You don’t need to use GOG’s launcher, they provide offline installer downloads.

Private companies also seek to maximize profits…

There is Batsh, a simple language with c-style syntax that compiles to bash and batch.

I use Dynalist. It’s an outliner, not strictly a to-do app but functions well enough as one. Also useful for notes, brainstorming, project management, or anything where you want text in a tree structure.

there is a slight trade-off in privacy, as Chrome and Gmail will share URLs with Google to check if they are malicious and temporarily associate this information with your signed-in Google account.

Yeah just a slight trade-off of sending Google every URL you visit.