Is It Safe to Remove Preinstalled KDE Apps on Debian?

You can definitely remove these apps, but I suggest keeping a few like Crashed Processes Viewer, KFind, KWallet Organizer, and KWrite just in case. If you have another terminal installed, you can ditch Zutty, and if you already have a text editor, KWrite can go too. It's good to look up what each app does online to figure out what's actually necessary for your workflow.

If you want a clean setup, consider doing a net install without a desktop environment and then just install the core KDE features using apt. That way, you can pick and choose what you want. As for removing the apps, it should be safe. Just keep an eye out for any warnings from apt that might indicate you’re uninstalling something critical—if it does, abort it and try another app.

Just a quick tip: don't just take the word from Reddit about Ubuntu being worse than Debian. There are a lot of opinions out there, and some might be exaggerated. Also, if you're looking for a bare bones install, try running "sudo apt install kde-plasma-desktop" after a net install. It's a clean way to get KDE.

It should be safe to remove those apps, many of which are only included to provide a complete set of tools after installation. I don't necessarily see them as bloatware, but they’re probably not needed for your usage. Just remove them one at a time and be careful not to uninstall anything essential related to KDE. Running autoremove afterwards is also a good idea to clean up any unused dependencies.