Wow, thank you for these tips and suggestions! The salami sticks sound really interesting. Thank you also for the warning about the stores, we will be visiting some smaller towns too.
I daily drive Ubuntu touch on a Fairphone 5. It is totally doable, but there is some sacrifice compared to the experience on a commercial OS. I think you will also get the best experience on UT if you lurk around in the community, as there are some good tips there on how to get the most out of it. (Like which smart watches are compatible, which browser is the least buggy, how to customize stuff)
Seveneves, Silo and The Flood series for that danger to humanity aspect.
Venomous Lumpsucker for a fun climate story with a quest. I really enjoyed this one.
To Be Taught, If Fortunate. This was a really lovely read about exploring another planet.
Remnant Population. What happens when an elderly lady refuses to abandon her failing space colony? Fascinating and unusual scifi, and a really enjoyable read!
Bobbyverse, Mickey7, Murderbot, almost anything by John Scalzi, for the mix of feelgood and excitement. Zero Stars, Do Not Recommend for a fun, goofy scifi/disaster holiday read.
That makes sense. On Ubuntu Touch (if you find a compatible device) you could just delete the apps you don't want and keep the rest.
Two issues I can think of is updating the apps that you do keep without the app store - I'm not sure there's an easy way to do that. Maybe transfer the new package via cable or ssh (as you've also uninstalled the browser) and install it via the command line? The other issue could be uninstalling system apps. I haven't tried that myself, but I have heard of others doing it and breaking things.
You could do something like that with Ubuntu Touch, but why waste the battery life and money on a smart phone when you can do this with a feature phone?
Reading Lake of Darkness by Adam Roberts. I'm not that far in yet, but the world building is really fascinating. It seems like such a beautiful yet creepy future for human kind.
Keep the rule as it is, and take those kinds of discussions in communities meant for political discussion. There's already enough of US politics everywhere else.
While your model may not be supported now, it may be in the future. I would join some of the communities that make custom roms and operating systems and lurk a bit to see if someone is doing a port to your phone and are near the stage where they need testers.
Look at deGoogle guides to see what you can do to make your phone safer in the mean time. Every little bit can help you be more secure.
The Waydroid container runs Lineage, a degoogled android based os. Many apps require Google play services to run, or they do other checks that fail in that environement. Most stuff from F-droid will run.
Signal does not have a native UT app at the moment, but some use Matrix bridges to send and receive messages. Others run it in Waydroid, or do experiments with the cli version. The first works very well, but you need to find/make a bridge host that you trust.
Oh, it feels very nice to use! Most of my troubles these days stem from me experimenting and running the devel version of the os. I can go days between serious issues, and the issues that do appear are never deal breakers as they don't tend to affect basic phone functionality. It feels great and it is way too much fun.
I'll still look for those two, sometimes the higher price is worth it.