I wouldn’t say barebones, but you’re right in there is no direct alternative to OneNote I have ever found. It remains the product I haven’t been able to directly replace.
A lot of the products people will suggest are very feature rich, just not all the same features as OneNote. For me, the ability to draw on the page freestyle with a stylus is what I love about OneNote. So easy to annotate notes. But linking and plugins are things others have which I love that OneNote lacks.
Cybertwuck