So why do you *choose* to spend some much time fighting against the machine?
Why do you insist on spending hours and days tracking down every little package that does you no harm and eradicating it from your system (even if doing so breaks stuff!) because it is "Gnomish"?
At the point that you are removing packages using dpkg --purge --force-all you are literally fighting the system and telling it that you know better than it what libraries and packages are needed.
No, I am trying to get a machine that actually works. I did try to use the defaults, but those browsers stopped working. It was because they stopped working that I tried to remove those packages. I went back to basics and started over completely, and tried installing packages and their dependencies one-at-a-time, trying to figure out where I had gone wrong (rather than following my tried-and-true method that always worked on my old desktop, where I was running Beowulf). I would return to my desktop and chuck this piece of junk laptop, but alas! my desktop is put away in storage.
I am almost ready to surrender and return to Windoze.
I did try to use LibreOffice, again and again, and can't use it, so I try to get OpenOffice to work. I have tried to run my system using those Gnome packages, and when it works, and I don't notice it, I don't mind so much.
At this point, I find that I have spent a big pile of money on nothing, and cannot move forward. I have a machine that is only useful for a passive spectator, to listen to music and online radio and watch videos, etc., but I cannot actually use it for work.
Thanks for caring, though.
;-)
Bill