[JeremyNT]

Personally, the Pixel line has greatly reduced the need for third party distributions, which I used primarily to get rid of vendor garbage. Pixels are the only phones I will buy now.

Pixels still have junk - but it's only Google's junk. There's value in getting rid of the base image and switching to LineageOS (or another distribution) but the situation isn't so dire as it is with other vendors.

I love that LineageOS is still going strong and it fills a huge gap once official software updates cease. I just no longer view it as a hard requirement.