I'm with you. I think this should be a downloadable plugin, not a standard plugin.

I kind of wish they would slow down development and just polish what is already there. They are on this treadmill where they feel the need to keep adding new features, new maintenance burdens, bloating the product in every dimension.

In a few years somebody fresh will come along with a product that's a lightweight alternative. It sucks, but that seems to be the lifecycle of this kind of thing. For now, I've turned off automatic updates on Obsidian which isn't ideal either. :(