Ventoy is so goated, I used Rufus then Balena for ages, then YUMI, and finally Ventoy. I’ve got a 128gb tiny USB attached to my phone case with every OS and utility I could need with over 80gb still free for file storage. Being able to download an iso and copy it with no software is huge, like in an emergency I could download an ISO on my phone if needed
I wrote up a whole thing on Discord but can’t find it now, but the gist of it is that at the moment I’m not particularly worried about my phone being compromised via exploits and my safety isn’t immediately at risk. My big motivator at the moment is trying to give Google duller claws to sink into me, and Lineage is fine for that at the moment.
Graphene due to its nature sacrifices a lot of quality of life features in the name of security. I found that a few apps would simply segfault on open, even with the security options disabled for the app. Multitasking was essentially non-existent, swiping between two apps trying to reference then type something? Good luck, both apps will do a complete reload on every swipe. Small things like that. Graphene is definitely a viable option if or when shit absolutely hits the fan and I am concerned about safety and exploits, but for now I’m much more happy on Lineage.
I’m right there alongside you, was pretty deep in Apple and decided to pick up an unlocked Pixel 8 and start working on de-Appleing and de-Googling as much as possible. I’m using Lineage for now, after trying Graphene for a bit.
I’m beyond pissed at how much money I’ve spent on apple products that are either almost entirely useless now (apple watch) or are severely nerfed (airpods, Apple TV, just even signing into a fucking Apple account with MFA) now that I don’t use an iPhone.
If you don’t think the modern Linux distro are shiny and easy to use, how long has it been since you tried? There are plenty of feature complete distros that are shiny and modern and comfortable to start using as a lifelong windows user