verassol

First of all, don’t waste your precious time enjoying life with privacy worrying and fear. It’s just not worth it.

I don’t know why, but I get the impression the device you are struggling to make more private is a phone. If that’s the case, the extent to which you can make things work is indeed very limited, so don’t try to push it too hard.

You could use a tool like a firewall to have a more high-level control over all apps, like blocking them all and only allowing a few.

This may be less overwhelming than trying to block and contain each app individually. Now, you will still need to allow some Google stuff to have a Google phone work properly (to use the Play Store for example). If you want to go further, I’d suggest trying another OS other than Android, but that may make your phone even less compatible with what you are relying on, so it may be a better idea to instead try it on an old phone first.

On a PC, you have more freedom. Instead of trying to block everything from Google, for instance, you can rely on a separate browser profile (or Firefox Containers if that’s inconvenient) for things that really need Google (e.g. Meet, work/school using Google Apps, whatever) and in your main browser profile you can rely on alternatives. For example, instead of trying to access YouTube behind a Google blocking extension, you could use Invidious or a dedicated app like FreeTube.

I hope you can feel more at ease with the sense of being watched and tracked online, but remember that’s not worth loosing your best moments for if it ends up just causing more distress to you.

It’s a thing!

I think you have a point there, but the reasons why Mint does not ship a streamlined version may be simply because the maintainers don’t want to bother with a whole different context to build, document and support.

I do think there would be value in a less “batteries included” Mint. I disagree with people in this thread who claim the “whole purpose” of Mint is all the stuff it packs, because it goes far beyond the essentials. Mint develops a lot of GUIs for the user to be able to configure the system. I think just these plus the in-house Mint core apps would make for a sweet, lightweight and less bloated system that would have real appeal, but that would also mean more work for the Linux Mint team and perhaps it wouldn’t really mean much for their audience.

I can’t seem to block them by just enabling annoyances blocks on my end.

“EasyList – Other Annoyances” has this:

! Google signin popup
###credential_picker_container
###credential_picker_iframe

“AdGuard – Popup Overlays” has this:

! Warning: check, if auth using Google is not broken
||accounts.google.com/gsi/client^$third-party,script,domain=<several specific domains here>

My impression is that the rules want to avoid breaking Google sign-in completely, which this rule may do.

1. Install UBlock Origin
2. Click the extension’s icon
3. Click the gears icon for settings
4. Open the “My filters” tab
5. Add a line with ||accounts.google.com/gsi/iframe/select?*

Steps 2 and 3 can be replaced by going to about:addons, finding UBlock Origin, clicking the ... button and selecting “Preferences”.

Consider antiX. It’s very lightweight, supports 32 bit and you’ll have access to the Debian Repos.