How to remove distro-specific “branding” from Firefox in Linux Mint

Question

I just switched from Ubuntu to Mint and I'd like to remove the mint branded Google custom search "feature" which does some strange things to the styling of the results page.

I went into synaptic and removed the "mint-search-addon" but it didn't help.

Answer 1

From here:

Deleting The Custom Search

The XML files for Firefox search engines are located here:

/usr/lib/firefox-addons/searchplugins

Inside this directory you should find a google.xml file which contains the Mint custom search fields. Back this file up and remove it.

sudo rm /usr/lib/firefox-addons/searchplugins/google.xml

or from here

1) Go here http://mycroft.mozdev.org/search-engines.html?name=Google&language=en

2) Scroll or search down to "28. Major Engines" (now it's 29)

3) Go to the first one, Google, click on it and install it. Check the box to start using it right away

4) Click the search drop down list

5) Click Manage search engines...

6) Delete the original Google.

Answer 2

I don't know about Mint at all, but often the custom Google search on Firefox is a different url altogether for the home page - so if you replace it with the standard www.google.com should get the vanilla Google site.