An operating system with all the usual tools, but without news and ads

[Keith]

On 6/7/22 2:08 AM, Ralf Mardorf via ubuntu-users wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> does anybody know a web browser that is similar to Firefox, but
> does not require every now and then to waste time by removing
> "sponsored shortcuts"? And/or does anybody know a Chrome/Edge etc.
> alike web browser that doesn't every now and then adds "advertisements"?
> The platform can be Windows and/or iPadOS and/or Linux. I don't care, I
> just don't like ads, unwanted web feeds and all that crap. I even would
> pay one time 200,- € or even more, but I'm not willing to pay for an
> abo. the web browser doesn't need to be for free as in beer.
> 
> Today I got an ADIDAS shortcut when opening Firefox. Yes, just a button
> to open the link and that button was easy to remove. However, for me
> that's already a real pain (I really feel pain). If today somebody from
> ADIDAS management or a Firefox developer would cross my path I would
> turn violent. I'm a pacifist, but I can't tolerate stupid
> intrusiveness. For me Computers are tools. I want to keep my mind free
> and enjoy my work, but I can't keep my mind free, if news tell me that
> there is another war or that ADIDAS sells sports shoes. It makes me
> sick.
> 

In urlbar, type "about:config". click past disclaimer if there is one, 
and then in the search preference bar search the following terms one at 
time: "newtab", "pocket", "normandy", "sponsor", "telemetry", 
"experiment", and "studies". With some of terms like newtab, there will 
be a slew of associated preferences to select from, but basically you 
want to find the preference that overrides most all of the other ones 
and set that one. For newtab, it's "browser.newtabpage.enabled". Toggle 
its setting to false.

Years ago when Mozilla was began rolling out these features and 
data-gathering-phone-home services  I started disabling them on the 
advanced config page. It's a pain to have to this, but OTOH, once set 
you don't have go back and do it for every new release because the API 
is relatively stable and the settings persist across updates. In 
addition,  the settings you change either though the Preferences page or 
through the advanced config page are saved in a file called prefs.js 
that can be moved to other profiles.

You also have the option of saving subsets of those preferences into 
individual .js files and placing them in /etc/firefox/prefs where they 
will be applied system-wide.

-- 
Keith