I like KDE and xfce. My hardware is pretty old so I appreciate how light xfce is, but I like KDE connect too.
They are starting to test opt-out telemetry and from what I read, it sounded pretty invasive. I’m no tech genius though so I’d check the links in that other comment.
I started on mint a couple months ago and so far I’ve tried as many distros as I could find. I liked manjaro but then found out about their controversies so I’m currently on endeavour os. Half of the fun for me has been experimenting with different desktops and whatnot, which has gotten me back into computer stuff.
Just my two cents but as others have said, not being publically traded helps a lot. The focus on short term benefits that come with shareholders stops “master plans” when they come with mistakes. Learning from relative failures, like the steam controller and the like, ultimately contributes to major successes like the steam deck. Being able to stay committed to improving the software experience over time, instead of killing the product when it didn’t immediately succeed, is fairly rare in the tech industry. And in all honesty, it would be better if they released a polished profuct, but being committed to it made it a success.
I feel like the pressure to have a majorly successful product day one means that smaller companies can’t innovate the way they want to, so they have to find other ways to produce revenue. Huge companies, like Apple can afford to do both but still stumble, like with the vision pro. Maybe it’ll be a success, but for now its not great and iteration makes it more difficult to maintain the original vision.