What bloat do you want to remove? Titanium Backup is good at it.

 

i personally use titanium backup,but there are several that prolly will work.

with titanium,you need to pro key,id strongly recomend to get it,its well worth the $7.

with tibu pro,you can freeze bloatware before deleting it. you can also do batch backup and restores of all your user apps,wich will come in really handy once you start flashing roms.

if you want to try a different app for bloat removal,just make sure it has an option to temporarily disable,or freeze,apps so you can run the phoen a couple days and make sure that things youve selected wont affect normal operation of the phone. after that,they can be permantly deleted.

also:
-make a nandroid of your stock setup with all the apps
-make periodic nandroids of your setup as you delete things. that way if something goes wrong,youll have one to restore that you wont have to start from scratch with the freezing/deleting

 

the main prollems with free titanium are this:
1)you cannot do batch backups/resrtores(need to do them one at a time )
2)you cannot freeze apps,only delete them

*please make sure that the only apps you backup with titanium,and attempt to restore to different roms are user apps. do not try and install system apps or data from one rom to another.

another option for backing up your user apps to restore to a new rom is mybackup. i have not personally used it,so i cant comment directly,only that it is a popular app,and most folks seem to somewhat prefer its UI over that of titanium backup.

there are prolly several apps in the market that will freeze bloatware,so just do some searching and try and fine one that will let you freeze before deleting that way you dont have to try and backup with one,then delete with the other. if app quarantine is letting you pull apps and make them nonfunctional prior to deleting them,then you can continue using it

remember your nandroid will have all those apps in it,so restoring it will bring them all back if you need to. no need to back them up with titanium.

as far as whats safe,pretty much anything in the app drawer... those pictured are defiantely safe. there is actually quite alot you can do without. there was a list on xda,if you search for it.

rest assured that while somethings may break function if you delete them,there is nothing you can delete that will "brick" you beyond repair

 

No,its not going to hurt that you backed them up. Just don't restore them when you're setting up a new rom.

 

unfortunalty my TB hasnt been my daily phone for some time now,so im pretty out of touch with available roms.

i prefer AOSP(plain android wit no sense UI) so i always ran cm7 and roms based on it. "thundershed" is prolly one of the better cm7 roms.

you might post up differernt thread asking what folks like/are using so youll get some better responses.

also,just look thru the rom threads on xda or root z. read the discriptions,look at screenshots when available,and read the buglists to see if anything doesnt work. no harm in trying lots of roms till you find one you like. thats the beauty of nandroid backups... its easy to pick up where you left off with a different rom if you decide you dont like the one youre on

id also defiantely give the jellyblur rom a look see.