If you base your opinion of vim from memes you are missing out. Anyone who can’t take 10 minutes to type vimtutor in their terminal is not someone to base an opinion on. These memes come mostly from impatient people that can’t read the docs. It’s a fantastic text editor.
That being said, it’s not meant to be used for written words it’s meant to write code and config files. You want to look for a word processor.
Abiword, etherpad, focuswciter are probably the next 3 biggest on Linux behind libre and open office.
Personally I prefer markdown for most things these days but it’s not exactly meant for word processing either.
Not vim necessarily, but I would really suggest thinking about a plain text editor of your choice and some of those lightweight markup languages (Markdown itself, reStructuredText, ASCIIDoc … I prefer rST, but they are mostly the same). Exactly because it allows me to concentrate on the content and ignore formatting. Besides, formatting, do you write for print or as everybody else these days for HTML? Why do you need a large word processor which is build primarily for preparing documents for print? Every serious text editor has some kind of plugins with spellcheckers, grammar checkers, dictionaries, etc.
There is still an older version of Scrivener available for free, from when they were beta testing it on Linux. It still worked well last time I checked. The Windows version also runs really well in WIne, although it takes a bit of setting up initially.
It’s not compatible with other Markdown forks, but the whole Markdown ecosystem is a mess duct taped together by more forks & extensions that aren’t compatible either. Even the common denominator CommonMark is feature-barren & isn’t suitable for documentation or technical writing, but boy howdy will the next guy have his Markdown contraption to sell you.
Others are recommending Obsidian (which I have no experience with, it may be the right way to go).
Myself, I chose Logseq on a whim a year or two ago and haven’t looked back. In the backend you get a nicely composed set of plain-ol’ markdown files that you can cp/edit/merge as needed.
I would have said Doom Emacs but given your note about vim, I’m assuming it wouldn’t be a great fit for you. Still, I used to write in Darkroom on Windows, because I really liked the totally minimal and simplistic nature of it, and Doom Emacs with writeroom-mode is a perfect upgrade.
As for other alternatives, it all depends on your own taste. I don’t think the issue here is really the amount of apps, just finding the right one. You mentioned Writer sends you on a constant formatting spree, so maybe a text editor would fit you better than a word processor like Writer.
In that case, I suggest you look at something that would resemble notepad. Lite XL is my favourite notepad-like text editor but I don’t think it’s usually available as a package. You can also try Gnome Editor as it is essentially Gnome’s answer to the lack of a super-minimalist app like MS notepad on linux. People have mentioned Obsidian and while it’s nice, if you’re not going to be using Obsidian’s graph or linking features I’d say you’re better off with a simpler markdown editor, Marktext is pretty nice imo. Sublime text is another good option for customizability, ease of use, and minimalism (Although not FOSS if that matters to you, neither is Obsidian for that matter).
You can also try and find a port of the original darkroom, as far as minimalism goes it really gets it right.
Overall, from what I can gather from your post, I suggest you use Marktext or LiteXL, if possible. Try out one of the other mentioned apps if those don’t fit your workflow.
Edit: For clarification, these are my suggestions for writing, formatting is a completely different practice and might need other tools.
I know you said don’t suggest Vim, but I use Neovim for my writing and write in markdown. Any markdown editor will do. Marker is fine. It’s really easy to convert to another format like HTML or EPUB with pandoc. Markdown has minimal formatting, too, so it shouldn’t bug you so much.
FocusWriter is another good suggestion if that’s more what you’re interested in.
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