A lot of comments in this thread makes me wonder if Roam has successfully become an actual cult. Personal opinion, but it seems like Roam's core features are hard-to-invent (though all of those existed in different apps in different contexts) but easy-to-implement. Many early adopters are very unhappy seeing multiple alternatives pop up (some arguably offering better features) which subverts the 'my-notetaking-app-is-unique-and-better-than-yours' sense of superiority. I'm seeing people defending every aspect of Roam at a level that usually comes from cognitive dissonances.
Obsidian does have that feature, so at least one of those options should work. For me, the best thing about roam is the outline level block references. Having to create a bunch of new atomic notes can start to make things really confusing from an organizational perspective and that is what always bogged me down previously. I can use Roam more like a bullet journal, just open up today's note, throw a header down for whatever meeting I am in and start to capture, then click on the header to get all the previous notes I have taken on that subject.
Note that I am not a researcher, but a dev manager, so most of my note-taking revolves around meeting notes and action items with some research thrown in.
Org-roam supports unlinked references. In any case, that's super easy to implement (it's just plain search for the current document title in all other titles) and I expect others to soon offer this feature.
If you're already using Emacs (or are willing to spend a few days learning and configuring things, with lifelong benefits), there is nothing that can beat org-roam. It has been discussed multiple times here on HN.
It’s still in development, but keep an eye on Athens (https://github.com/athensresearch/athens), an open-source self-hosted web app. The project’s plan is to have a usable MVP on August 1. (Disclaimer: I’m a contributor.)
Athens will allow importing of Roam databases and will support many of Roam’s features, such as blocks, pages, backlinks, and Roam markup syntax. Unlike Roam, Athens stores your database of notes on your local computer, since it is a self-hosted web app.
