Here's an interesting article from Ayush (Pesto) => https://ayushj.substack.com/p/21-products-for-a-productive-you

Obsidian is a better alternative to Roam FYI. It doesn't have that obnoxious pricing and your files are stored locally.

Yes, if you are just looking for backlinking, then yes, Obsidian is better than Roam. For that matter, Notion has backlinking now too. I haven't checked if Obsidian supports block references now, but yeah that is powerful. I get to easily prepare an outline for content I write from the existing notes.And it is also true that not everyone needs Roam 😅

Obsidian doesn't have block referencing, don't think it ever will because it is 100% based on markdown. Notion is too slow and no offline access, big red flags. I even paid for notion for a year, but they have not been keeping up their promises lately. The obsidian devs have a really solid roadmap in terms of feature development and have a great community.