They must have got this right finally. I tried that years ago, it took hours, where as Dropbox took a couple of seconds. And as I only use DB for that now. Never bothered changing it
It’s just that Diaro and others diary apps are setup so that you see the date, title, tags, just like a paper version, again, something that you can’t easily do in Joplin
Joplin is really good for notes, (I tried uploading a Screenshot for you, but keep getting errors) , how and what to do when installing a Linux for instance. With it’s sub categories. But for me at least it’s useless for a daily diary use. I’ve been using Diaro on my phone for years now for my personal journal, as it’s perfect for noting what do on the day, though I would like to have another option without my data being stored with them, syncing straight to my Dropbox or NextCloud for instance
For note taking, Joplin is pretty good, in fact I went from Simplenote to Evernote (over kill and not free) to Joplin using Dropbox for the syncing (syncing is done by Joplin, so you don’t need a ‘syncing’ app) between my PCs, all Linux and my Android phone. Simple to set up and free. I do not use it as a Journal as that is extremely poor, but for notes, it’s perfect
I use timeshift, on Arch and a Debian setup . It’s simple to set up, I do a automatic snapshot once a day, so if something breaks, just boot into tty and restore the previous day’s snapshot, takes about five minutes. Not sure why you say ext4 doesn’t work as it does. Haven’t tried the other programs that you talked about
I keep a diary using Diaro on my android phone. I started a long time ago in note books, but as even I can’t alway read my own writing, switched to typing. I don’t write much, mostly rubbish, what I do find useful is the ability to search and find things, ‘repaired the fridge’ ‘changed the battery in the smoke alarm’, ‘had so and so around for dinner’ , ‘bought this and that’ … It’s only for myself, do when I’m dead and gone it will just disappear like myself
The Arch install is much lighter, Endeavour like many other linuxes, installs programs that you may or may not require. I prefer adding programd when I require them
I went from Manjaro to Arch. Installed by command line (took a few tries to get it done… ) I tried their installer but it wasn’t very good. Have also run Endeavour on a second pc for a while but I prefer pure Arch.
Maybe a second hand NAS? They can be found dirt cheap, and often you can upgrade the HDs easily, or if your running a desktop PC with room, just add internal HDs as these are cheaper
As others have stated, Dual boot but with two HDs one OS per Hard Disk. Otherwise Windows will write over the Linux grub (the equivalent yi windows MBR) one day (been there, several times 😭) and then it’s a right pain to get it back to normal. For the sync option, there are several options, Dropbox is available as an app on Linux, Also NextCloud works extremely well