I strongly recommend f-droid.org. They have a marketplace that adheres to the FOSS ethos. That's a pretty simple solution, if you just want to ditch the google play store. If you want to flash a custom rom/recovery, xdadevelopers is the go-to for active communities for most devices. I'd be happy to help, but I'm in abq. If you send me make/model/sw versions, I could find appropriate resources.