Thanks for all the responses everyone. I love Manjaro because forums usually gets answers pretty quick and well. Sorry for late response.
I stated the model number from the Amazon page that I bought it from (the vendor of which was the official TP-Link page, so I had no reason to doubt it). I had bought it before I had thought of switching to Linux, so it has been more than a year atp.
This seems to be the only actionable suggestion here, and I will look up how to do this and try giving it a go.
Otherwise all I can think of is to buy a dongle that is explicitly compatible with Linux. This one wasnt too terribly expensive so it would not be a bad option.
Again thanks everyone!