who don't use them as not "real" computers is kind of frustrating. Incidentally, as a long term Evernote and Linux user, I remember all the threads in these forums requesting a Linux client, and how they would fill up with non-Linux users confidently assuring everyone that there was no market for it and no point to the idea and that we should make do with the webclient or give up on Evernote. And yet, some years later, here we are waiting for an excellent Linux desktop client to be brought out of Beta. So if Chromebook users want to raise their hands in the direction of Evernote management and say "what about us then", why not?

There are at least a couple of us in the preview group using the Linux client with Chromebooks. They ask us to restrict discussion of the Beta to just within the dedicated forum, but I don't think it's a problem to share that it's working very well. When the Linux client comes out of beta it should be an excellent solution for modern chromebooks. By the way, the idea, @PinkElephant, that a Chromebook is necessarily "a cheap computer with a lot of restrictions" is rather out of date. Without knowing which Chromebook the OP is using, I wouldn't make that assumption.

Hi, I have a similar workflow to you, and have recently had the same problem with Nixnote failing to sync. Each time I have managed to get around it by revoking authorisation for my account and then reauthorising Nixnote, after which it syncs without protest. Hope this helps

+1 +1

Is there an intention that the new web version will have multi-select capability? This is what is keeping me using the classic version despite it no longer working properly on Chrome. As a linux and android user, the classic web version is the only way I have to get multiple note selection and note merge functionality.