If you're used to markdown in Obsidian, you could look at vimwiki to use a similar syntax in vim. I find it works fairly nicely for standard notetaking, and is a lot faster to start than Obsidian.
this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2025
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I have been preparing for this question.
https://nvim-orgmode.github.io/ is very good and very customisable while keeping consistent and open file file format that allows your notes to be easily stored and read by other apps.
For longer form notes https://github.com/chipsenkbeil/org-roam.nvim/blob/main/DOCS.org can also help while maintaining all the benefits mentioned above.
There is also https://github.com/nvim-neorg/neorg that is trying to create new file format and ecosystem around it. Seems cool, but a bit new imo.
I wonder if I can just straight up import my obsidian vault and have it work
Not very easy but not very hard either. Obsidian works with .md files they have close syntaxes to .org files that orgmode works with, but you will have to convert them.
I would also suggest searching for some neovim plugins working with .md files. That will allow you to directly import your files. Something like this maybe?
Wiki.vim https://github.com/lervag/wiki.vim
It let's you create a wiki with links between pages.
Unlike obsidian, it doesn't put your personal data in the cloud.
Unlike the similarly named vimwiki it doesn't use a custom file format. It uses markdown. Although I think you can configure vimwiki to use markdown as well, but with reduced functionality of the plugin.
obsidian doesn't put my files in the cloud... lol
I use syncthing for sync, obsidian sync is optional
Ooh, I don't know why I assumed that XD
Makes Obsidian way more interesting.
I use obsidian.nvim. It's a Neovim interface to my Obsidian vaults, so I can work on my knowledge base in whichever app works best in the moment.
I edit files with vimwiki. I view them in obsidian.
Or at least I used to, I wrote a few little functions to do zettels now, but the linking and traversal features of vimwiki are still really useful.