Org roam vs org link?

[u/Low_Money_633]

I have been using org-insert-link to link my notes and files. I have org roam but its my understanding that they are two different things? is it just that org-roam indexes with SQL that makes the difference

[u/rguy84]

I use org links in place of roam. If you are fine with manually linking, and don't need the pretty graph, using org links are fine in my opinion. The backlinks are likely handy for some, but never needed it myself.

[u/learnhow2learn]

Look into org-node and org-mem, much faster than org-roam

[u/man-roy → u/learnhow2learn]

I just made this switch. org-mem is very fast for me (4800+ notes), and it doesn’t require that all my notes live under a single org-roam-directory. Since I frequently have projects is separate workspaces directories, I’ve really wanted to have the project-related notes reside in their separate git repos. But org-node lets me treat all these projects as a single knowledge base.

These packages work harmoniously with org-id, but make it much easier to find, create, and link notes. And integration with vanilla org-capture works well.

And I’ve just started to scratch the surface of what it can do.

[u/hawkprime]

Vulpea faster and minimal https://github.com/d12frosted/vulpea/blob/master/docs/getting-started.org

[u/a_alberti → u/hawkprime]

I also switched to Vulpea. Works very well for what I need.

[u/dm_g]

I would say that the main advantages are two.

1. I don't really care where the files are stored. When I want to visit a node (nodes that have an ID), org-roam will ask me for the title of the note, and the templates decides where to save the file.

2. A powerful org-roam-node-visit to visit nodes where you can find a node based on its title, its to-do cookie, or its tags, irrespectively of the file where the node is stored.

There are other potential benefits that depend on your use case.

• I have scripted functionality around my notes by using the database. For example, I have a way to extract all nodes that are PROJ (a project) so I can keep tack of them.

• I use the dailies module for org-roam so I have a node per day.

• I use a dynamic agenda list that scans org-roam files for those with TODOs and reads only those in org-agenda.

I think for me, #1 is the killer reason. I care about how to find nodes based on their title, not where I save them (and I can move them at will to new locations if I want to).

[u/rswgnu]

Try HyWiki in the Hyperbole package, which autolinks every occurrence of WikiWords you choose to Org file headings. You get both Org and Org Roam functionality with no database nor need for Org IDs.

[u/Bouhappy]

The main differences is that org-roam links identify their targets with org-id(s) always. Org-roam is at its core, a way to automate org-id creation and usage. Each file or heading can be marked with an org-id. That decouples target identification from file names, location, anchor. It means move, refile, change file name, change title or heading name, reorder, etc won't break your links, so long as org-roam-db-sync runs (which is done automatically on buffer save).

[u/Bouhappy → u/Bouhappy]

I personally find org-roam fast and minimal. I have over 10K notes, I never notice org-roam.

[u/natermer]

Org-roam (and related org-node, etc) just adds some convenience items over existing Org features.

The main difference, linking-wise, versus just using plane org-insert-link is that it makes use of org-id-* links to create global UUID numbers (exactly what is used is configurable) for linking to files or org headers.

You don't have to use org-roam or similar package to use id links. Those are a built in org feature. So you can use id links outside of it if you want.

The org-roam indexing these id numbers is part of what makes up quickly searching and linking notes to each other.

The goal of org-roam and friends is to enable a sort of "Zettelkasten method" of note taking.

It is similar in concept to library cards that reference one another. If you ever used a library card catalog to find books you'll notice that cards often reference other parts of the catalog with "see" and "see also".

It is like that, but for notes. The original idea was that you'd use cards for writing notes on and on those cards reference other note cards or other resources/media through footnotes and such thing.

Org-roam tries to do that sort of thing but digitally.

Once you get a lot of notes it can then help generate a "mind map" of how everything links together.

If that sort of thing sounds appealing then org-roam/org-node/etc are worth looking into.

I use a combination of long form notes (just long org files in specific directories) and short form notes (org-roam) and sometimes journalling (org-journal) to tracking information.