>>23103
The one issue you might run into with Debian and similar distros is that the packages in the "stable" repository are often ancient. This is beneficial if you're working in an environment where stability is important; the package might be old, but it works. For a desktop user experience though, this can sometimes be a pain in the ass for things like your browser, or frequently updated programs like yt-dlp. In these situations you can either install the software you want to be up-to-date manually, based on whatever instructions the provider has (usually adding an APT repository to your sources.list or compiling the software yourself, usually after cloning the git repository). This isn't as difficult as it sounds but often new users will think, "wow, debian sucks, all the software is outdated." It is, but that's on purpose, and if you want to have more up-to-date packages at the potential cost of instability, you can use Debian Testing, which you can read more about here: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianTesting . If you want easy installation for "bleeding edge" packages, you'll want to use a rolling release distro like arch or gentoo.
As for telemetry, a decent solution to detecting and stopping software on your linux machine from communicating with the internet without your knowledge/permission is a great program called OpenSnitch. It's an "application level" firewall, which means it can automatically block certain software from accessing the internet while allowing others. For example, LibreOffice never needs to talk to the internet in my opinion, though by default it does (to check for updates). My browser, however, generally needs to talk to the internet all the time. OpenSnitch allows you to choose what can have internet access and what can't, either permanently or for a given duration (e.g., I want to listen to an internet radio stream using mpv for the next hour, but after that, mpv shouldn't be able to access the internet anymore). It's a great way to mitigate "checking for updates" communication, which is really in most cases an unnecessary and malicious anti-user feature dressed up as convenience, since these are often used for telemetry like:
1. What version of the software are you running?
2. What time do you load the software?
3. How long are you using the software?
etc etc
If you really want to get into this kind of thing, learn Wireshark.
A final word, though: don't obsess too much. Learn this stuff slow and steady. Privacy exists on a spectrum, and especially as you're learning, trying to do everything perfectly right away will only lead to frustration. If you really want to do it right, develop a threat model, and work towards mitigating those threats first. In most cases, allowing LibreOffice to check for updates is probably not going to be a life-ending security threat. However, as you learn more and more, you can mitigate these little annoyances as well.
And yeah, fuck canonical.