My advice is to always go in short steps, proving the ground and getting to know the alternatives. I’d recommend installing f-droid and having fun testing all the free apps you can, removing google stuff one by one, then, after feeling comfortable, trying a custom rom, and when you eventually need a new phone, looking for a model more friendly to degoogling.
And not only an easy thing to do, but something that bothers the big tech a lot! If it didn’t bother, they wouldn’t care to invest so much in making it harder for us, and if it bothers them, it means we’re on the right track.
Linux market share is increasing even in the charts with all OSes, desktop and mobile.
So, if we consider a classroom, it’s roughly 1 or 2 students using linux in each class. I don’t think it’s too far off from real life experience.
Back in school, we would ask others if they were going to the gym. Then someone seemed to have their ego lifted by the question, we would say that we asked because it does, indeed, doesn’t look like so.
They count based on useragent info from accesses to websites using statcounter analytics.
Those people always impressed me. I always went 100% the stealth way, even in games not centered in stealth because I’m terrible in the fast action stuff.
I went directly from ubuntu to arch, and then fedora. My curve was like a 1st order system, without that confidence overshoot. However, I don’t feel like competent today, neither I have confidence in my skills.