Drunk & Root

garuda gaming edition great for gaming and pretty user friendly i use it dual booted w/ gentoo never had a issue with it

i dont want google profiting by sending my data to the gov whos paying for it with my tax money

first quesrion: no unless you play rainbiw six or fortnite all games run with wine or proton tou could take a look at garuda gaming edition 2: Yes you can r2modman has a appimage (universal linux app) and forge has a linux client for minecraft 3: you could use wine or always just spin up a windows vm if you need it and it doesnt work with wine 4: yes it can run .NET using the wine compaitibilty layer 5: updates are distro specific for example on debain ud do sudo apt update && upgrade or on arch its sudo pacman -Syu 6: its actuslly more secure with it being open source because anyonr can check for vulrabiltys and since its so unkown theres little malware affecting desktop users most are targeting servers and theres one av i know called clamtk theres also rkhunter that looks for root kits only 7: linux has a weird reltonship with gpu drivers for nvidia theres nvidia open source that offer worse perfomrance but are open source and nvidia properitary that run better but are prob spyware 8: Linux cant really damage hardware 9: for distros Linux Mint is and like windows Pop os is good for gaming or for a arch linux based exooernce but still easy try garuda gaming it comes with everything you need to game.

debian

side note but you dont need to use proprietary android phones you can flash custom roms to most like GrapheneOS LiniageOS or CalyxOS or you can find a linux phone os like ubuntu touch

u could prob find a way to do this with nextcloud i saw smth like this on fdroid for nextclouf

another option if you want a hybrid is host a jellyfin instance with your music youbcan even install a lrclib plugin and get pretty good lyrics

lineage os has a pretty extensive device support or in theroy you could compile base android with none of the spookieness or bloat.

i host my own but if you cant do that id reccoment one of the ones with the V html grade and with good uptime

i used to use startpage before switching to searxng and its pretty good just the mobile app they beckon you to download is garbage and just chromium with a startpage paint job over it but if you just want the search engine for another browser its prob one the best

i use gentoo because i love the package manager and how in control i am of my desktop and for servers even though not linux ive been using open bsd because of secure it is and lightweight helps squeeze out little bit more performance from mt shit vps lol

synapse can be resource intensive but u can conduwuit or now tuwunel and its pretty lightweight https://github.com/girlbossceo/conduwuit https://github.com/matrix-construct/tuwunel

NeoVim with NVchad stomps both

for vpn super generic but Mullvad or if you can you can self host a vpn youtube music has some apps over on Fdroid like musify

the icons are not for every app but i dont know if you can chsnge for default apps. the camera is pretty good has good zoom diff modes etc. battery is pretty good lasts the whole day. the sandboxed services are great most apps work you will have “GmsCompat” running when play services is. and some apps still wont work with the sandboxed play services like Gwallet and the multiple users are a very great tool if you need to run non-free software.

im pretty sure they turned over ip of a french activist (not 100% sure) and when i was checking them out there tor mirror just linked to the clearnet site wich put me off so based on your threat model they can be ok

i mean cant go wrong with a self hosted matrix instance im pretty sure theres some managed hosts that make the process eaiser i dont know if this is what your looking for but cant go wrong with it

i run my own instance and i can vouch the results are great for general things. searching for things based on location can vary though.