I was using Zim for a while until someone I was working with suggested Joplin when I mentioned I was looking for alternatives. It's perfectly functional, but it feels... lacking, just this side of clunky. I just wasn't happy with it overall or the way notes are organized. The generated backlinks were annoying.

I'm liking Joplin a lot better, although the rich text editor will get weird every once in a while. I'll switch back and forth between Markup and rich text depending on how lazy I'm feeling.

Might have to give Obsidian a whirl.

I actually prefer QOwnNotes. Its main store is markdown files on disk, unlike Joplins database, which makes syncing easy (at least for me, not separate webdav needed). Obsidian is very nice too, but startup is a bit on the slow side, whereas QOwnNotes is instant.

I've used Zim before, but it has no mobile clients and its custom syntax means I can't just use e.g. any Markdown editor.

I've been using Zim Wiki since late 2016. I like that all of the pages are physically text files and are fairly readable without the Zim software. That's been handy a couple of times where I threw them onto a thumb drive while on the way to help a friend fix his PC at his home.

How is this different from other note-takers/editors like Obsidian? I think the idea is cool, but it has definitely been done before.

This predates Obsidian by a significant amount of time.

Oh, my bad. Point still stands - Obisidian's GUI and the editor in general looks cleaner, and performs more or less the same function. What sets this apart?