I've had Pixels pretty much the whole time since the Pixel 2, I've dailied every generation except the OG and the 6a, coincidentally. I'm on the 7 now and really like it after thinking the 6 was hot trash. Out of curiosity, why is the 7 "intolerable"? What makes the 6a better?
No youre not. Calyx is a joke, sorry. DivestOS may be okay but its still very different from GrapheneOS.
And no tiny custom Android can fix the issue that hardware manifacturers will not supply a single byte of firmware updates after their contract is done.
CalyxOS implements many random 3rd party stuff as if that was their own.
Apart from 2 (QKSMS and Bromite) being unmaintained, installing random apps as system apps (if this is what they do) means a system update may cause data loss for users, when removing those apps. And it has the problem of a way too high goal that can not be reached. They simply dont maintain those apps, so dont ship them.
How much maintenance does a simple SMS app need? What random apps are system apps? Beomite is not installed, not even sure qksms is, but I always use it. Never had a single issue removing any apps. Seems like you're just very uninformed
They had this on their homepage, advertizing QKSMS and Bromite as if they were project apps. Which they are not.
So either A: they preinstall apps as system apps or B: they have some form of installer that installs them as normal user apps.
You should have as many apps as user apps as possible.
Maybe they changes this idk. But QKSMS is not a simple SMS app like the one that GrapheneOS implements (the old and hardly maintained AOSP one) and Bromite is an unmaintained Browser which is a huge problem. Cromite and Quik are maintained forks.
I am pretty happy with GrapheneOS. Things like separate toggles for internet, or long powerbutton press foe torch are missing.
But you cannot imagine how much effort it is to maintain such a project, and their base is stable, the updates are damn fast.
First stability and security, then features.
Their core OS is minimal on purpose. I use the phone, vanadium (hardened chromium, with JIT toggle, now with adblock, completely degoogled), their attestation app, etc.
Most of the other stuff are random FOSS projects, I dont even use sandboxed play, but if I wanted to I could create a separate user profile and install it just in there.
DivestOS is doing sandboxed microG which is way more secure than unsandboxed, but still tons of effort and will break a lot.