If they were hashed then they were likely salted too, not much reason to not do both. Especially since they said "in accordance with best practices", otherwise they're just lying lol. They probably just didn't want to make the announcement too technical.
It's not impossible or unreasonable. But I think the game is most fun when you play a mix of stealth and shooting, depending on situations, especially as your character gets stronger.
If you really want to go full vanilla, I noticed you're on Linux so it actually runs ok there. But you'll still want Vanilla Fixer for the more modern renderer, launcher, and high frame rate fix.
There are some huge bugs in the vanilla game though (Vanilla Fixer only does compatibility fixes not gameplay fixes). For example if you start a new game while in a game your inventory will become seriously broken. Before starting a new game you either need to restart the program, or enter the training first and start the new game from there (because starting training clears your inventory).
Also vanilla does NOT have autosave. When the game says SAVING when traveling maps that's actually only for the purpose of traveling back to the old maps and you cannot load from that if you die. Get used to that quicksave button or rebind it, but also make hard saves just in case!
Also vanilla will not allow you to save during infolinks (radio calls). Not a huge deal for a first time playthrough if you aren't rushing.
It's just random. When zoomed in, I believe the sway will pick a random direction to sway in and a random number of milliseconds to wait before picking a new random sway direction. But without a scope it's just full random at the time of firing.
I can try to grab some excerpts without spoilers...
GMDX offers new player mechanics, refined AI behavior, reworked weapon mechanics, rebalanced RPG elements, enhanced artistic direction, expanded level design, overhauled audio design, new interactions and simulated effects, improved user interface, and hundreds of bug fixes.
Messing with the design of Deus Ex may quickly hurt the experience. And that is what GMDX does.
In early areas, the changes that GMDX makes are minor, which is the reason for my early positive feeling on GMDX. In later areas, however, there are radical changes. The aim seems to have been to increase the difficulty. And it succeeds at that: the difficulty of GMDX is certainly quite a lot higher than the difficulty of Deus Ex. But higher difficulty does not make for a better game. That is particularly true because of the reasons why the game is more difficult with GMDX.
If they were hashed then they were likely salted too, not much reason to not do both. Especially since they said "in accordance with best practices", otherwise they're just lying lol. They probably just didn't want to make the announcement too technical.