GNU IceCat is a "de-mozillaed"[^] Firefox LTS:

https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/

It seems it is mostly maintained within GNU Guix now (which has 91.3.0).

[^]: It comes with its own set of opinionated (but privacy-friendly) add-ons.

Unfortunately, upstream IceCat appears to use the FireFox 60.x ESR branch, which is three branches behind the current ESR and is past its end-of-life date. It's also a few security updates behind the 60.x ESR branch's last release.

The GUIX package is more recent, but its description states:

> WARNING: IceCat 91 has not yet been released by the upstream IceCat project. This is a preview release, and does not currently meet the privacy-respecting standards of the IceCat project.

It reminds me when Debian shipped with "Iceweasel" instead of Firefox because of some licensing nonsense.

>(I wish someone would do this with Firefox too. I am tired of all the useless or meaningless services being added to Firefox - from pocket to monitor to even ads now.)

Is that really needed considering that about:config flags fixes all/most of the issues?

Once upon a time, I used icecat, based on the conclusion that it was basically just firefox but with all the settings pre-set to what I would have had to manually set them to. A soft fork, or repackaging, of firefox that just tunes about:config values to somewhat more conservative presets would be lovely.

> about:config flags fixes all/most of the issues?

How do I even keep track of all this? What if my personal data has been uploaded to some service that I am not even aware is running in the background.

I'd like all that unnecessary code stripped from the browser. (It's like we are going backwards - we seem to have removed browser plugins in favour of bundling everything into a big bloat of a browser ... yeah, I know some of these are "special" firefox addons. The only thing that makes them "special" is that they are bundled into the browser by Mozilla, do not show up in the addons / extension page and cannot be removed like other user-installed addons.).

Mozilla can remotely kill extensions which means that privacy enabling features of firefox that are served as extensions like the containers feature can suddenly and without warning stop working.

No amount of config flag fudging will fix that glaring design choice.

And make no mistake, it's a choice, not an error.

>privacy enabling features of firefox that are served as extensions like the containers feature can suddenly and without warning stop working.

containers is a core feature of the browser. The addon (Firefox Multi-Account Containers) only adds some niceties like an addon button to start containers, and auto-assigning sites to containers. Without the addon, you can still manage containers by going to about:preferences#containers and open a tab in a given container by long pressing the new tab button.

Any idea why Mozilla has chosen to implement it this way?

Nobody thinks that Mozilla’s remote kill switch for extensions is an error. The reason I accept it is because I don’t want to be personally responsible for every extension I might install. Nobody has time for that. Let someone who does this stuff for a living take care of it.

I agree with that sentiment, It would just be nice to be able to turn of that kill switch, you know?

Librewolf might be in a similar vein to what you're looking for? https://librewolf-community.gitlab.io/

Been using it on my work machine for a few months and I'm quite happy with it

https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js

plus

    rm /usr/lib/firefox/browser/features/*.xpi

takes care of pretty much all of the firefox bloat for me

THERE, LET ME OPEN A TAB TO TELL YOU. Closes tab Presses Cmd+T “MOZILLA MAKES THE WORLD BETTER FOR YOU. BIG BROWSER CARES FOR YOU, AND ALWAYS WILL.”

Just spend the 2 seconds to change your default new window / tab page to “Blank Page” if it bothers you that much. I set that in the 2000s and they've always honored it since.

The first run after an update opens a separate tab with the bullshit in it, regardless of what the start page is set to. Now this wouldn't be a problem like back in the day where updates were rare, but nowadays they're churning out updates like crazy and use these as an opportunity to get in your way.

That's what I have set as well. Still seeing VPN ads.