celluloid, pix, hexchat, hypnotix, rhythmbox, LibreOffice

Those applications uninstalled just fine without any dependency issues last time I tried Mint.

If you’re unsure, make a snapshot of your current VM state (if your VM software supports it). Then just uninstall the junk you don’t need until Mint breaks. Restore snapshot, test some more, and so on. Those on real hardware should use Timeshift to create snapshots.

Tip: Run sudo apt autoremove package in the terminal so you can see which dependencies that are removed.

OpenSUSE use patterns. Groups of packages that can be selected during installation. If one of the included pattern packages is removed it will be “fixed” when updating. You can uninstall some patterns, but be careful as some may be more important than others, leaving you without a graphical interface or something like that. If you decide to do a reinstall, you can deselect a lot of patterns (search for “pattern” in the software selection section of the installer).

Just Firefox/Librewolf with uBlock Origin is enough. The more extensions you add, the larger the attack surface and chance of site breakage. A common mistake many do is to add multiple blockers on top of uBO which will decrease uBO’s ability to defuse various anti-adblocks. This also includes addons like Privacy Badger, Ghostery, DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials, etc. uBO have good enough privacy protection enabled by default. If you want more, enable some other privacy filter lists. And if you know what you’re doing, enable hard mode by blocking all 3rd party requests and JavaScript.

If you want to feel more secure when adding more extensions to your browser, then only use Firefox addons that are recommended by Mozilla. Those extensions have gone through a review process to make sure they don’t contain anything malicious.

If you’re like me and don’t care about recommendations and being able to comment, then use Freetube with sponsorblock enabled.

Some links explaining this topic:

• https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Design/os-mockups/-/issues/150
• https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xdg/xdg-specs/-/issues/84
• https://blog.tingping.se/2019/09/07/how-to-design-a-modern-status-icon.html

The performance issues are because of Adblock and Adblock Plus: https://nitter.net/gorhill/status/1746263759495077919#m

It affects more sites than just YouTube.

Adblockers will still be allowed, they will just be crippled a lot. It will probably be the same as the adblocking situation on Safari.

If any 3rd party browser vendor wants to maintain a Chromium fork with Manifest V2, they can do so, but with the risk of code maintenance hell. They would also need an extension store for Manifest V2 extensions. Otherwise V2 extensions needs to be installed manually.

Browser vendors can also create their own separate ad blockers that aren’t affected by the changes. For example Brave Shields, Vivaldi adblock, Opera adblock, etc.

By doing that you’re wasting bandwidth on all the CDNs that hosts ALL your filter lists. Updating the Quick fixes list should be enough. (Which updates every 5 hours automatically on uBO 1.54).

How to manually update Quick Fixes (Manual updates push back automatic updates.)

• Click 🛡️ uBO’s icon
• the ⚙ Dashboard button
• the Filter lists pane
• the 🕘 clock icon next to the uBlock filters – Quick fixes list
• the 🔃 Update now button.

uBO Lite have a lot of limitations:

• Filter lists update only when the extension updates (no fetching up to date lists from servers)
• Many filters are dropped at conversion time due to MV3’s limited filter syntax
• No crafting your own filters (thus no element picker)
• No strict-blocked pages
• No per-site switches
• No dynamic filtering
• No importing external lists

Try with the invidious instances or piped instances that are the closest to you.

While talking about alternative front ends.