kde connect is my recommendation also
matrix should cover everything you need with the added bonus that you can chat with people from other instances
you could try mailu. that should be simple and Provide you with everything You need
a vpn doesn’t protect you if an app is compromised. vpn is just putting your device into another person’s or organization’s Network.
I am not really familiar with how android sandboxes apps but I wouldn’t trust my phone not being compromised after installing a potentially compromised app.
that is of course an option. not my cup of tea though. if I need to do things like that to play some games, I’d rather not play them at all and put my time into games from devs which don’t actively sabotage linux compatibility. That doesn’t mean I don’t miss playing for example pubg or valorant
almost every day for a year. my gaming pc often collects dust
screw take two and screw ign
I switched from ububtu to fedora kde about a year ago. really solid for gaming and the differences are not that big.
for work I also use debian and it is really cool to be able to understaand deb and “enterprise linux”(fedora/suse) differences
thanks, i know. switching to cinnamon was on purpose though because I always find it exciting to try something new for a while
mint is nice but fedora KDE runs also pretty well on my thinkpad x1 yoga gen3
I am very happy with fedora KDE, although I have weird flickering issues since fedora40/plasma 6 and so i temporarily switched to cinnamon (which was really easy) untiljthe nvidia 555 driver releases. I can really recommend this combination
i have used arch with kde plasma for about a year on my ThinkPad. so far it is working (and updating) without a hitch. I think the Potential, that your OS breaks somehow is higher on rolling release distros but i think Arch isn’t bad as daily driver if you take the time to install and customize the system to your needs. it is not so far away from a current fedora.
also aegis needs next to no permissions(Camera for qr codes), bitwarden does need Network and some more
use haproxy instead of Port forwards, that should work just fine and works really well on opnsense
debian. stable, reliable, easy to learn
you could theoretically use something like ansible and manage your stuff there. i dont know if it is really practical on arch and for your use case. theoretically you’d write how your system should be into a playbook and on a fresh install you theoretically just had to run your playbook to get all the Packages and settings you need
great games. you should definetly try them out if you got a few thousand hours to spare
And „normal“ would mean a total invasion of privacy and accepting games installing malware? Bowing your head and install bootloader destroying windows on an otherwise fine machine instead of owning your system? Then I’d recommend not playing those games
until you can no longer log on with just a local Account. or your Data gets backed up for you anyway. Enshittification is one exec decision away