You said youve tried experimental and normal proton but have you tried protonGE?

Honestly IMO if you have even an inkling that you’ve been got by a virus, nuking from orbit is the only solution.

Grapehene has historically offered extended support, but for the longest support time the pixel 8 isnt a bad option. The 7a is also I think the king of budget phones right now but the 8 is on sale for a few hundred off the last I checked :)

I disagree that you are inherently in a worse position simply because you dont know enough to take a peek at the code or harden things. I think that again, simply being such a massive project linux gives a trickle down effect to normal users. Even as a normie, you are safer on linux than on windows, full stop. As for github scripts, thats an entirely different subject because yes, open source CAN be dangerous still (just like proprietary can).

You are correct for open source projects with only a few maintainers… But with a project as big as linux, there are SO many people with that “formal education” (which doesnt really even need to be formal) that the amount of eyes on the codebase DOES benefit the normies who dont look at it.

I love my security resting in the hands of a multibillion dollar corp, so that way when they get hacked I get lumped in! So secure!

How is that even relevant at all - especially when talking about the hundreds of forks of firefox with ACTUALLY privacy focused features or settings

I just use betterdiscord with the do not track extension