Basics#

Make backups#

• By copying your files on another storage device like a usb thumb drive or an HDD.
• If you have one, by putting your data in your NAS
• The two above but on another physical location
• By uploading to a secure cloud such as nextcloud or proton drive

Use libre software#

To avoid having to stop the software you got used to because of a paywall or a price increase. If you do use proprietary software, prefer those that let you pay a one time license over a subscription.

Software#

Non FLOSS software will be in bold and partially FLOSS is in italic

Learning#

• Note taking#

  • Logseq markdown editor, links made between notes can be seen in a graph view for easy representation of the material
  • Obsidian similar to logseq but proprietary and better optimized

Studying#

• Flash cards#

  • anki spaced repetion flashcard, FLOSS expect for the ios app which is paid
  • Memorado simple flash cards, with decks for organisation and that’s it

• Diagrams#

  • drawio made for diagrams, easy to use
  • LibreOffice Draw good if you want better integration with other libreoffice tools, you can do something in draw and copy paste it into writer for instance
  • InkScape full vector graphics editor, high learning curve but very precise
  • Logseq “whiteboard” has a smaller toolset but you can link them directly in your notes

• Summarizing#

  • Joplin my prefered markdown editor
  • Kate it is a normal text editor but it has markdown preview

Planing#

• KOrganizer calender app, let’s you add todos when you want
• Logseq has a “journal” tab where you can have a todo for the day

Researching#

• Zotero great tool to manage, organazie and hasten research. It integrates with your browser and libreoffice and it allows collaboration on a shared library
• FreeTube youtube frondend with addblocker integrated
• Kiwix lets your download some websites locally such as wikipedia, the arch wiki, project guntenberg library and various other open documentation/books

Redacting#

• LibreOffice Writer best office document writer in my opinion
• OnlyOffice looks similar to microsoft office and has better compatibility with it as well

Extra info#

Night light/Dark mode effect on eye strain#

The effectiveness these two features on eye strain is not well documented. Most people do prefer warmer colors on their screen before going to bed which explains why night light exists. Dark mode technically reduces the brightness of the screen which does reduce eye strain, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t reduce the brightness of your screen when it is dark. If you have to focus to see the text on your screen, increasing your system’s font size should have a positive effect on eye strain.

File formats#

Text#

• markdown (.md) It is the most portable format. You can write markdown with any text editor, but to see it you need a dedicated tool. It works by using simple characters. For instance if I write *hello* in a plain text editor and then open it in a markdown editor I will see hello It is intuitive and easy to learn, you can export it to other formats, even in .html if you want to upload to the web. If possible you should write everything in markdown as it is the most practical and futur proof format.
• docx/odt Contrary to markdown, these formats are paged based. You can specify the layout of each page and even add non-textual elements. These files are not meant to be shared as their layout can change based on what software you use. Meaning that if you open the same file in microsoft office and in libreoffice you might not see the same thing. Preferably only used while the file is still being edited.
• .pdf PDF is the standard format for documents, it allow you to preserve their exact appearance. It is not meant to be edited and can contain much more than text.

Images#

• JPG Very small file size but it does not support transparancy and it is lossy, meaning that it doesn’t look the same.
• PNG Compared to JPG it is not lossy and does support transparancy but it’s file size is bigger.
• WebP & Avif These two are modern replacement for JPG and PNG but being newer, they are less compatible with existing software.
• SVG Made for logos and simple images that can be described with mathematical equations.
• TIFF Very high quality images.