Has the author of this article ever used a custom ROM? There are so many free alternatives for these apps out there. If I remember correctly, LineageOS ships with their own version of Dialer/Messages anyway. I usually replace them with the versions of SimpleMobileTools, which work just fine.
The main difficulty for custom ROMs are not these standard apps. The real issues are bootloaders which cannot be unlocked, undocumented binary&buggy firmware blobs, SafetyNet, Google Play Services, and so on. Just look how Google effectively broke the AuroraStore App recently. It's getting more and more difficult to use Android without a Google Account.
> Just look how Google effectively broke the AuroraStore App recently.
For anyone who has been hit by this, you can workaround the api issue by long pressing on a playstore http link and clicking open in app (aurora icon).
So you can't search using the app anymore, but if you have the link to what you want you can still install without playstore or a google account.
It's frustrating but isn't the end.
Not a very clean solution but if someone (power user) wants to avoid the playstore entirely, they can perhaps do so by simply force-disabling the app (using tools like adb), and then use something like apkmirror[1] or apkpure[2] or aptoide to install the APKs for the apps directly and bypass the store entirely?