My choice of distro is just a compromise and close enough to serving my needs. All distros have pros and cons, and I use different distros for different use cases.
The minimal furniture and a sense of free space are great for my mental health. A cluttered home to me feels like a cluttered mind. I don't want to live in a cage of excess stuff, much like I don't want to carry unhealthy mental baggage with me, pulling me down. You may see a sparse room, but I see freedom from sensory fatigue. I see freedom.
Gentoo is great. I used it for a few years 20 years ago and I still think the package manager is the best I've ever used. I wouldn't use Gentoo today, but I'm really glad I went through the install and maintenance process. It didn't make me a guru, but I did learn a thing or two about Linux.
Here's a tip I learned so very long ago: Never shop hungry.
That being said, I'm really careful about what I buy anyway and plan my purchases so that I end up using everything. Fresh foods can still spoil because I didn't spot a moldy spot, but that's pretty rare. Dried foods are great.
Honestly I have little good advice to give aside from awareness and planning, since I am by nature perfectionist about my food and budgeting and can't relate to the meme.
postmarketOS, though they are in the process of migrating to systemd. Not that I personally mind terribly much, even if it feels like a bit of an odd choice. So maybe I should say Alpine.
George Orwell wrote about his experiences with those in Down and Out in Paris and London. It's a decent book and an interesting look at poverty of the day.
The thing is, people by and large don't want to be convinced. They want their convenience and ease of use, they don't want to learn a whole new paradigm, least of all one that requires constant vigilance and understanding of the risks. I can't blame them, they have a lot on their mind, and their existing skill set might not be relevant to privacy issues. People in general resist change and effort. I do. You do too.
It's less about you, and more about them. People will only start taking steps when it all clicks for them. What the catalyst will be is impossible to tell, since people are wired differently. All we can do is talk about privacy and advocate for it with people who are willing to have the discussions. Don't expect to go in and change people's minds. It's horribly difficult and you will be disappointed. Instead, think of it as giving people perspectives and starting points for their own journeys. If something happens and they are finally willing to start doing the work, they will at least have some context and words, labels to use. They may even come to you for more. They may not.
A few years back, during Covid lockdowns, I stumbled upon Alessandro Manzoni's The Betrothed and liked it a lot. It was fascinating to read how people reacted to the plague back then.
Mandriva is gone, but there's a couple of projects carrying its legacy. OpenMandriva is one of them, obviously. Mandrake was my first distro too, so I have a soft spot for it.
From my perspective, OpenMandriva's biggest strengths are that it's independent, non-derivative, community driven, and based in Europe. Unfortunately it's also small, but the people behind it seemingly do a lot with very little, so the community is passionate about the project.
Personally I'm just happy that there are smaller, non-corporate distros still out there providing alternatives. And OMLx seems like a pretty solid distro at that.
I eventually decided on openSUSE Tumbleweed for a few reasons: rolling release, because I like to stay up-to-date; non-derivative, not a fork or dependent on other underlying distros; European, for (perceived) privacy reasons; a relatively well known and large distro with a decent community, for troubleshooting reasons; backed by a company, though that has both its ups and downs; lastly, support for KDE Plasma.
I actually had trouble finding a distro that suited all my criteria at the time, but openSUSE is good enough for now and I am pretty much satisfied.
My choice of distro is just a compromise and close enough to serving my needs. All distros have pros and cons, and I use different distros for different use cases.