As far as I can tell, yes. I signed up for the free tier before paying for the service, and the worst I ever got was a banner here or there advertising their paid service. Proton encrypts all your data with your password, so they literally can't access it even if they wanted to. The only info they have on you are things like when you logged in and your IP address (and I believe they've turned that info over to law enforcement when required, like any legitimate company would have to do), but their servers are in Switzerland where there are better privacy laws.
If you happen to have any background with coding, I recommend OpenSCAD. There are a (relatively) limited set of instructions, easy to pick up if you do any other coding.
Yeah, that's my plan. I usually end up with a couple of flatpaks (or AppImages) for the things that I need up to date, but otherwise just go with most things from the repository.
I was thinking of switching away from Arch and back to something Debian-based. I've never been a big fan of flatpaks (I have a background of not having fast internet or much storage space, it's just stuck with me) and I never used the AUR anyways.
I mainly tried Manjaro to try the bleeding-edge life, and while I do enjoy having more up-to-date packages, I do miss being able to install DEB packages. I think I might try Debian testing and see how that goes.
You can snag a Pixel 6a on Swappa for about $100. I looked into compiling the OS once, and it wasn't worth it for me (on an i9 w/ 16GB RAM and a SSD, still would take days).
"My wallet is stuck! Here, I'll just give you my pants!"
Or something along those lines