I still prefer a physical SIM for my main cell plan, but when travelling to other countries it is so amazing to be able to just download an eSIM and avoid roaming fees. Airalo is quite convenient, but I hear it’s getting pricey compared to other options.

Plus with dual SIM I can disable roaming on my main SIM but still receive texts for free, but use data for cheap with the local eSIM at the same time.

Disclaimer: I live in Canada which has some of the most expensive cell plans in the world. Roaming in the US is $13 CAD/day and $16 CAD/day in the rest of the world. That seems like blatant extortion to me, they can’t blame Canada’s large size for expensive roaming fees (right?). I think US plans are a lot better, and I assume European cell plans are generally even cheaper.

Edit: I prefer physical SIMs for my main plan because if my main phone is dead or broken, I can just pop the physical SIM in an old phone that I bring while travelling. Until eSIMs can be somehow transferred like that, I don’t see myself using them for my main cell plan. Just remember to set a SIM PIN so that if someone steals your phone, they can’t use your SIM card to receive 2FA texts.

Edit 2: eSIMs are generally a pain to transfer between phones. I think my cell provider lets you do it online by scanning a QR code, but I know some make you call them and read 16 digit codes over the phone. Some even charge a small fee. I dread the day where other cell phone manufacturers follow what Apple did in the US (I think?) and make eSIMs the only option.

I really like Aegis for 2FA/TOTP:

https://github.com/beemdevelopment/Aegis

Edit: also Element, a matrix client, for messaging: https://element.io/download

Edit 3: Feeder for RSS (Google Play), (F-Droid), I really like how you can extract the text of articles without ads.

Edit 4: Simon Tatham’s Puzzles, a bunch of simple puzzle games, no ads or BS (Google Play) (I think this is the right one: F-Droid). Fun fact: he created PuTTY.

Edit 2: also minidlna (apparently called ReadyMedia now) as a UPnP/DLNA server to host music and videos on your PC, then you can easily watch using VLC on a phone/computer (and any smart TV with the VLC app, probably) within the LAN. I’d be interested to hear any recommendations for how to easily access my UPnP server from outside my network from my phone. I’m sure there’s some way to do it with a VPN, but I’d rather only route the media streaming traffic through my home network, not all my phone’s traffic.

+1 to everything you said. Another funny thing I noticed: I looked at my steam catalog on a family member’s Macbook. Many of the games aren’t available on Mac, plus they dropped 32 bit executable support.

I never thought that only ~15 years later (from when I first tried Linux) we would start booting into linux from a mainstream OS for gaming. How the times have changed.