EDIT: You just made me remeber in 2005 I had a computer with a Linux installed on it, I thought… ok… let me see how long can it work without crashing or rebooting (I was just still feeling the “burns” of Windoze), I left the computer on and worked spread sheets, word processing, updating system, browsing, editing music and images… not a single crash, not any slow down, nothing… for over 35 days without even rebooting for any reason!
In about 22 years on Linux (since 2000) I never had to wipe my system unless it is me who messes it up (during my lousy attempts to learn!) By the way… I did it here… a year ago with EOS (I messed things incredibly, see my earlier posts then… installing LXQT on top of KDE with same user then installing Gnome apps in LXQT… I was so naughty… and I was completely new to Arch based distros.)
Well my piece of advice for anyone with this fear is: If you want peace of mind just have a USB stick or two with a live ISO on it. That’s all the peace of mind you really need. And maybe backup your important files from time to time.
If you have these two things taken care of you can hammer away at the OS without any fear.
Obliterate it and then fix it using the live ISO, whose role is to let you reach the Internet so you can search for solutions, but also to allow you to chroot and fix the broken system already installed.
My intuition tells me the problem was with LXQT and KDE rather than the fact that you also installed Gnome apps. Because both LXQT and KDE use QT, I expect their configuration files to collide and lead to curious behaviour and issues.
