Other than the FairPhone, which you already mentioned, nothing really matches all criteria.
I’d give a nod to the Pixel line, though. Google already offers 5 years of software updates, and the next line is rumoured to get 7. Plus Google allows Custom ROM support, which makes it a fan favourite in the privacy community. Granted it’s not as repairable as the FairPhone, and it’s not as eco-friendly, but it’s decent enough.
They’re literally junk, that’s there to collect your data, while also sometimes charging you for the privilege. It’s snake oil. VPNs CAN help play geo-restricted games/content, and hide your IP from malicious gamers (eg: Dead by Daylight is known to leak your IP, to those you’re playing with), but beyond that… yeah, no. Any benefits you’re getting is placebo. If anything it’ll be worse, due to the added latency of hitting the VPN server, then going to the games server.
If you must use one, at least look at a VPN that’s privacy respecting. Something like ProtonVPN, Mullvad, Windscribe, or IVPN.
Games that just come out could be an issue regardless of distro. Sometimes Wine/Proton needs to fix a few things… no distro is going to help, in that regard. I suppose a more regularly updated distro COULD help with getting updates faster… but it’s usually nothing you cannot already solve with Pop. ProtonUp-QT is a great tool to help get you the latest Proton versions, including the Eggroll fork. It’s available as a Flatpak, so it’ll work on most modern distros (including Pop).
If you must switch to a more regularly updated distro, you have a couple of options. Nobara (based on Fedora) will give you a nice middle ground between your current setup and Arch. Speaking of which, Arch is a great distribution, with fantastic documentation. That being said, it IS NOT new user friendly. It WILL break, and you WILL need to look stuff up. You’re on the literal bleeding edge, of Linux. The Arch forums can also be quite toxic, in comparison to what’s available on both Pop/Ubuntu and Nobara/Fedora. If neither is appealing to you, consider OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. It’s very up to date, but I often find it more stable than Arch.
Hello, the UK and the NHS. Well over a decade of budget cuts, mixed with corporate political “donations” (to both majour parties), is leading to this end. Some parts are already privatised.
Copyright is a HUGE pain in the arse, especially with books. Do you realise how hard some libraries have had to fight, just for trying to do, your business idea. On that note.
What’s your USP, especially compared to a library? They already have tons of physical and digital books, and other media. You can even request scientific papers, from some of them. Remember digital libraries are also a thing.
A lot of scientific papers are already available for free, online. They can be hard to find, but they are available.
How are you making money? What are the expected net/gross income? How are you going to convince them to pay?
Via an application Firewall, which will run on your PC. Safing’s Portmaster works on both Linux and Windows. Objective-See’s LuLu is a good Mac option. Both of these tools are free and open source.
If you know Unity’s IPs, you could block it in your firewall. I’m guessing you do not. Though, with a little work, it can be done.
If you can’t do either, you could at the very least block it at the DNS level. This will stop the software getting those IPs. It doesn’t really work if the IPs are already baked into the software, but that is incredibly unlikely in games. A great configurable DNS provider is NextDNS. If you have the know how to self-host a Pi-Hole or Adguard Home are great options.
There’s also ways to analyse that traffic, which I won’t go into here.
For a start, even if you run it stock, it’s somewhat on par with the iPhone (depending who you ask). You’re trusting one company with your data, Google. You’re not trusting Google AND Samsung, or Google AND Huawai. It’s just Google. Plus Google does offer good security, so your data/device is pretty secure. In comparison to Samsungs Knox… while better than a lot of other Android security stuff, is kinda bad.
Though, the real privacy win for the Pixel, is it DOES allow you to modify it. You can remove Google’s version of Android, and change to Calyx or Graphine OS. Both of which are fantastic options, that allow you to really lock things down.
Let’s be honest here, no system is perfect. Whether it’s devices from China, USA, or here in the UK. Even if it’s properly secure today, it might not be tomorrow. You just need to mitigate risk. There is always something. As for easy/hard to do something… that’s relatively simple in even prosumer software (nevermind Enterprise). 5 minutes in Unifi, or Pf/OpenSense, is all it takes.
I’m not talking VLANs, although that is an option. I’m talking about completely blocking WAN access. You could also detect the IPs it’s connecting to, and block them across all your devices.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but can’t most Hikvision cameras work completely offline? Block them from reaching out to the internet, and just connect locally. You could still do remote access through other means, so functionality shouldn’t take a huge hit.
There is no clear indication of bias, from PrivacyTests, just accusations.
If the tools and tests ARE open source (which they are), they can be checked for bias/cheating. Someone could also expand (fork) upon them to give more of a rounded opinion.
Oh, those little snowflakes. Poor things. Do they need to retreat to their safe space? What about a kiss on their boo-boos? Never mind those bad pro human rights, pro equality, pro EU people can’t hurt you.
Too much work, for so little gain. I’d expect it if they ever release a Tf3, though.