dagrha

Nice choice on the XZ2. Like you I picked up a phone from the Xperia line. It's an older model than yours, namely the Z1 Compact, which I chose after filtering for form factor, LineageOS support, and price. I wrote about it here: https://hallau.world/post/the-perfect-android-phone/

VLC is great-- it's what I use for viewing RTSP on my LAN.

Speaking of PIA and not using the provider's client, I've written this simple python script that populates PIA OpenVPN routes for NetworkManager on a bunch of Linux distributions, which then pop right into the system tray or are accessible from nmcli, etc. (https://github.com/dagrha/pypia)