It's unfortunate that they missed out on Trade Union recognition at the Coventry facility recently. I'm sure GMD (or others) will keep on trying though.
When it's needed for the website to work properly, it will automatically accept the cookie policy for you (sometimes it will accept all and sometimes only necessary cookie categories, depending on what's easier to do)
As far as laws go, I'm in the UK and AFIAK privacy laws are still the same as before we left the EU. Other countries such as the US seem to have less strict laws (apart from the CCPA) which means a lot of US news sites I visit will geoblock me as they don't want to comply with EU standards.
Debian is good for this. Enjoy it while there is still 32-bit support though. Edit- do you have any swap configured?