I completely agree with you. I'm in the process moving from SaaS to a more personal computing space (selhosting, file-based app,…). I believe the dumbing down of user interfaces to sell an idea of "It just works" (magically) is a net negative. It also reduces the capabilities of the general population because there's no longer the idea of expertise (as expertise is not allowed). Maintaining a Arch Linux installation is not as easy as using MacOS but it removes the veneer of magic. And I think it's necessary knowledge if we need further improvement in the personal computing space. Just like C has its foot-guns, but learning it gives you a stabler foundation knowledge on how software works. It may not be for everyone, but removing the possibility is harmful for someone.
Allow me to suggest NixOS instead of Arch, for the same automation reason: NixOS meant a single (normally split in few) file(s) that describe your desired config, nixos-install/nixos-rebuild makes the system for you, so at any point in time if something break you just roll back to the previous build, not need to "emergency fix" something or have a test system aside. It's not a "distro war" but what I call a natural outcome of taking notes: in the same org-mode notes I keep my bills, my mails (ol-notmuch), my files (org-attach-ed and linked), a fully searchable "knowledge base" with just ripgrep, no recoll (xapian) or other indexers needed, but also my NixOS config, zsh config, ... and so on. Again the same automation (well, org-babel-tangle + little stuff) works for anything. The same documentation model works for anything. It's long to start, many things to learn, but it pay back much thereafter.
In my case while migrating toward a local approach I've tried some tools, like the idea of using Zotero for a bit anything, bookmarks, docs, ... it works, but it's not integrable with other tools like ALL modern apps, so I've put most in org-mode, bookmarks included, with Buku + ebuku to manage the SQLite DB from Emacs, org attaching stuff is slower than the Zotero connector but much more flexible, "Copy as Org-Mode" (FF extension) it's not as quick as Zotero notes, but the flexibility of one tool for anything is extreme, a thing we lost loosing the classic desktop model and today we can rediscover but still suffering the lack of development and the rest of the world heading in totally different directions.
