

Do try out the “private space”, you can install play services and gmaps in there and have it separate from the rest of your phone.
As for notifications: this heavily depends on your apps. I mainly use Signal, and the fdroid build has notifications without play services, and for protonmail I found “you have mail” which makes it work. And I live without whatsapp notifications
I much prefer aosp with gestures enabled. That diagonal swipe was hit or miss for me