This is an arms race though and eventually mozilla will make any particular methods of overriding the default search not work. It's really annoying.
I looked into using other browsers but IceCat <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_IceCat> seems to not receive security updates frequently enough to be a viable secure browser. It seems we are stuck with firefox and playing this arms race game for setting default search forever. On Friday, January 29, 2021 at 2:47:48 AM UTC-8 Emma Borhanian wrote: > I might be interested in contributing code for this, but I'm not sure how > to package it. > > On Friday, January 29, 2021 at 2:43:20 AM UTC-8 Emma Borhanian wrote: > >> You can use an autoconfig >> <https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customizing-firefox-using-autoconfig> >> file in the firefox-esr install directory in the template to control >> everything except default search, which mozilla has added a bunch of >> protections to in order to prevent default search page hijacking. You can >> use this to disable "first run" welcome tabs, etc. >> You probably also want to put privacy/hardening settings in the >> autoconfig file. >> >> To change the default search page you actually need two mechanisms: >> 1. Reverse engineer the way the firefox-esr directory configures default >> search. >> 2. Reverse engineer the way the profile directory configures default >> search. >> >> You need both because: >> #1 will be undone every time you update firefox. If you run firefox >> before re-doing it, the change will be cached in your profile directory, >> and method #1 will no longer work for you because the profile will >> #2 doesn't work unless you already have a profile directory. A startup >> script that ran on dispvm creation that both created a profile directory >> and modified it using #2 would allow you to avoid needing #1, but it seemed >> cleaner to me to just do #1 as well. >> >> #1 requires monkey patching modules/SearchService.jsm to not fetch the >> default search from mozilla's servers, and changing the search default in >> chrome/browser/search-extensions/list.json. >> #2 is documented here >> https://blog.onee3.org/2018/04/manually-add-a-search-engine-to-firefox-quantum/ >> On Friday, January 29, 2021 at 1:58:22 AM UTC-8 Josefa Hays wrote: >> >>> I use dispvm's all the time (both Fedora and Debian dispvms). Thus, I am >>> quite annoyed to see varios "first run" issues every time i start >>> Firefox in a disp-vm. I would like to perform the following changes in >>> the template-vms, preferably from CLI, so I don't have to start Firefox >>> in the template: >>> >>> * disable "first run" wellcome tabs >>> * change startpage to https://duckduckgo.com >>> * In Fedora-30 dispvm: disable the bookmark-bar in the top >>> >>> I've been poking around in ~/.mozilla/ files and configs, but so far no >>> luck. >>> Anybody got this working who can share their configs? (Maybe we could >>> put a guide on in wiki/docs? I guess it is quite a common "problem" for >>> people that use disp-vm's on a regular basis?) >>> >>> Best regards, >>> Jo >>> >> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "qubes-users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to qubes-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qubes-users/d7160ffc-522f-4131-9e6e-6aae990b43d9n%40googlegroups.com.
