I continued in another thread with later issues.
the rtl8852au was for an external wifi dongle that I actually don't use much or at all now. The laptop's internal wifi is working fine.
If I need the rtl8852au again I'll just rebuild the module. I always forget exactly what was done in the past for a particular configuration, which makes it trickier when attempting to resolve an issue down the line.
I've got a reasonable knowledge of how the desktop & application side of linux goes together now, but kernel/driver stuff I don't have such a great handle on.