Version 93 back in October added sponsored search suggestions on by default, [1] without even explicitly mentioning it in the release notes. [2] Is there going to be a similar surprise this time?

I still use Firefox as the lesser evil, and I believe there are lots of great people working on it (to whom I am thankful) but to see how the project has been run by the Mozilla Corpo-Foundation in the recent years is really disillusioning. I would love to see a change that would put a stop to the incessant stream of anti-features, while instead focusing on staying true to the original goals of the project.

1. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-suggest

2. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/93.0/releasenotes

iqanq

If you don't like nasty surprises, I recommend that you use Firefox ESR instead:

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/enterprise/

(In the same vein, if you use Windows, I recommend Windows LTSC)

4cao

Thank you for your suggestions. I've been considering what to do about my Firefox setup for some time (switching to ESR vs one of the forks, which I have to research first). Thing is, I'm using a heavily-customized profile with lots of extensions, Violentmonkey [1] userscripts, containers (including Containerise [2], and Temporary Containers [3]), and a custom user.js (based on [4]), so I should also revisit the settings for all of these at the same time as it's been a while since I last did so. It's all on my to-do list but as the current setup works well, there's always something more urgent to do instead.

1. https://violentmonkey.github.io/

2. https://github.com/kintesh/containerise

3. https://github.com/stoically/temporary-containers

4. https://github.com/pyllyukko/user.js

The LTSC suggestion is also good. I'm already using a heavily-debloated LTSC with lots of unnecessary packages removed (including the hidden ones, which are not supposed to be officially removable), and all kinds of customizations for privacy, security, performance, and convenience. While I'm satisfied with my setup (automated with custom scripts I've been maintaining since Windows 8), the number of hoops one has to go through to have their computer do what the user wants and nothing else, or a "User-Agent" that gives actual agency to the user these days is truly astonishing, and makes the goal unattainable for most people.