As a Guix user, I recommend Ubuntu. If you stick with it, there are specific distros for gaming, but, Ubuntu has such a large user base it makes it very easy to get answers to questions that are specific to your distro. Ubuntu makes it easy to install nvidia and other ‘3rd party drivers’, it’ll just work. I do recommend installing software in the terminal, the Ubuntu app store I feel has some rough edges.

Well, the alternative ROM scene has been active as long as Android has, so I kinda doubt Google hasn’t thought about whether their software is actually soft and squishy like the name implies, and easy to remove or modify.

I think you might be right, but it’s a little silly to think Google would only install spyware on a tiny fraction of their phones that they somehow had a premonition that GrapheneOS would be installed on.

The user base of Pixel phones is small? What?

You can just pass the --update flag when invoking yt-dlp. I don’t think the package itself needs to be up to date in order to work reliably.