Is there a distro you recommend? I’ve toyed around with Tails, but the lack of persistence and forcing all traffic through Tor instead of a VPN (I guess the whole point of Tails) is too inconvenient for daily use.
Not to be one of those people, but I use Arch (btw) as a daily driver and I really like it, but also I'm a tinkerer. But TBH even just something Debian with a decent VPN would probably be a lot more private than just regular Windows 11 or whatever IMO.
I'm a tinkerer as well, but I'm at a point in my life where I need to prioritize my tinkering haha. Like buying stir-fry takeout (Windows/MacOS), cooking it by buying a pre-packaged bag (packaged mainstream Linux distro), or starting from scratch, experimenting with literally everything from chopping technique to cooking temp for each ingredient, until you realize you're missing an ingredient you need, then you have to go back to the store (Arch lol).
I recommend Fedora for most people, its what I use. It has a great configuration out of the box for privacy, security, and usability, and is overall a really great option for both beginners and advanced users. Had no issues or complaints with it so far.
You can check out Privacy Guides for some other good options as well and more details, and just generally other recommendations and good resources.