EDIT:
As it turns out this is just how gnome is supposed to look and to get a permanently visible dock showing running apps and favorites I must install an extension like dash-to-dock
Thanks everyone to help me understand I was the problem here 🙂
After using Ubuntu for years I thought it would be a good idea to try out plain old Debian for the first time.
So I downloaded the live-Image setup a VirtualBox and started installing it... installation ran trough without any problems. But I don't see any panel/taskbar anywhere.
I tried to google this and best guess was that gonme-panel was not installed (how?) after installation I tried to run it by the terminal but it only trows an error "(gnome-panel:3427): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: 20:24:58.712: invalid cast from 'GdkWaylandDisplay' to 'GdkX11Display'". So before I start digging into this I just wanted to confirm that I am on the right track and not just mixing stuff up. So does anyone have an idea what went wrong here?
No my initial point is, that if you are boarding with how to setup a VPN you are probably not the main user that TikTok is generating money from.
Plus companies will probably not use a platform that is banned in a country to target people in that country.
And plus if you are willing to just Google or look up a single video tutorial about what a VPN is or how to set it up you are probably above of the average Internet user today.