I'll have to look into microG. My plan was just to avoid attractive nuisance apps on my everyday phone, and stick with stuff from F-droid. But then of course eg traveling puts one in a different mode of just needing to get a problem solved on the go [1].

It is a bit worrying that microG's first listed feature is augmenting perfectly-fine GPS location.

The split with Lineage seems annoying, for both practical and long term considerations. From a quick reading, it seems like Lineage is being stubborn and preserving the paradigm where Google is trusted more than the purported owner of the device.

Seems like one would definitely have to use a VPN with microG, lest Google continue to infer social metadata from whatever IP address (ie wifi network) one was connecting from [2].

[0] I wouldn't mind say running Waze for the highway part of routine trips (with a nonce account of course), to report highway robbers and other hazards.

[1] Which is how these surveillance companies get us over the barrel, but I digress.

[2] It seems like the best solution here would be some sort of headless "wifi condom" that would connect to 3g/4g/wifi networks, do the VPN stuff, and present a single constant wifi network.

You don't need this crap.