I wish I knew this months ago! This knowledge needs to be spread around more.

Also, if your phone doesn’t show up on the deck, make sure to enable “show all devices”

Been using it for about five years now. I absolutely love it. But I will say some of these comments make it sound like it’s a little easier than it is. I’d say about 80% of your knowledge from Android will transfer over and just work. But the last 20% is a bit of a learning curve, and will take at least a few weeks to get the hang of.

What I recommended to some of my friends that switched is to get the phone and mess around with it for a few weeks before you switch your sim. Then you’ll get the hang of things like alternative app stores and sandboxed play services, and you’ll figure out what you can and can’t do.

I will say the vast majority of things do work easily because of protection compatibility mode and sandboxed play services. But there will be some things that are just more hassle then they’re worth. I find keeping a second device, like a tablet, without a custom ROM makes that stuff easier.

And there are some things that seem impossible to get working properly, at least for me. For example, casting to a TV is basically impossible from what I can tell. Also, tap to pay, even for things like tickets doesn’t work (although if you have play services, you can use Google wallet for things with barcodes).

Overall, it’s totally worth trying out. Just don’t set your expectations too high. You’re not getting a completely “just works” experience.

As for other custom ROMs, I’ve tried CalyxOS and LineageOS for MicroG. I didn’t find either of them quite as good, but that was many years ago. Maybe they’ve gotten better.

Interesting idea. How easy is it to start and LLC?

I love virtual cards. I use privacy.com for all my online stuff. Not a solution for this purpose unfortunately.

As for your divide-it-up approach, that’s an interesting thought. I guess I’m a little concerned about signing up for several cards with several companies and several privacy policies. Feels a little weird to me, but I do see the merit in not having all your eggs in one basket.

As far as the Apple Card and Goldman Sachs is concerned, I’m still trying to figure out which details are given to whom. Its hard to find info about it. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re right and it’s the same as any other card from Goldman Sachs.

You can have a primary network and guest network. As far as I can tell, you can’t have more than that.

You can set DNS manually.

Here is a link to a pretty comprehensive user guide that explains all the settings. Maybe I missed something about the SSIDs. https://static.inseego.com/us/download/mifixpro-userguide-tmobile.pdf

I recently got their hotspot and its been good. I got the MIFI X PRO 5G and have no complaints. I can’t speak to the privacy of it, but it uses a T-Mobile sim card. Do you have any questions in particular?

I try to buy things on GOG when I can just for the sake of diversifying my dependence on one company.

There are plenty of guides to setting up Heroic Launcher on the Deck. Once its set up, it’s easy to install games.

I’ve found GOG games to run perfectly fine, and cloud saves work perfectly.

Lastly, I saw some other people saying GOG doesn’t have the latest version of this game specifically, so definitely check that before buying.

Admittedly, some of the games I’m about to mention take time to get good enough at to turn your brain off, but here’s some of my favorites for listening to audiobooks.

Bloons TD6

Any roguelite - currently I’m loving balatro and spelunky 2

Backpack battles

Tetris Effect

Mario sports games

Mini Metro

Kingdom

In general, I find it helpful to tell yourself that it’s totally okay to “lose.” When you are listening to an audiobook, you should be spending most of your attention on that. You don’t need to take the game seriously.