AcreetionOS · Gecko engine · GNU IceCat fork
The web, without the watching.
Acreedom is a privacy-first Gecko browser for AcreetionOS. It forks GNU IceCat — itself Firefox ESR plus GNU privacy patches — and keeps the whole thing source-first: mirror, patch, build. No black-box binary. You can read every line that went into it, and rebuild it yourself with machbb.
MPL-2.0 · Tracking Firefox ESR 140 · Maintained for AcreetionOS, Natalie Spiva
about:acreedom
Welcome to Acreedom. This start page is local — it phones nothing home. Your history, your tabs, and your business stay on your machine, the way a browser should have worked all along.
Privacy at a Glance
Acreedom inherits GNU IceCat's reason for existing: Firefox ESR with GNU privacy patches applied, carried forward for AcreetionOS. Open the shield in the toolbar to see the protections this preview models — toggle them and watch the count.
The Source
There is no mystery build here. setup-acreedom.sh clones GNU IceCat from GNU Savannah and Firefox ESR from Mozilla, and pushes to the project's mirrors on GitHub, GitLab, and Codeberg. Acreedom's own changes live as readable patches in app_acreedom.
Enhanced protections — this preview
Modeled on the protections Acreedom is built to carry. Toggling updates the count live; nothing here is stored.
↑ a working miniature — switch tabs, open the shield, toggle protections
01Why Acreedom
A browser is the most trusted program on your machine — and the one most likely to betray that trust. Acreedom exists so AcreetionOS ships a browser whose loyalties are inspectable.
GNU roots
Acreedom doesn't start from raw Firefox. It starts from GNU IceCat — the GNU Project's privacy-focused rework of Firefox ESR — and tracks it, so the GNU privacy patches come along with every rebase.
ESR stability
The base is Firefox Extended Support Release 140: the slow, stable channel built for people who need a browser that doesn't reinvent itself every six weeks. Security fixes flow in; churn stays out.
Source-first, honestly
Acreedom is a source project: a mirror, a patch set, and a build tool. There's no prebuilt download being promised here — there's something better: the exact source and the exact steps to build it yourself.
02One system, three repos
Acreedom isn't a lone repo — it's a trio that fits together. The browser, the build scripts and patches that shape it, and the tool that drives the build.
acreedom THE BROWSER
The GNU IceCat source mirror for AcreetionOS — the privacy-first Gecko engine itself. Set up by setup-acreedom.sh, which clones IceCat from GNU Savannah and Firefox ESR from Mozilla and pushes to the project's remotes.
- Fork of GNU IceCat (Firefox ESR + GNU privacy patches)
- Mirrored on GitHub, GitLab, and Codeberg
- MPL-2.0 · Maintainer: Natalie (AcreetionOS)
app_acreedom PATCHES + CI
The build scripts, patches, and CI for the fork. Acreedom's own changes live in patches/ as custom patches on top of IceCat, applied in sort order during the build — every change readable as a diff.
- build.sh drives the build
- patches/ — applied in sort order
- .gitea/ CI workflows
- Rebase: fetch upstream IceCat → check out the new tag → re-apply patches with git am
machbb THE BUILD TOOL
"mach, but better" — a modern replacement for Firefox's mach build tool, written entirely in GNU Guile Scheme. Single-command builds, auto-detected parallelism, profiles, and patch management.
- GNU Guile 3.0+ · MPL-2.0
- Auto-dependency management (apt / pacman / dnf)
- Release, debug & profile builds · dry-run mode
- Build status dashboard
03Build it yourself
Two stages: mirror the source, then build with machbb. Click each step to see what it does. Requirements for machbb: GNU Guile 3.0+, Python 3, Rust/Cargo, and a C/C++ toolchain (clang/llvm).
machbb command reference
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
| init | Initialize a build workspace |
| fetch | Fetch the source tree |
| bootstrap | Install build dependencies (apt / pacman / dnf) |
| configure | Configure the build |
| build | Compile — -j auto-detects cores for smart parallel builds |
| test · lint · check | Run tests, lint, and checks |
| package | Package the finished build |
| run | Run the browser you just built |
| profile | Switch profiles: release / debug / profile |
| patches | Manage the patch set |
| status · env | Build status dashboard and environment info |
| clean | Clean build artifacts |
04Releases
Acreedom versions track the GNU IceCat / Firefox ESR line they are built on. These are source releases from the acreedom repo.
v140.15.0-gnu1
Latest · Released September 5, 2026 · Tracking IceCat / Firefox ESR 140
v140.13.0-gnu1
Released August 17, 2026 · Tracking IceCat / Firefox ESR 140
Release tags and source live in the repo: github.com/spivanatalie64/acreedom ↗
The honest part
Acreedom is a source-first project, and this page won't pretend otherwise. There is no one-click installer linked here, because the project doesn't ship one — it ships the mirror, the patches, and the build tool, so the browser on your machine is one you (or your distro) built from source you can read. That's not a limitation of the pitch. That is the pitch.
05FAQ
What exactly is Acreedom?
A privacy-first Gecko browser engine for AcreetionOS. It's a fork of GNU IceCat — which is Firefox ESR with GNU privacy patches — maintained by Natalie for AcreetionOS under the MPL-2.0 license.
How is it different from Firefox?
Two layers up. Firefox ESR is the base; GNU IceCat applies the GNU Project's privacy patch set on top; Acreedom mirrors that tree for AcreetionOS and carries its own changes as a readable patch set in app_acreedom, applied in sort order at build time.
Where do I download the installer?
There isn't one linked here, on purpose. Acreedom is source-first: clone acreedom, use app_acreedom's build scripts and patches, and build with machbb. What you run is what you built.
What is machbb?
"mach, but better" — a modern replacement for Firefox's mach build tool, written entirely in GNU Guile Scheme (Guile 3.0+). It gives you single-command builds with auto-detected parallelism, automatic dependency handling for apt/pacman/dnf, release/debug/profile build profiles, patch management, a dry-run mode, and a build status dashboard. You'll also need Python 3, Rust/Cargo, and a clang/llvm C/C++ toolchain.
How does Acreedom stay up to date with IceCat?
Through the rebase flow in app_acreedom: fetch upstream IceCat, check out the new tag, and re-apply the Acreedom patches with git am. The current line tracks ESR 140 — latest release v140.15.0-gnu1 (Sep 5, 2026).
Is the source mirrored anywhere besides GitHub?
Yes. The setup script pushes to the project's remotes on GitHub, GitLab, and Codeberg, so the tree doesn't depend on any single host.