Quitting from sites you despise is a better option than hopping from frontend to frontend in my view.

I already have enough content to watch between Peertube and Odysee. Youtube is dead to me.

This seems more like a good reason to not use default options than a reason to not use Garuda. Many distros have worse defaults than this.

I use Simple Dialer myself. It's available on F-Droid.

I prefer Peertube over other alternatives although Odysee is a close second. I use Tilvids as my instance of choice:

https://tilvids.com/

I am on a Pleroma server called Free Speech Extremist myself. Very light on rules:

https://freespeechextremist.com/

If you are wanting to stick with Mastodon over Pleroma then I would suggest Linux Rocks:

https://linuxrocks.online

I use it on Linux. It's in the AUR if you'r on Arch as well as them having instructions to setup the client on a variety of distros:

https://protonvpn.com/support/linux-vpn-setup/#linux_app

I have been a happy Proton VPN user for years.

I didn't know they even had a VPN but I doubt I would trust them over Mullvad or Proton. Even if what other posters are saying is true and it is just a reskinned Mullvad i'd rather give Mullvad money over Mozilla.

Age is only part of the equation. Older ones can be more secure but you have to go further back and think of more than just the hardware. The big thing is to try to get a laptop that is sold using a non stock BIOS or be comfortable doing the work yourself. Libreboot; Coreboot; or something like it. After that try to use as free as an OS as you can such as Trisquel; Guix; Hyperbola; etc. There are lots of stores that sell laptops that are more secure out of the gate:

https://puri.sm/products/librem-14/

https://configurelaptop.eu/nv40-series/

https://minifree.org/

https://store.thonkpeasant.xyz/

https://tehnoetic.com/laptops

https://store.vikings.net/en/?route=common%2Fhome

Basically a computer is only as secure as you are willing to make it. You are limited by the hardware but you choose the hardware so you're only really limited by yourself.