Buy the phone second hand. Not a cent goes to Google. From my understanding, they only support the Pixel line because it's the most secure hardware or something. Someone more knowledgable will probably explain it better though.

It's boring, but like someone else mentioned it tells you exactly what it does. So, I don't really see a problem with it.

LineageOS would probably also be a decent choice if they don't absolutely have to have no Google at all.

Try Osmand or Organic Maps. Both available from F-droid. Magic Earth is an option if you're using Aurora Store or downloading APKs.

They say Emacs is an amazing OS, with the best calendar, to-do list, email client, etc. Just missing a good text editor.

There's also Slide, which is a fork of the old Reddit app. But, that's not very active. There's quite a few actually. There was a thread with a bunch linked but I don't remember where it was posted.

Edit: Found it!

If you're looking for stable and up to date, give openSUSE Tumbleweed a shot.

AdAway is what I use on my rooted devices. It does have a rootless mode as well and if it's anywhere near as good as the root mode I would absolutely recommend it. I haven't tested it though so give it a shot.

Pixeldroid is a third party app. Pixelfed has their own official app as well if that matters to anyone.

Like most of the apps at the moment, it's under active development and improving rapidly. Don't give up on any of the apps you try too quickly.

As much as they all copy from each other, it's never a 1:1 copy. The copy is almost always slightly inferior to the original. Even if they all had exactly the same features, they'd look or function slightly differently. I do wish they'd stop copying though. Keep them seperate because they're all meant for different purposes. At least, they used to be at one point.

openSUSE Leap or Tumbleweed is an option if you wanna stick to RPM-based.