KDE Connect is one of the most amazing pieces of software I’ve used in my life

Yeah, it’s a moving target for sure. For now, the devs seem to be very certain that AOSP will stay and that they will still be able to port GOS on new devices (although it will take more time and work).

If app installation is not managed by Google (i.e. if you’re not using Google Mobile Services or GMS), Google cannot block the installation of any apps. Graphene’s devs have confirmed themselves that this new measure will not affect their ROM

It does not block anything by itself. I use Adguard as my DNS provider and it does that system-wide. It you can also use a VPN provider such as ProtonVPN that does it

It’s about surveillance. Federated services are not a threat to big tech since it’s so small

I’ll happily continue using my GrapheneOS Pixel since nothing will change for 3d-party ROMs :)

Since you’ve talked about OpenMW + mods, do you have any recommendations for someone who played Morrowind on Windows years ago and would like to play it again on Linux via OpenMW? What works, what requires tinkering? Any mods that you recommend?

Graphene OS does something similar. It sandboxes GMS like any other app

That’s another issue. AOSP is effectively being developed in a closed environment, with only the final code being published on github after release. So AOSP if effectively not being developed in the open any more