For mobile I use Cake Wallet for iOS, but for security reasons I only sync it with my personal node at my home. I’m an user of Debian based distros, so unfortunately I can’t talk about Gentoo
Discussion
Seems like personal node is the must.
Another thing I am waiting for is the xmrsigner to be incorporated in the Cake Wallet.
Gentoo seems to be easier for me, but maybe just a matter of familiarity :)
It helps, but you don't explicitly need it. Set for privacy offers a remote node, however trusted, it's not the same.
Where it helps is for quick syncs and wallet balance checks
But ideally, if you have the hardware and bandwidth, download your own node.
I’m using a fanless mini PC (bought it from AliExpress) running Ubuntu Server.
I am thinking about RPi, something like this
https://github.com/peanutsformonkeys/raspberry-monerod
In a rack
Interesting! I will take a look !