After huge amounts of wasted time deliberating on this and initially thinking I'd just sign up for the *Obsidian Sync* service to keep my Macs and iPads synced to the Linux machines. Looking deeper the *Obsidian Publish* subscription looked to be potentially much more useful. If it's $96/ year useful and turns in >£96/y who knows? Suppose the more you put in the more you are likely to get out. Looking at all the Obsidian files I've created over the years turns out not many are just *ready* for publishing as are too work oriented and don't make much sense out of client context. I started using [Obsidian](https://obsidian.md) about 2 1/2 years ago, switching from [Bear](https://bear.app/). Bear was good but development was slow, the implementation of [Markdown](https://www.markdownguide.org/) was a bit non-standard and there were costs. Obsidian looked to offer more for less with greater flexibility across my MacOS's and iOS's it just works. Sling the **Vault** (just a folder so why not call it that)? onto iCloud and everything just syncs and works. It's teflon (other slippy things are available). It's a frictionless experience. As such I use it every day for all sorts of things. I know Apple Notes has greatly improved in recent years and I can even draw with the new iPadOS freehand calculator in it and have the calculations appear in Notes. But Markdown isn't supported. ##### Fun Factoid… I can't get the freehand iPadOS version of Calculator to accurately work out simple *sums* For example I wrote in my best Apple Pencil hand the following: `250 x 1.2=` and it came up as 500. As we all know it should be 300. Putting the figures in the numeric page of the calculator app did indeed give the correct answer. Try it for your self.  The bottom right one is actually 500 and not 50 as shown. Perhaps it can't do Math(s). ###### Back to Obsidian The only sticky bits I've had have been running Obsidian on Linux and getting the files to sync. I know there are options like Obsidian Sync for now only $4/month but most people would want to do the $8 option as it offers much more. I know also there are lots of workrounds using GitHub et al and I've settled on a clumsy, ham-fisted sync solution using *IceDrive*, Yes I know, but it sort of works. Which brings me round to now and the money I would have spent on Sync has now gone on *Publish* and again I realise there are again GitHub workrounds from the likes of ##### October 2025 Have decided *not to renew* Obsidain Publish subscription, I don’t feel like I’ve had my money's worth out of it unfortunately, so might go: *But then when I checked to see what the default domain name fall-back page was now the hosting had stopped I relented and paid up just for an easy life.* - GitHub > Cloudflare pages - GitHub Pages - Digital Garden Docs [https://dg-docs.ole.dev](https://dg-docs.ole.dev/) - Digital Garden uses [Vercel](https://vercel.com/pricing) for its hosting, can also use Netlifly. - - **Digital Garden** was the one I was looking for using Vercel: [https://dg-docs.ole.dev](https://dg-docs.ole.dev/) - This appears to be my link to Vercel set up in GitHub and seems to be awaiting content: https://vercel.com/simon-scmps-projects - This is half ready to use but will need the *Community Plugin* which might be a security issue in order to work. - This link shows 10 alternatives to **Obsidian Publish**: https://readmedium.com/7-obsidian-publish-alternatives-to-publish-your-notes-online-for-free-33db4fb06f5 - This is the link for [Quartz which looks best alternative]([https://quartz.jzhao.xyz](https://quartz.jzhao.xyz/)) - Mindstone might be ok: [https://mindstone.tuancao.me](https://mindstone.tuancao.me/) - This page from [eesel](https://www.eesel.ai/blog/obsidian-alternatives) gives good alternatives to Obsidain it’s self which might not be what I’m looking for I’m happy with Obsidian. - [AnyType]([https://anytype.io](https://anytype.io/)) looks good and have free tier and fairly low cost versions and iOS app. - **Quartz** seemed to be the leader last time I looked. https://github.com/jackyzha0/quartz - The how-to for Quartz is at: [https://quartz.jzhao.xyz](https://quartz.jzhao.xyz/) - Quartz can host from Cloudflare or Vercel. - Looks quite nerdy in it’s setup and requires command line access so not so simple from iOS - Given also that today my remaining MacBook Pro suddenly Swelled it’s battery to such an extent the track pad popped out and the lid wouldn’t close I’m left pretty much reliant on iPad for the day to day. - #### But then I… Relented and just paid up the fee for another year of Obsidian hosting. In the end the grief of moving everything over, setting up the new workflow just wasn’t worth the friction and frankly wouldn’t probably have got done. So, by doing without something else for a while it solves a problem and I can just push *Publish* and it just works in a frictionless manner, which is what we set out to achieve in the first place.