Great guide! I feel the excuse given for not using and supporting companies like purism was a bit off (they make special hardware). I got a second hand librem laptop. Purism cares about your privacy and that needs encouragement.

Also, if you care about backdoors you can only get lenovo x200/230 which has very old hardware. A librem laptop is a step up.

As for VPN, check out postmaster as an alternative. Open source that gives you full control on what accesses internet (no need for you to use a sniffer anymore).