things I've learned:
- It is a project (not something I could recommend to family)
- It's a PITA
- There are painful tradeoffs to make to gain some privacy.
edit below: hit reply before I was really done..
I personally couldn't stomach getting a pixel 4a (or wait for 5a) because it's a side-grade at best to a phone I bought brand new in January of 2020 for less. I ended up with Lineage OS for microg because it supports way more devices. I ended up picking oneplus 8t and going that route.
Most painful tradeoffs is the camera app. The camera app that came installed on Oxygen OS was great. I had to spend a couple of hours trying different modded gcam apps for Lineage OS to find something good enough. And good enough is not being able to take pictures at the highest mega pixel setting and my macro lens not supported (bummer).
Google maps works fine for me (thanks to microg), but because I'm not logged in there's no history of where I've been for fast selection. I haven't tried any alternatives to google maps yet.
I replaced YouTube with NewPipe. And it's surprisingly good. But to be honest I do miss YouTube recommendations a little for content outside of my subscriptions.
I favor open source apps now when possible on F-droid and Aurora droid when possible and install other apps via Aurora store. Everything works so far. Only issue I've had is sometimes I can't find apps on Aurora store and have to find it on a search engine first and open the google play link with Aurora to find it.
Other annoying thing is my boot loader is unlocked and I get an ugly warning screen letting me know that when I restart my phone. I'm not sure all the security implications of that. I know this is one advantage of GrapheneOS and their choice to mostly support Pixel phones (so they can support locking the bootloader).
Keyboard that comes with Lineage OS without google apps doesn't auto complete for me. I guess that makes sense. I ended up switching to openboard and it seems to work well.
I also miss the ability to just dictate to google maps where I want to drive without typing it in. I guess there's no replacement for that?
Other than a few annoyances, everything's great. I'm sure there's a lot of more hardcore privacy features that GrapheneOS comes with by default (and CalyxOS). I might try those ROMs eventually.