Definitely, the GNU/Linux software stack needs improvement for everything that's not a UVC Webcam. libcamera is a relevant project in that context. Purism, who make the Librem 5, are working on that - they have a paid team, but it's small so this will take a bit.
That said, the PinePhone camera app, Megapixels, recently got better post-processing thanks to postprocessd, which may have landed in OPs Manjaro or not.
I think there is a lot of secret sauce that perhaps is lacking in the Pine software stack.