Maybe you can use your existing phone for google stuff only, and get another cheap phone for doing anything else, or try doing as many things as possible on a computer.
Also rooting is dangerous (it opens door for exploits and hacking) and things may go wrong (as I also used to f**k things .)
Nope. You'll still need a ROM with Sig spoof support.
Some suggests rooting and doing extra stuff but there is high chance of something not working right.
Calyx and LOS are almost the same, but Calyx is slightly better in terms of community and automated upgrades.
I suppose you can get it from here though note that it's not that functional.
If Cromite is working fine for you, then better sticking with it
You can't do much about google tracking you, but you can still block ads by using some adblocker and be on vpn.
Try to do browser isolation (do google stuff on chrome and anything else on another browser), better than none.
Do as many thing as possible on a computer.
Syncthing. it may be confusing in the beginning, but it's good once up and running.
Chromite is smooth though perhaps not much less memory usage than the ones based on Firefox.
If not then Jelly, the default browser based on webview LOS. *Not a big deal using webview as long as I never log in to G.
Yeah that sucks. If possible, you may want to sell your device and get another one with more support (usually pixels are the best in terms of custom ROM support) or get another used one for cheap price.
You won't be able to remove all the google spy codes at system level by just debloating, unfortunately.
For example, google has wifi scanning crap that you can't turn it off, and google has your device fingerprint, which means if you go to some website with google code in it, google will still know your device went to the website and so on.
It's not as simple as some people here says.
Privacy and debloating, mostly.
Wish I could try it out but couldn't successfully install it on my device. So I'm sticking with LOS. LOS is already good enough (if not great) as it's stable and gets update more often.
It could be helpful about unloading some crap though It does say that "system apps cannot be truly uninstalled without root".