Most of the "looks" come from the compositor (picom) and the bar.

"mLauncher" from Fdroid, it is a fork of OlauncherCF

When I had reddit (deleted a few years ago), I posted a screenshot of my android launcher, and someone pointed out that I was using google apps, and said "protect your privacy", he gave me some resources and that's where it all clicked for me. What a nice guy.

I read the full blog post from the linked blog of a sysadmin there, and it was worth the read, what a ride.

Bonus: Instance and community

Decentralization is king here

Linux mint is in my opinion the best distro for a new user, but you may personally not be fond of the UI.

I don't know how to write a guide for you, but if you have more specific questions feel free to ask them, best of luck!

Olauncher, Foss and actually minimal

You pay and you're still the product, they continue with all the tracking they do.

I would love it on Piped, they already have sponsorblock

No ads, no tracking, just donations. The model proved itself when twitter went to shit and a big influx of users came to mastodon, it all worked out.

Dude, same thing happened to me