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Nah same results :( maybe Firefox nightly mobile problem?

Just gave it a try… Doesn’t appear to work for browser default search settings? I do a search and see results for about 2 seconds before it then shows their search page. I used https://www.qwant.com?q=%s for the query. Liked the search results I tested it with but not being able to use the search bar for quick searches is a deal breaker for me :(

What I did was just buy the tv I wanted for the hardware and block it from internet access by Mac address, then plugged it into the network with eth. I then put dns blocks on every request it made (I log things before blocking them, and did this on the scenario a kill switch gets messed up or something) and installed the media software from there. Smart tv made private.

If you’re very technical and understand Linux, security, etc in great lengths (such as how to setup your own iptables rules with looking for help or creating your own scripts), and really know what your doing, a rooted non-gapps lineageos (optionally microg) is a great choice, as long as you install things like AFWall+ and such to lock it down a ton. Heavy emphasis on “understanding” what you’re doing here, since if you don’t, a rooted device could be bad on security.

If you’re not at that comfort level or have the time for that kind of stuff, GrapheneOS (unfortunately on pixel) is the best option.

If you don’t want to give Google any of your money, and you don’t want to go into the super low level system control with root, the best option is probably still lineageos with microg (or without if you don’t need push notifications for anything).

Probably already said here, but it’s going to just come down to your end goal to know what distro fits what you’re looking for.

I am personally a huge fan of Gentoo, another distro that’s all about “from the ground up” approach. It’s actually where I started with Linux and is how I became as proficient in it as I am today. In fact my internal server that does everything is running Gentoo as it’s OS… Has never had any problems in the last decade that would require a reinstall or anything crazy like that.

But even as much love as I have for Gentoo, I have Linux Mint installed on my laptop. Why? Because it’s just more convenient when I need my full focus on the 10 other personal projects I’m working on… Also amazing on the gaming front. Doesn’t have nearly as much bloat as some other Ubuntu-based distros on first install, has a huge community support, and is just great all around to have.

Why not just self host? What happens when/if their service goes down without any warning? You lose everything?

Got my things all on a server with RAID for redundancy and backup weekly to an external (encrypted) device, monthly to another that doesn’t stay at home. Also means I don’t have to rely on the Internet to use all my services if the ISP goes down, the firewall explodes, etc. Self hosting is the way to go!