I have yet to find a solid obsidian competitor, plugins + git repo really do cover most things.
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+ It’s all within the editor you already know really well. Uses your existing tools.
+ Many editors have really good support for markdown built in. Treat H1’s like notes and along with modern fuzzy search for files/symbols you can easily get to any note and jump around.
+ If you want smarter [[liking]] there’s some good plugins out there to bring this to your editor.
+ Simple, future proof and no lock-in.
I’m currently enjoying markdown-oxide, an LSP for markdown docs. Captures all your notes as symbols so you can fuzzy search and “find references”, etc. supports #tags, too.
My obd vault is "a folder of markdown docs" (which retains the "future-proof, no lock-in" benefits you cited). But the excellent WYSIWYG UX (open files in Edit mode, w/ "Live Preview" enabled) is something I haven't seen replicated in any VSCode or Cursor extension/plugin. I also prefer a dedicated tool for note-taking and "PKM" (Personal Knowledge Management"), as a peer of my IDE(s) for coding. I get to use the best tool for the job, w/ no compromises. Switching to a different IDE for a given project (eg IntelliJ for wrangling Kotlin) doesn't disrupt my workflow, and having clear context boundaries (note-taking vs coding) is a personal preference.
YMMV, different strokes,.... I know some emacs org-mode fans out there will extoll the benefits of using "one tool to rule them all", which does sound compelling... (shrug).
I love that there are such a variety of quality tools and approaches -- and, I'm very happy with mine.
I think what matters more is like you say - how the data is stored. It's been nice to see this convergence towards markdown and it's this that's seems the real sweet spot (or plain text, more generally). Separate the data from the logic and you're free to operate on your notes with whatever fits at the time, or even with different tools at the same time (on mobile, say).
Not news to many folk here on HN but a refreshing contrast to other PKM that use proprietary formats, often along with monthly subscription fees for what is essentially variations on "editing a plain-text database".