I stopped using Obsidian. It took about three months before it became clear that Notes was a far superior app.

Yes, the idea of a knowledge graph is a terrific one. But in practice? The speed and ease of creating a note on Apple won out every time. Because of Obsidian’s filename-based approach to notes, you had to think up a title for the note first. So I needed to stop thinking about my idea, and switch to thinking about categorization every time I created a note. And I would often lose my train of thought, or worse, my inspiration.

In my Obsidian article I described it as a tool for thought. Human beings integrate tools into their self-image. When I swing a hammer or play the piano, my brain understands those instruments to be a part of my body. If the strike of the hammer is felt in the wrong place, or the key plays its note with the wrong frequency, everything stops. I switch to a mode of recovery.

And that’s what Obsidian’s default flow triggered more often than not. It interrupted my principal desire to emphasize a secondary desire.

Linux as a desktop OS followed a similar trajectory. I have a set of default tools that I’ve used going on ten years now - Iterm2, Chrome, BetterSnapTool, Notes, VSCode, Finder, Photoshop, Mail, Office. And while many of these have ports or linux-native analogues, all of the interfaces were different enough that I lost efficacy. To add to that, the context switching from OSX to Linux was annoying and difficult, and about once a quarter the machine required expert attention in order to not fall to pieces.

The end result being - I didn’t use my desktop all that much.

Nowadays? Notes + Mac. And my desktop? Still running Linux, available in the terminal, as all of my beloved servers are.