What does HackerNews think of policy-templates?

Policy Templates for Firefox

Language: HTML

Someone posted downthread to use this instead:

https://github.com/mozilla/policy-templates

It's from Mozilla.

Usually a much better option to about:config when available is a policy file:

https://github.com/mozilla/policy-templates

For Firefox you should try a policy template to disable all together updates and the default browser check <https://github.com/mozilla/policy-templates>
You can also enforce most of these settings in all profiles with a policy: https://github.com/mozilla/policy-templates
(Disclaimer: I work on the Firefox Application Update system)

> But let me opt out

It seems to me that you can opt out. You can use the "Check for updates but let you choose to install them" setting in `about:preferences`. Or you can use the exact policy currently under discussion: `DisableAppUpdate`. Or there is another policy called `ManualAppUpdateOnly` [0].

> (Mozilla, are you listening?)

Why yes, we are listening. We have heard many people request the ability to disable automatic updates, which is why we have the options that I mentioned above. If you feel that these options don't meet your needs, we would really appreciate you filing a bug [1]. We will get to it fastest if you put it in the correct component (which for this issue is `Toolkit::Application Update`).

> for the love of god please don't override my preferences back to automatic updates when you decide to change the UI of preferences.

I'm guessing that you are referring to when we removed the "Never install updates" setting [2]? This wasn't fundamentally a UI change. We had several good reasons to remove the underlying pref. Naturally, that meant that the UI for that pref went away as well. I won't spend a lot of time getting into our reasoning here, but we would be happy to discuss it with you if you want to chat with us about it. You can find us in the `#install-update:mozilla.org` channel on https://chat.mozilla.org

[0] https://github.com/mozilla/policy-templates/#manualappupdate... [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/home [2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1420514

You could also user a policy.json for Firefox to permanently disable it. I don't see Firefox dropping this option as it is important for enterprise users.

https://github.com/mozilla/policy-templates

You can also exclude specific domains but at this point they have to be written in about:config.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-dns-over-https#...

It looks like Firefox Policies can be used to enable, disable, or specify the DoH provider but cannot yet specify excluded domains.

https://github.com/mozilla/policy-templates

Firefox 60 was the first release with official Group Policy support [1]. Starting from version 64 you could also configure Firefox for macOS using configuration profiles [2].

Both the ADMX templates for Windows and preference .plist for macOS are available from GitHub [3]. The full list of configurable preferences can be found on SearchFox.org [4].

As of Firefox 67 there are quite a lot of settings that can be managed now. Certainly enough for Firefox to be deployed in enterprise environments.

There was also a really interesting talk at MacADUK 2019 by Mike Kapley on the work Mozilla has done so far to support enterprise deployment [5].

[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1433136

[2] https://github.com/mozilla/policy-templates/blob/master/mac/...

[3] https://github.com/mozilla/policy-templates

[4] https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/compone...

[5] https://youtu.be/jB_5h4ihih4

So two things. The MSI installer will convert a local (EXE) installation to a global install (updating shortcuts and removing the local profile install whilst preserving the chrome profile).

Second, Firefox does have ADMX policies (ADMX being used primarily after Vista): https://github.com/mozilla/policy-templates. I believe it took them so long because they were initially reluctant, user freedom etc. But I guess Chrome's success in enterprise made them reconsider. Honestly I never considered Firefox for our Windows Domain because of the lack of Group Policy support. Now I deploy both and users have options :)