requires a phone number

That hasn’t been true for a while now.

deleted by creator

moving onto Mint.

Yeah, but in another 2 years it would be the same with Mint 23. Then 24. And so on… /s

Yes. IIRC it’s based on latest LTS kernel with Google patches. So it’s been “year of the Linux phone” for a while now.

It’s unfortunate that the slop they put on top of it is such a privacy nightmare. PostmarketOS is trying to change that and supports Plasma, Gnome, etc. But it’s early days yet and still rough around the edges from what I’ve been reading.