For managing a personal knowledge base, I highly recommend Tiddly Wiki[1]
It's a self-contained Wiki/Notebook/Journal with tags, it works instantly, and all of it is in a single HTML file with magic JS in it. Or you can use it with a server.
I use a tool called zim wiki. Its less of a wiki and more of a notes app with a tree sidebar for navigation and linking between pages. Everything is stored as txt files which works awesome.
I would love an alternative that is free/and or possible to self-host.
However, I do not see how this compares to Notion. How do I edit this HTML file on my phone? How do I add bookmarks to it via a hotkey? What is the equivalent of Notion's databases? Does it have Slash commands? This list of questions could go on for much longer. I really don't want to sound like a Notion shill, especially since I also use other tools (e.g. GitLab) for my knowledge base, but many of the suggested alternatives lack basically all the features that I describe in my post.
I am not sure you understood how Tiddly Wiki works.
>How do I edit this HTML file on my phone?
Open https://tiddlywiki.com/, click the pencil icon on any of the entries. Edit away. The edits can persist with a self-hosted solution. Or you can just download the edited HTML file.
>Does it have Slash commands?
You probably mean "keyboard shortcuts". Yes, a plenty. Get started here:
This doesn't cover all of it; there are shortcuts in the editor (Ctrl+B, for example to make text bold), and they are fully customizeable. Everything can be customized.
>How do I add bookmarks to it via a hotkey?
TiddlyWiki is tag-based. You can add tags with a keyboard. Tags define all the structure (table of contents and search).
>What is the equivalent of Notion's databases?
I am not familiar enough with Notion to answer this. If you ask "can I do ____ with TW", I can tell you.
>but many of the suggested alternatives lack basically all the features that I describe in my post
Sure, because they are different products. Feature-by-feature comparison doesn't make sense; if you want Notion, you need Notion.
If you want to organize your knowledge, Tiddly Wiki is one very fine tool to do that.
TW is not a CRM, it is not a Calendar or Google Sheets alternative (as Notion claims to be). It is not an all-in-one tool.
What it is, it's a personal knowledge base tool - and that's what the title of your post says. At that, it can do better than Notion. Or worse. User's call.
>This list of questions could go on for much longer.
The same can be true going from the other side. Here is one:
How do you access your knowledge in Notion 10 years after Notion-the-company goes the way of the dodo?
With slash commands, I do not mean keyboard shortcuts. The lack of customized keyboard shortcuts is one of my issues with Notion, but their slash commands are great.
It basically means that you can access all kinds of features by just typing ahead after a '/' without knowing a precise shortcut. E.g. if I want my text to appear blue I would type /blue. I would also get there with /color or even by just starting to type either of those words and Notion will make suggestions. Slack, Confluence, and others do it in a similar way.
I think I do understand Tiddly Wiki works, as I have quite a bit of experience with Wiki systems, didn't use TW in particular though.
Some of the features you put aside as not needed for personal knowledge management are actually very nice for personal knowledge management. You might want to look a bit into my post to see what those databases can do ;)
> How do you access your knowledge in Notion 10 years after Notion-the-company goes the way of the dodo?
This is a very valid concern, that was also raised by some other commenters. In my opinion, Notion's exporting capabilities are quite good and I use them regularly. However, I do hope that we will get more automated and sophisticated third-party backup solutions when they have an official API.
How do you recommend running it? The install guide lists a half-dozen different possibilities including PHP, Node, Ruby which all look to be vastly different solutions.
You just download the HTML file and open it to 'run' it. Then, once you've made changes, use your browsers "save as" feature to save a copy. Everything is in browser.
Other options do things like public hosting.
Personally, I just use the HTML file with the Timimi Firefox plugin installed for autosaving the current file.
I use TiddlyDesktop and open with it the HTML file that I downloaded from the site. The desktop app takes care of saving the file when you finished editing a post and save it.
That's the save method I'm using since one year now. It perfectly fits my needs as a single user of this wiki.
No infrastructure to set up, it works out of the box.
As a former ikiwiki user I won't go back.
Jeremy Ruston the creator, says a 100MB TiddlyWiki works fine on a 2013 era laptop, and that browsers are some of the best optimized VMs available to work on (in the video I linked in another comment).
I strongly support this recommendation. Tiddly Wiki has enough features and extensibility that I wasn’t tempted to write my own bibliography management system after discovering it. Yes, I know there is dedicated software for that but they didn’t fit how I want to structure my notes.
Joe Armstrong of Erlang fame was a fan of Tiddly Wiki, and there's a video of the Tiddly Wiki creator and him enthusing about it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uv1UfLPK7_Q
It's a self-contained Wiki/Notebook/Journal with tags, it works instantly, and all of it is in a single HTML file with magic JS in it. Or you can use it with a server.
[1]https://tiddlywiki.com/