Me too, the mobile device landscape is definitely shaped by consumerist values. Divest has been intriguing me lately as well, I used to think it was a more flexible, less hardened alternative to Graphene, but it seems to have continued on down the road a ways past Graphene now. That wiki looks super interesting, I’m going to check it out. Just a quick look through what they have looks like high quality info.
I’ve used graphene for over a year, and it’s been solid. If you have the sandboxed Google play installed all apps will work fine, and as long as you don’t rely on heavily commercialized apps everything will likely work without play services as well (sans push notifications for apps that rely on firebase). RCS will work if you have Gplay services and the carrier services app installed.
One in a while there will be a slight hiccup in the UI, but I’ve experienced far worse on stock android, so I’m assuming it’s normal operating stutters. All in all it’s very reliable.