Is Logseq Better than Org Roam?

• Regular videos start back next week!
• I’m planning to diversify topics a bit while continuing Emacs videos

I’ve been experimenting with an interesting tool called Logseq for the last week, and since it has some similarities and relationship to Emacs, I thought it would be interesting for us to take a look at it!

If you’re new to this channel, consider subscribing! I’ll be talking more about workflow tools and knowledge management this year.

“A privacy-first, open-source platform for knowledge management and collaboration.”

Basically, it’s a combination of an outliner and networked knowledge database.

It’s inspired by and competes with tools like Notion, Workflowy/Dynalist, Obsidian, and even Emacs, Org Mode and Org Roam to some degree.

It’s free software! Licensed AGPL 3.0: https://github.com/logseq/logseq

Linux users (even Guix users!) can install easily via FlatPak: https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.logseq.Logseq

You can also find other desktop and mobile app builds on GitHub: https://github.com/logseq/logseq/releases/tag/0.6.7

It’s got a lot of traction and high-profile users, even acquired a ton of funding (but is that necessarily good?):

https://blog.logseq.com/logseq-raises-4-1m-to-accelerate-growth-of-the-new-world-knowledge-graph/

Here are some of the features you might want to experiment with:

• Stores notes as plain text files (Markdown by default)
• Supports user-authored plugins with a built-in plugin “marketplace”
• You can embed both pages and blocks into other pages
• Pages and blocks also support backlink references
• There’s a graph view
• It can auto-commit your notes to Git for you and use the repo for note history
• Can also save notes as Org Mode files!
• Anything else I’m missing?

Let’s take a look!

Let’s create an empty “graph”, but make sure to set the file type to Org Mode first!

Things to cover:

• Daily logging
• Creating networked notes
• Using the graph view

If you’re an Emacs user, you could even use this as an alternative mobile editor to things like Orgzly.

Depends on your use case, but it’s possible that you could use them together!

• Use Logseq to edit your Org files on the go (but it might require using only a subset of Org features)
• Use Logseq primarily but sometimes make edits from within Emacs

To me, the downsides of Logseq are:

• You don’t get the benefit of your comfortable Emacs setup
• You don’t get to generate agenda views from your tasks, instead you have to concoct your own task workflow (not 100% true, Logseq queries can help)
• Not really compatible with Org Roam if you want to use Emacs to edit notes primarily on desktop
• Perhaps not as easy to export your notes to a website (debatable), but it is actually possible!
• No Org Babel, code execution, etc (or is there?)

Any other thoughts?

This tool is definitely worth checking out! I’m going to keep using it for now because it gives me a slightly different way to think about how I manage my tasks and personal knowledgebase.

It’s very possible that I’ll adapt some of the ideas from it back into my own Org configuration!

https://github.com/llcc/org-logseq/