I wonder why they settled
Because they were engaged in code theft, piracy and Nintendo had them dead to rights. Leaked chats and drive folders showed they were actively pirating games, paywalling questionable content and using the Switch SDK. Clean room emulation implementations are completely legal. Their methods and behavior were not.
Dude spent $44Bil just so he could behave like an insecure reddit mod...
I suspect you feel that way because it's easier to know what DOES mine you, free or paid, on Android, than it is on any other mobile OS. Consequentially, it's also easier to block such stuff on Android with custom dns, custom roms, root and a hosts file or using apps to track the trackers like Exodus. So, no, I disagree: You say it's highly limited when trying to avoid those kinds of apps... We have F-Droid and other third party app stores. There's a plethora of FOSS apps that can replace the common garbage data collecting apps out there. People just don't want to make the effort and look a little bit harder elsewhere for what they would feel more comfortable using. That's why we have privacy nightmares: people are lazy.
My guess will be hibernation file and swap. If any of those had suspend to disk enabled, the hibernation file will be the same size as installed Ram... which can take up a good percentage of that used space. I have a pretty bloated xUbuntu install on my system right now and it's sitting at 10.6GB. Including swap and /home, but no hibernation file.
Android devices with a non-deadlocked bootloader can be reflashed to have de-googled builds of Android. LineageOS isn't completely de-googled (it's damn close to it) but you can put that on any supported device without GApps and use it that way.
Apple is completely deadlocked, through and through, and you cannot de-Apple without completely abandoning their platform.
Android is “open” i guess, but it’s crammed full of adware and trackers and all sorts of garbage.
That's a bit hyperbolic and unfair to the point of being misleading.
"Android" is not one universal type of phone operating system. It, like Linux, has various distributions. Samsung makes their own version. as does Motorola, as does HTC and Nokia, as does OnePlus, Huawei, etc... The version of Android that comes with a Samsung phone is radically different than what comes with a Motorola phone. You cannot blame Google for what Samsung decides to include on their own strain of Android. You cannot blame Google for what shady Chinese brands put on their hardware.
Want an Android device that isn't crammed full of adware, trackers and all sorts of garbage? Stop buying garbage devices from garbage OEMs.
Motorola and Google are the two that (shock, surprise!) are the most open, always have unlocked bootloaders when bought directly and not through a carrier and have the most well supported devices if you decide to go with a custom rom.
I'll second Proton. It sucks to have to pay for services again to have something that matches the generous free shit that we got before... but seems those wild west days of the internet, unless you were grandfathered on or have to give up a lot of info in return... are now long gone.
For first party stuff, Nintendo launches finished games
This wasn't true for several Nintendo games. Mario Kart 8, Animal Crossing and Zelda:Tears all required day one downloads.
Unfortunately there is a fair number of games with a physical release that require downloads to be playable as they are not complete on the cartridge.
Not always true: Not all physical copies contain full copies of the game and will require downloads before the game can be played.
Animal Crossing being a prime example. Mario Kart 8 requires 4.4 GIGABYTES to be downloaded before the game is playable. There have also been cart revisions where earlier versions of the game were complete on the cart... and newer versions of a cart were partial and required downloads as a cost saving measure.
https://www.spacebar.news/p/stop-using-brave-browser
The Brave web browser has carved out a niche over the past few years as an alternative to Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and other mainstream web browsers. Some of that has come from its marketing as a privacy-preserving web browser, and it has also been repeatedly evangelized by cryptocurrency enthusiasts.
If someone recommends Brave to you, you should ignore them, because they are wrong. Brave Browser is a mess of a software project, and the company building it is even worse.
Then don't remove snaps and you don't have to mess with anything out of the box.