Zim really is amazing, its the perfect balance with its simple plain text files in folders data structure, but powerful search and back linking. And I love linking to other files on the local file system.
How do you do the LUKS volume upload to cloud? Is it for syncing between devices or just backup? Personally I use (self hosted) NextCloud to sync my Zim between devices.
Maybe you can install Arch in Distrobox, then install Merkuro in your arch container?