I changed from DDG when they started to censor users from searching for what they were looking for. I use Mojeek (https://mojeek.com) and add it to my Browser (my preference is for Zen Browser over Brave, which is why I installed Zorin 17.2 over 17.3, removed Firefox and installed Zen which is a fork of Firefox). Difference is no data collection or tracking, just like Mojeek. If Mojeek does not give the solution you are looking for, then it offers alternative search engines with the search criteria you entered in Mojeek.
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Busy busy day today during a typhoon been raining and windy for 2 days straight .... so I'm trying out some new recommendations .... Mojeek search engine and Zen browser .... my poor ol' brain is getting stress out .... LOL ....
Got Mojeek installed on Zen and freaked out when it used Firefox extensions software to download it ..... thank god you mentioned Zen is a fork of Firefox because I was about to delete the whole kit and kaboodle ....
Now all I have to do is figure out how to extract my favorites and passwords from Brave .... I believe the bookmarks is a .html file and passwords a .csv file .... so it shouldn't be to hard I'm sure I've done it before ..... so far Zen has proved interesting to say the least ..... well I'm heading back in .... wish me luck .... LOL
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I guess Zen Browser is not for me .... I tried really I did ..... but I just don't like it or should say the way it looks ..... no matter how I customized it still looked terrible to me .... I want something that looks like and acts like Vivaldi or Brave ....
Now the problem is I can't uninstall it ... tried the terminal ... Snyaptic .... Ask Ubuntu and all kinds of searches as I want to delete it in it's entirety .... no bits and pieces left over .... I installed it using tar.xz
Here is what my Zen Browser looked like ..... the 1-4 folders are email accounts ....
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Is that really what the Zen browser looks like? I don't mind the top bar, that seems fine. However, that side bar has got to go, I hate it! If the makers of that browser knew anything at all, screen realstate matters #1 on an internet browser, especially for smaller 13" screens. I got a 32" screen, and even I wouldn't approve of it.
Look, they clearly got room on the top bar for a folder icon, with a + sign, ya don't need a whole sidebar for new folder tab. And the settings icon, why can't they put that on the top bar like Chrome does it? That is just all the wrong going on in it, that I am not feeling the Zen.
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Package managers in general, on GnuLinux or on Mac or Windows OS usually cannot manage a manually installed piece of software.
If using a .tar.gz, what steps did you take to install it?
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Please don't judge Zen by my poor attempt at customizing it as I have managed to lock Zen Home screen so it looks like this see now photo below .... they offer with no side bars .... a very small side bar or the size you see .... actually I had to put everything on the Home Page you see there except the address bar on top ..... it is a bare minimal screen when you first open it .....
Downloaded the file from their website and after trying several programs that couldn't open it I used the Open Here on the right mouse button .... here is the results ....
I deleted Zen in the Main Menu using right click and then tried to download the tar again from the website and did what I did before but Zen will not open now .... anyway enough for today .... I got the flu yesterday so I had no business playing around with Zen all it has done is aggravate me and made me feel worse .... gonna let sleeping dogs be .....
Thanks for all your help .... later
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I'm sorry you're not feeling great Frog! I remember trying Zen and absolutely hated it - like @StarTreker said, that side bar has got to go away! 
I'm happy with Brave, although I get why people aren't into it. I despise the crypto garbage personally. Seems dodgy. I like Vivaldi, but I notice if I have a few dozen tabs open, performance tanks. The whole system becomes slow to respond until I close the browser. So I ditched it.
Back to the topic of search engines, I use, other than Brave, Murena's Find (murena.qwant.com) and Surfshark's search (but you have to have a paid subscription to use that).
I'm thinking of trying out Librewolf as my browser, I don't like that Brave uses the same engine as Chromium, but it's a little too tightened down for me. But I digress.
On a final sidenote, I am typing this while testing Zorin 18. I am really liking it so far! I installed this, then when PopOS's 24.04 beta came out yesterday, I tried that. I don't think that one's quite ready; the Zorin beta feels more polished, and was much better for gaming for me. There were games that had wrong resolutions on my main rig downstairs, and maximized windows would lose their place, and the title bar would be underneath the top panel. That was a little jarring! So Zorin 18 went back on both my desktop and here (lappy). Looks like they fixed the auto-dark at sunset function too, because before it would just go dark at 8pm (the default time if you left it at 'manual'). My Murena account gets added as well, whereas in 17.x it wouldn't - I'd get 503 errors.
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As far as I know, You can disable it or at least shrink it - like now on Firefox directly.
They offer an AppImage:
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First off I want to thank everyone for all the super recommendations and suggestions as it has caused me to do a great deal of research and soul searching ..... I have finally settled on using Startpage over Mojeek ....
The main reason is whenever I couldn't find what I was searching on Mojeek it offered Startpage as an alternative (4 stars for that) and every time I found my answer in the first 3-4 suggestions ....
I also found a way to put Startpage on my favorites selection on the Brave Browser start page which solved my problem with the one I was having with DDG ..... thanks to zenzen's post on my using DDG as a Browser instead of just of search engine ....
Again thanks for everyone that replied to this thread as I have lots of Search Engines to use should the need arrive in the future .....
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