Proton VPN is good and has a good free plan, but os doesn’t matter when choosing a VPN
Probably every comment but install linux
Could set up a nextcloud instance, but might be a bit overkill for your use case as it is a full Google workspace replacement
Antennapod is good
Honestly I see no use for the ai response in search as it is hard to trust 100% but I do see that it could become a requirement for a search engine