Just wanted to leave a comment to say thank you for sharing your findings and taking the time to write your post here. I am sure you spent a lot of time and effort researching all of this. These kinds of posts are why I love Lemmy and its communities.
Not currently in need of a new VPN, pretty happy with Proton and my plan is active for another 1.5 years. But I still wanted to say I appreciate your post.
Just try the simple image, see https://github.com/alam00000/bentopdf?tab=readme-ov-file#-simple-mode-for-internal-use :)