True, Linux applications (e.g. apt, dnf, pip, but also rm, sudo, and many more) would be more precise.

For Arch, it’s probably not so easy to define “essential” packages, as it, for example, supports many different bootloaders. It is of course also a question of distro philosophy and target audience. Personally, I’ve noticed that “rm -r” as root prompts for every file on RHEL but does not on Arch…