LMDE 6 has only been out for less than a year. It’s based on Debian 12. Debian 13 will likely be out around this time next year, and the future LMDE 7 will be based on that.
With a de-googled custom rom like LineageOS, I’m not forced to choose between 2 mega corps.
Celluloid, pix, hexchat, hypnotix, rhythmbox, LibreOffice all uninstall just fine without any issues. The only one of those I personally keep is Libreoffice.
Linux Mint is one of the most widely-used desktop distros and it defaults to X11 (and Wayland on Cinnamon is still experimental). LM is known for not changing things until the solution is good and ready.