Thanks for this update. I did a fresh install and reloaded my backup.
Everything works fine.
In the description of version 196, it is specified:
Misc. Peer Dietzmann contributed a series of patches which will show for firewall hosts, groups and services in which firewall rules they are being used which will help to manage large sets of firewall rules easier.
On the Firewall Groups page, eg the Hosts page, if you have entries that are being used then in the column headed Used there will be entries like 1 x or 3 x or 6 x.
Place you mouse pointer over the value you are interested in and wait for a short while and an info box will appear showing the firewall rule block and the firewall rule number in that block.
EDIT:
It will also show you if a particular Host entry is being used in another network/host group.
This about the space that your BIOS is offering for EFI variables. This should be pretty normal to be small and quite full. There is no way to change this. You can always update safely.
The only problem I am aware of with the firewall groups was related to the customservices file. That issue was found in Core Update 186 Testing and fixed before CU196 was even released.