Yes SearXNG is awesome. You can even self host your own instance for added security/privacy. I have my own instance running on a free tier Oracle cloud 1core/1GB ram and it works great.

I’ve tried a couple different KDE distros and settled on Fedora 40 KDE spin. It seems to be the most complete KDE experience without all of the Canonical/snap bloat. It works great on my Thinkpad. Also runs decent on my gaming desktop using the latest Nvidia beta driver - I used to get stutters and artifacts in games/steam/plex and now with the beta driver those apps run fine

Download another launcher, set it as default home, and forget about google’s excessive ads. Depending on your model, you may need to run an ADB command. You may need to get a remote remapper app to remap the home button to open the launcher

I am using this one for my android tv https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spocky.projengmenu

And flauncher for my chromecast https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.efesser.flauncher