SharePoint 2013 - removing '_layouts/15/start.aspx#' from URL's

This text appears in the URL of SharePoint 2013 Site collections as result of Minimal Download Strategy (MDS).  This feature is designed to improve performance by only rendering changes to a visited page instead of the entire thing.  In any case, if you never had performance issue with your environment in the past, you may have a desire to disable this.  Another potential reason would be a migration from SharePoint 2010 and a desire to keep URL's consistent in that migration.

The following displays the difference in the URL with MDS active and not active.

MDS active: http://site.domain.com/_layouts/15/start.aspx#/SitePages/Home.aspx

MDS deactivated:  http://site.domain.com/SitePages/Home.aspx

To deactivate MDS:

1. Browse to your site collection
2. Site settings
3. Manage Site Features
4. Scroll down to 'Minumal Download Strategy'
5. Click Deactivate

(this needs to be completed on each site collection individually)

Disclaimer - deactivating this feature may have performance implications - this was worth the risk in our case since we migrated from SP2010 and the client had a desire to keep URL's consistent.