Just because not many people use a package, doesn't mean it is irrelevant. For open source packages (or anything really), as soon as one additional person uses a package, that package becomes relevant. The person/people using it become its advertisers, and when enough people are seen using a product, especially a free one, a larger group will use either that package or something similar to cut their own programming costs.

This is simplified, but the point is that we need to stop this sort of thing at the root (the package itself) before it gets noticed by larger groups and companies who might actually get away with this BS. Always remember, we are tech/privacy nerds. We are the minority, and the average person doesn't care until something hurts them directly.

My point is less that leaving Arch alone breaks things and more that updating after a really long time can break something. It also kinda defeats the point of using a rolling release distro. I can see how you thought i was spreading misinformation though. My bad for poor wording.

Arch Linux with NVIDIA is definitely not great for newbies, especially for people who can't keep up with the distro. If left unupdated for too long, your system may break. Even if you update every day, you could break something. You just never win with a rolling release distro like this. My only saving grace is that I run with an AMD gpu and so far, that thing has just worked.

My tip for anyone switching to Linux is to switch to AMD. Even if NVIDIA is better overall for performance and features, even if the last time you tried AMD on your windows system it was slow and a bit buggy, on Linux, AMD just works, without extra steps.

Man i didn't know the Thunderbird logo turned into reverse Firefox

It depends on what you have installed and what you do with your device. I just so happen to do a ton of stuff and have way too many packages installed. The big difference is that you don't have to restart with Arch, meaning you might not know when something broke until it loads up the new code later.

I also had that problem, but didn't think much of it since I don't really turn off my VPN often. It only really affected me when either my first issue occurred or ProtonVPN crashed for whatever reason. So far, running ProtonVPN through OpenVPN had solved this issue for me.

This has worked nicely! Thanks

All of my other devices are either Windows or Android for convenience. The VPN works on Windows, but I can't isolate this issue via that route as those devices are old and have their own issues.

I have tried running my system without vpn and this specific issue hasn't appeared from yesterday until now. It is making me feel a little uncomfortable not having it on though.

I'm going to try another suggestion, then I'll come back to this one if it still doesn't work.

Unfortunately, the wifi password issue still occurs, but at least it is even less frequent than before (>1 day between password requests).

I restarted my system. All of my configurations should be equivalent to those in the wiki. I'll reply again if the issue still occurs in a few days.

I do indeed have plasma-meta.

The issue still occurs, but not nearly as often as it did before.

Apparently I had uninstalled the kwallet manager. I'll change the password and see if my problem still occurs.

Do you know how I would do that when I cannot access kwallet from the settings?

Unfortunately, several other programs use this as a dependency and some of those programs are required by stuff like plasma-meta.

The password for kwallet is different bc I thought I might have ended up using it to manage money. I did not.

I have checked for for anything to do with kwallet in settings and searched for it with kwin. Kwallet doesn't exist in either of those for me, only at system restart.

I have noticed other people with kwallet issues, but that only affects me when I restart my system (asks for password). Other than that, I can't find a way to edit or disable kwallet without installing a 2-star app on the KDE Discover store that might not work and is reviewed as extremely annoying.

How do you know when to update an AppImage? I would use the Krita AppImage but I would have to hunt down the file in my file manager to open it and I can't find a way to update it without straight up replacing the thing manually.

It benefits both devs and end users.

Many people don't have the time or resources to manage a broken application especially devs who have to deal with that on several Linux distributions simultaneously.

Many distros use different package install scripts and repos to suit their specific needs. If I were to use a Debian-based distro, I would need to use apt to grab from a Debian-compatible repo. If I somehow got apt to work on Fedora, then not only would the program I installed not work, it would likely annihilate many of the preexisting dependencies and possibly brick the system.

I personally use Arch Linux which uses pacman, my package manager of choice, and a lot of times I'll find an application that doesn't work on my system due to mismatched dependencies. Arch is incompatible with .deb and .rpm files and does not use the Debian repo and its derivatives. It uses the AUR and its own derivatives of that repo. I don't have the time or skill to get a program to work with a newly updated dependency on one distro nevermind however many exist on the internet. Many devs do that for free after they've been working at their job for hours and/or taking college courses.

What a Flatpak or appimage (ignoring goofy aah snaps) really does is allow a developer to update dependencies for their application at their own pace without having to play catchup when something inevitably breaks due to an update. It allows for a more stable system. As a Debian Bro, you might not need that, but on rolling-release distros like Arch and funky distros like Manjaro that can be very much welcome.