I used most of the stuff you listed though I usually switched to mpv instead of VLC. On Linux, I used Strawberry for quite some time though I use foobar2000 on Windows. Deadbeef is a good lightweight alternative to that on Linux but always seems to play catch up to it’s elder cousin.

That website has always been like this. They occasionally publish articles and I sometimes visit them for curiosity but more often than not, many articles are sheer garbage.

Oh, it seems like they also started their own membership thing. Wow!

hoping for improvements

There have been improvements, just on the fronts you haven’t been looking for. Also, if I am correct, torrenting over Tor would be painfully slow compared to normally doing it or via a VPN. It is not worth the hassle.

Yes. Chrome OS is heavily modified(and locked down) version of Gentoo but I doubt any end users of Chrome OS want to experience vanilla Gentoo :p.

Folks who use Gentoo do out of their own choosing, not because someone recommended it. It is quite technical a distro and takes some time picking up. Void, is comparatively way easier to come to grips with than Gentoo.

Void was a great experience last time I used it. A minimal set of tools/software were installed(for some reason, I dislike ISOs/distros that fill everything from Libre Office to an FTP client in it; I will just download them if I want it), the package manager seemed pacy enough and system was fast. It is definitely one of the better distros I have tried.

Forever, no! Sure, compiling Firefox with some flags on my slow system can take ahem, time but I can install Gentoo in couple of days.

Though, in all seriousness, Gentoo takes a notch higher than Arch and unlike Arch, which has many entry level distros based on it, Gentoo has comparatively lesser. It’s fully usable but takes some initial time configuring and setting up the system exactly to the user’s requirements. The package manager is portage, I think.

Well, one does need to sideload two apps, a browser and then the corresponding xpi file which will install the add on.

There was/is an alternate way on Firefox Nightly, I think to create a custom add on collection which will add it to mobile Firefox normally. But yes, you are correct, only a miniscule amount of people would care to run it on Android(though it is always nice to have a workaround).

Same here. Whilst torrent sites themselves are blocked, once you get the magnet link/torrent via a proxy/VPN, there is no issue. I do not think anyone has ever received a cease and desist letter from their ISPs here. But then, I think, this is the case for many countries outside of the developed world.