RuTracker is the way to go if you're not keen on playing the private tracker game. Good selection and well seeded, especially for content that doesn't tend to have good retention on other public trackers (e.g. FLACs, high bitrate encodes/remuxes etc.)

Public trackers are pretty awful at the moment. I like PSA alot, but they're only doing new releases, even that not very comprehensive, and some shows only in 720p (this last one's bizarre imo).

I've slowly over the years lost whatever toehold I had on private trackers, but even when I had that it was just impossible to expand it. Until this last year whenever it was, I was happy enough with Rarbg. The night before it dying, I remember thinking to myself "I am so fucked if they go out". I think I might have been the one that jinxed it.

> I’m also wary of any private trackers because they block using VPNs.

Yeh, that policy's not great. It's only 50/50 that they do that so they can snitch on you if they get raided.

How good is software like radarr/sonarr/etc? I’m not super familiar with them but they sound kinda like trackers of trackers, and somehow are developed in the open on GitHub so I feel like they should be fairly trustworthy.

> How good is software like radarr/sonarr/etc?

It's usable. Was a learning curve, and though it's been awhile it seems like I spent more time getting it configured than it should have taken.

> and somehow are developed in the open on GitHub so I feel like they should be fairly trustworthy.

They're like 5 steps down the "contributory infringement" hierarchy. Though that probably wouldn't help them in sued, because the punishment for facing a lawsuit comes as soon as it is filed, rather than after judgement.

Torretfreak is a great site to check on Sailing the Seas in general. They also do annual roundups of public trackers. It's a place to start.