As far as I understand, border officers can kinda send you back because they don’t like your vibes.

I love how your first example was AUR.

I use arch BTW.

That also depends a lot. Often (e.g. on Fairphone) the stock ROM may lag behind way worse than e/OS.

So if a user has reasons to avoid a Pixel, or just wants to improve their privacy without replacing their device, e/OS may be a marked improvement even on security.

Not quite, it requires Play integrity.

Safteynet seems to mostly work.

Whether you knew better or not, I mostly wanted to provide slightly more accurate information for whoever might have been reading the thread.

Actually, no. e/OS includes MicroG, so even most app requiring Google services work just fine. What really doesnt’t work is Casting videos to a Chromecast, and anything requiting Play Integrity certification like Revolut.

But by that standard, Windows isn’t ready either…

Yeah, I work in a making very high end scientific equipment. Almost almost the whole operation runs on Linux. All laptops are refurbished Thinkpads, and most desktops are pretty old and slow from a maimstream POV, but they are just fine for the task, and then some. My “new” laptop I got last summer is a 2018 laptop which cost 300€ refurbished.

If I can do decent science on that, I’m not sure what everyone else needs a 2000€ machine for.

I’m sure someone does, but I expect really they’re few and far between.

I can decide to not use Google (I have indeed stopped), but it becomes harder to avoid all websites that run google stuff.

Resistance is obviously not futile (or Google wouldn’t be doing this). But resistance will have to update.

At least there’s a chance this crap is illegal where I live. And if so, there’s a small chance they’ll care.

Except, it is irrelevant whether or not you decide to use Google.