Probably just hardware compatibility and me specifically NVIDIA x) once you get the kinks sorted out it's a pretty stable experience
Started contributing 2 weeks ago and just did a walk for StreetComplete yesterday, it's hella fun and I've added a lot of POIs on my city since i started, just over 400 changesets atm :)
Indeed, I was supposed to born on the 31st Dec 1999 but didn't feel like it I guess :)
Jan 2000 here :)
If you want a FOSS alternative to fetchnotifs, you can try changedetection.io :)
Libreddit is great, been using it way before the Reddit drama (libreddit.caldeirag.xyz), there is also Teddit which is similar, they both support the cookie subscription thing.
Libreddit uses anonymous endpoints that still work for now, I use Libreddit daily on my instance.
Honestly I've been very satisified with ostree-based distros, specifically Fedora Kinoite (Silverblue for GNOME) and it's very hard to fuck it up and it encourages flatpak usage.
Other than that, the recommendations on the article are pretty good.
For server, Debian is great :) i use ubuntu 20.04 lts personally
Used andOTP but got discontinued, Aegis is the king now :)