I already saw that in latest years for many users browser and mail client deps are not needed (browser from other packaging, view mail from browser ecc...) and some people want remove these software but they can't without broke the metapackage so I moved to recommends in version 5.4.0
I suppose anyway this is not important enough for propose a stable update that will be accepted
As workaround you can remove cinnamon-desktop-environment, is already possible make a more minimal install installing only cinnamon-core instead cinnamon-desktop-environment (or from tasksel), or also only cinnamon (also without recommends). I tested in cinnamon 4.8 some minimal cases and did some changes related to make cinnamon working "out of the box" also on some minimal install cases without recommends.
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