It just works. Whenever anyone I know tells me they are going to install ubuntu or try out linux for the first time - I just tell them to install linux mint and they've had no complaints so far.
(Even though I only use mint as a fallback distro, I really appreciate it being there)
There are some people who use other roms like Lineage without the google apps. It's not as good as Graphene but it's better than the OEM version that comes with the phones.
You can use a rss reader app that works on the desktop like
or if you want to go all out - setup something like freshrss / miniflux on a selfhosted server.
As for getting Rss feeds from Youtube. I think there are some browser extensions you can use. If you have the newpipe app on android , you can visit any Youtube channel and it will have an option to get the Rss feed on the top right. You can copy that link to your RSS reader and it will start showing new videos.
There are some very crazy looking Gnome customizations in the unixporn community. At a glance they look like a custom window manager setups, not sure how well it performs though.
Well my point is that Gnome can be customizable just not as straightforward as KDE.
It just works. Whenever anyone I know tells me they are going to install ubuntu or try out linux for the first time - I just tell them to install linux mint and they've had no complaints so far.
(Even though I only use mint as a fallback distro, I really appreciate it being there)