I had a similar issue when I started with Hyprland to set up all the additional programs which usually come with a DE. But there are preconfigured setups which give you a “full DE” experience out of the box and you can customize from there.

I recommend SolDoesTech or My Linux for Work. Both have full guides on Youtube as well for “easy” Arch + Hyprland installs.

I had a very similar experience when I switched to Linux around 2 years ago. Now I dread every second I have to use Windows at work.

You can block it’s internet access, but I don’t know if you would still get all features.

The far-right party AfD polls at around 20% at the moment. There are (too) many bigots in Germany as well.

Speaches from on of their leaders Bernd Höcke are very close to speaches from the Nazi time. So Germany is not a very good example to prove your point.

Do you have more info on the proprietary shim? I’ve never heard of it