conor_f

Like many of you, I have spent more time trying out different applications in the todo list/knowledge management space without finding a solution that has stuck. I've tried aggressive calendar scheduling, todo.txt, Vikunja, a paper planner, Logseq, Notion, and likely others along the way! I now have the suspicion that the issue I'm having isn't the tooling, but the process. The solution I've stuck with the longest has been Vikunja, but I felt limited by it as it is strictly a todo application, and doesn't support any form of knowledge management (by design, which makes sense!)

So I'm wondering, what processes do people follow for their todo list management and knowledge management? What resources have you learned how to use your applications of choice?

My requirements (in rough priority order):

- Mobile + Desktop support (PWA, web UI, native application, all fine!)

- Searchable

- Allows me to keep track of todos with priority ordering and sublists

- Allows me to easily capture one-off ideas, as well as expand them into richer, more detailed concepts

- FOSS + Self-Hostable

The issues I've faced with previous solutions are:

- No integration between my todos and knowledge!

- Not being able to search

- Not being able to quickly capture ideas/notes/todos

- Not having a clean(-ish) UX to navigate between points of info/see what my next priorities are

I've accepted that LLMs are useful when taken with precautions. A few tools I've used recently have convinced me on this fact. Alongside this, I've heard first-hand anecdotal experience of LLMs providing great benefit, from asking about APIs all the way to practising languages or summarizing texts.

I'm now interested enough to try run one myself and see how it suits my personal workflow. So I have a few questions:

1) How can I set up a LLM locally with good effort/reward ratio? I don't want to spend hours setting up something unreliable that needs constant modification - moreso something I can just interact with easily from a web UI/CLI when I need to.

2) Is there an easy way to keep up to date with LLMs so I can update to newer models as they become popular to get the best results?

Note that I'm only looking for self hosted, Linux compatible solutions!

My partner has been using Ubuntu on their Thinkpad for the past two years and it's been riddled with issues. These are things I'm used to as a Linux user for ~15 years, but they're not. Wifi issues, sleep and restart issues, dodgy trackpad, etc. These issues are a deal breaker for them.

I can completely reinstall and configure a laptop setup for them, and I'm wondering what should I pick? I have always suggested Ubuntu to new/Linux apathetic users in the past, but what I'm wondering if there's any other distro/setup I should try for someone who wants stability, ease of use, etc like a Windows or MacOS provides