Yeah, I think you can’t play online games with kernel-level anticheat on your PC… I remember trying to get valorant to work before I realized that :\ I guess it was easier for me as i didn’t use to play many multiplayer games other than valorant anyway… So, I guess we just have to wait for developers to support Linux.

I understand the Android/Google Services part, but you wouldn’t be losing much if anything with a just-works Linux distro. I switched to Linux from Windows way before de-googling. Before switching it seems like it’ll be a very hard thing to do. Getting replacements for your Windows programs to run on Linux (you can run Windows programs on Linux with Wine by the way, I even got a Microsoft game running), get used to the whole operating system etc. But it hasn’t been bad for me. I really really recommend just downloading Linux Mint (just a recommendation for coming from Windows. You can get any other just works distro. I started with Debian), putting it on a USB and just testing it out in the live environment. Then if you have a spare hard disk or ssd, you can dualboot it with Windows. That’s how I got into it, I deleted Windows after a few months and used the now free hard disk as an encrypted volume. I haven’t missed Windows at all, and I still do not. I’m glad that I’m not using some closed-source, data collector corporation owned software for my operating system, I hope you have success in this area.!

Well, it’s Microsoft Edge…

You can still get play store apps, if you must, on a de-googled phone using Aurora Store. You can bypass the safetynet attestation as well with some methods (used by things like banking apps). I’ve been using a google-free phone for a month now and after switching I reinstalled the apps I used the most (mostly through F-Droid), and then I created a separate profile solely for installing apps from Google Play (still through Aurora Store). It works well for me, I haven’t had a single issue. Maybe because I really only get 3-4 apps from Google Play, the rest is F-Droid.

I switched from MIUI (xiaomi android) to LineageOS a month ago now and my experience has only been better. There’s no google, it’s way less bloated compared to MIUI or any stock android so I think it’s actually faster. Though I must say that while it increases your privacy, it decreases the security of your phone because of having an unlocked bootloader but that’s mostly a concern for a threat having physical access to your device, and that’s something I’ve accepted. If you have or get a pixel phone then you can install GrapheneOS which is also very much secure while being google-free and high-privacy. I can’t buy a pixel so I’m with LineageOS right now. I highly recommend it, compared to Apple.