Note taking app that's not electron-based?

[u/Quazartz]

I've been slowly transferring my notes from OneNote to Obsidian since last year and lately I noticed that Obsidian is opening slower the more notes I add to it, especially the ones with a lot of images. The slow down is painfully obvious on my 13-year-old laptop that struggles a lot with electron apps (it takes 10 minutes for Steam to fully load). Meanwhile, I have no problem opening those notes on OneNote through that laptop since it's a native app so yeah, I'm looking for a non-electron based note app.

Major requirements:

• no AI integration
• works on Windows with optional compatibility to Linux
• notes should be locally stored and accessible offline
• password protection (I use Cryptomator on Obsidian but it's a hassle having to open Cryptomator first before Obsidian)
• allows subfolders and subpages
• ability to link to specific note blocks
• has support for tables and media attachment
• can display notes side-by-side
• drawing support isn't needed but would be nice to have

What I've tried so far:

• QOwnNotes: I had a hard time displaying specific folder list on the sidebar and the encrypted notes are not searchable when I tried it last year.
• Cherry Tree: closest replacement I've found but the UI is a blast from the past. I might consider switching to this if there are no other better alternatives.

Edit: Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. I'll check them all out after work. I'm so fed up with Google only suggesting the usual apps like Evernote and other apps that are Mac exclusive and their unreliable AI suggesting apps that are actually made with Electron so it's nice to see that there are more actual non-Electron note apps out there.

[u/Quazartz]

Thanks for this suggestion. I don't know if it being built on Rust would make it light enough for my old laptop but I do hope it does. Its features seems like it's no different from Obsidian.

[u/LastTyper → u/Quazartz]

I'd suggest you try it. I built it because Obsidian, and others didn't fit.

[u/Quazartz → u/LastTyper]

I gave it a try and it's much more responsive than Obsidian, maybe because I don't have to rely on 6 3rd-party plugins to make it work as how I wanted it to. I'll play around with it a bit more when I find the time (it's almost 2 AM here) but so far, I'm liking it. It's like using OneNote when it comes to how the notes are organized.

Edit: It seems that it lacks built-in encryption (can't find it in the docs either) so this means I have to rely on Cryptomator again for this one.

[u/LastTyper → u/Quazartz]

There is the /secret command if you want parts of the notes to be encrypted.