It's a choice. We know that it's riskier to use stuff from AUR. Which is why it's highly recommended to read the PKGBUILD before installing the package. The basic Arch install doesn't even include an AUR helper. That said, AUR is typically very reliable for packages with a decent userbase. It's mostly due to the community aspect. Bad actors are caught relatively easily as the PKGBUILD is available to look at.
No, it's powered by Tensorflow, not an LLM. It's the useful side of AI, basically, also it's locally hosted. In case you don't like it, you can disable it. It's still a great app.
I've been using exclusively Linux since high school, and now I'm doing a PhD in math. It's always been pretty smooth. I used to have a separate Windows rig for gaming, but don't really need it anymore, now that Proton works very well with most games. (I don't really play AAA games, so that helps.)
Coming to the point, for academic stuff, I mostly needed to use a PDF reader (Zathura and qPdfView), LaTeX, and some computation and graphing software (mostly SageMath). I sometimes needed to use DOCX files, but LibreOffice works well for that. Most other software I need from time to time are usually Linux native.
Also, many universities provide access to O365. I've used it in some rare cases where I needed to provide input in some collaborative document. But in most cases, I was able to convince my friends/colleagues to use Google Docs instead.
Unless you do CAD, or some creative work, Linux should be perfect for your usecase.
Individual philanthropy is never a solution. Most of the breakthroughs happen by public funding. Tax the rich, and fund the research. Don't let the MFs claim they're helping anyone out by donating 1% of their stolen wealth.
I don't keep any TV series after I watch them, unless someone else with access to my Jellyfin wants to watch too. So my collection is relatively small at a few terabytes.
Sorry, I should've specified, it's in Haskell. Idk where you tried running it.