On GNOME 3.x now, really settled into it. I have heard claims that KDE is more efficient on resources than Xfce. Is there any truth to this? If so what are the significant differences or why this is?

Great read thanks. Not a very dissausive piece, does well going over pros/cons.

It’s not entirely clear what your deciding factor is here on choosing a browser. If its privacy Brave is not it. There is still telemetry used, uses Google dependencies. Personally their privacy policy is dubious, they sell themselves on not serving ads but searches are done on Google by default. A pro of Brave is their anti-fingerprinting that’s pretty innovative.

Out of the box browsers I would recommend are GNU/Icecat, Tor browser paired with a VPN, specifically ungoogled chromium. Customized Firefox is still legit but takes some work. There are a few others out there but unfortunately little support really, small projects, Bromite on Android comes to mind. Check out privacytools DOT io , they have a good list of alternative apps.