The key to avoiding spyware is to not use any of the things that bring it in.

I bought a new tablet as a media consumption device: books, comics, music (control, mostly) and random web stuff. Priority went to screen size and resolution, then RAM, then “whatever” – I don’t care especially about CPU or GPU performance, connectivity beyond wifi, or special features. Books come from my own library server via OPDS or HTTPS, comics via OPDS, music in the house is controlled by a web page, TV and movies aren’t likely to be used on this device but can be handled by Jellyfin. I found a major-manufacturer’s last year’s top tablet on sale for about 50% of the original price, about 25% less than any previous sale. Almost 13”, 3K by 2K, 8GB RAM: all good…

When I got the tablet, I hit every “skip” or “don’t use this” available, including running the installation process without having connected to wifi yet. I used the built-in Chrome to get Waterfox from https://github.com/BrowserWorks , then stopped using Chrome. Waterfox got uBlock Origin added immediately, then I used Waterfox to get:

• Koreader, from https://koreader.rocks
• F-Droid, from https://f-droid.org
• Lawnchair, from https://lawnchair.app

I used F-Droid to install an open-source weather app and NewPipe and a few other things. I set Lawnchair as the default Home, then uninstalled a half-dozen or so other things that had shipped with the tablet. There was an aggravating “Task Bar” popup every time I went back to the home screen; turns out that can be disabled once you know it’s called “Task Bar”.

I can now do everything desired. It is “lacking”:

• calendar integration (but I have a web browser)
• email (but I have a web browser and I don’t want to do email here)
• maps and navigation (which I don’t want to do, but I have a web browser and could install OSMand easily enough)
• chat (but I have a web browser)
• automatic backup to the cloud (I don’t plan on saving anything unique here)
• spyware and ads (I didn’t want those, thanks)