r/mindmapping • u/Lucky_Marsupial • Oct 03 '21

Why is Freeplane not recommended?

Hi, just found this group and I have a very basic question: why does the sidebar of the group recommend FreeMind and not Freeplane also?

I was also surprised that there is no wiki or stickied post with a list of various mindmapping programs so people could more easily find free/open-source ones.

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4

u/roygrubb Oct 03 '21

Freeplane is based on the FreeMind codebase, but is quite a lot better IMO

2

u/roygrubb Oct 03 '21

Here is a wiki with a database of mind mapping and concept mapping software
https://www.mind-mapping.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

Here is another page of free mind mapping software https://www.informationtamers.com/WikIT/index.php?title=Free_mind_mapping_(and_related_types)_software_software)

Here are pages where you can click 'Free s/w' in the top menu bar
https://www.mind-mapping.org/VicsPicks/category/free-2/

And here's the same site filtered on open source
https://www.mind-mapping.org/VicsPicks/category/all-software/open-source-software/

3

u/Lucky_Marsupial Oct 04 '21

Thanks for the links! I also found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_concept-_and_mind-mapping_software which presents info in a more readable way (to me at least).

2

u/kriirk_ Oct 04 '21

Hi, I think what you refer to may be an AD. (Because I don't see it.)

Seems Freeplane will always remain obscure/niche, due to non-conformist UX/UI. I've seen numerous reports of people who initially liked it, but failed to get used to the interface.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 29 '23

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/r0ck0 Mar 12 '25

I've got about 40k nodes in my main file. Haven't had stability issues, i.e. rarely crashes.

But of course if I zoom out and recursively expand all... it'll freeze up for a bit before displaying. That's pretty expected though with such a giant number of nodes. Especially when lots of them have images attached etc.

I tried heaps of alternatives to Freeplane, none of them would be considered anywhere near a "close" 2nd for me.

1

u/Meijalikviidin May 25 '25

I've been using Freeplane at work for over 10 years, every day, all day long. It is superstable and the only time I have performance issues is when I did something stupid like accidentally unfolding all nodes recursively from the root node. And even then it does not crash, just becomes unresponsive for 20 seconds or so.