Proposal of a new app by default
I was happy to note that tor is preinstalled in Trisquel but I think it would be even nicer if there was a possibility to find Tor-Browser directly in addition to Trisquel's Abrowser browser.
What are your thoughts on this?
There's the Guix package manager available in Trisquel's repositories under the package name "guix", and Tor Browser is available in Guix's repositories, I like using the Tor Browser from there however I find that configuring the Guix package manager can be a bit hard as Guix won't come preconfigured unless you are using Guix System which is the FSDG-compliant distro specifically made with Guix in mind, also Guix is rolling-release so unless you like getting many updates it might be not be the best choice for you to get Tor Browser, also Guix works independently from apt which might be good but can also be bad. Sorry if this is not the answer you were looking for. As far as I know Guix is the only repository shipping Tor Browser directly, other repositories seem to ship a "Tor Browser Launcher" which instead of being the browser itself is a launcher that downloads the latest version of the browser from upstream. I'm not sure if "Tor Browser Launcher" is free, so don't take this reply as a recommendation for "Tor Browser Launcher", I'm merely stating the fact that I don't know anywhere other than Guix where they ship the browser itself rather than the Launcher.
I have never used GUIX, and at this point I would like to learn more about it.
However, the suggestion arose since I had problems trying to install Tor Browser from Trisquel's “Add/Remove Applications” application. I also didn't quite understand where the repository is so I could try to help keep the app up to date.
However imho it might be a good idea to have Tor Browser pre-installed because then Trisquel can set up the official source of Tor Browser without having to resort to third-party tools (Which in this case is always too dangerous) and so that users who want to approach this world don't necessarily have to arm themselves with a terminal to install Tor Browser (TorProject for Linux kernel-based systems has a tar archive downloaded and an installer launched to manage the Desktop file to enable menu-driven booting of apps).
PS: It would also be nice, in my opinion, to see Trisquel forging some ties (if it is not already there) with other projects that share free software ideals, such as TorProject.
What do you think about it?
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> However, the suggestion arose since I had problems trying to install Tor Browser from Trisquel's “Add/Remove Applications” application. I also didn't quite understand where the repository is so I could try to help keep the app up to date.
For some reason "Add/Remove Applications" (trisquel-app-install) lists Tor Browser Launcher as one of the packages available for me despite the fact that such launcher is not available in Trisquel's repositories, so I'm not sure what's going on
> What do you think about it?
I'm not sure, sorry
The trisquel-app-install data is kind of outdated on and requires some good time to improve reported issues, anyone with scripting skills is welcome to help on this process.
I am interested in helping out, but I don't understand why trisquel-app-install wouldn't just pull data from the same place apt does.
I installed Tor Browser using apt some years ago IIRC. I can see that I have the torbrowser-launcher package installed (`torbrowser-launcher/nabia-updates,now 0.3.2-9ubuntu1 amd64 [installed]`). It looks like the package is not available in Trisquel 11 for some reason, so maybe that's related to why it might show up in Add/Remove Applications.
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As far as I know Guix is the only repository shipping Tor Browser directly, other repositories seem to ship a "Tor Browser Launcher" which instead of being the browser itself is a launcher that downloads the latest version of the browser from upstream.
I have the version from Guix installed now, it does not perform automatic updates like the version from the Tor project website. Besides, I remember hearing that Tor Browser includes non-free components, then I would expect that the version in Guix has removed them but I am not really aware of any detail.
Why you need Tor Browser if you already have Abrowser? You already can install tor: sudo apt install tor then in configuration of Abrowser you can enable Tor as proxy with-
Manual configuration
Server SOCKS: localhost
port: 9050
SOCKS: v5
Then install GNU LibreJS y JShelter doing it you start to protect yourself from nonfree software in Javascript.
I don't know the details, but I suspect this does not result in as good privacy or security as using Tor Browser. There are many things Tor Browser does besides route traffic through the Tor network. The Tor project discourages using Tor with other browsers: https://support.torproject.org/tbb/tbb-4/
Depending on your goals, this might be okay, but some people might want all of the features Tor Browser provides (I say this not knowing what those actually are).
It is mostly about network parameters (including, crucially, DNS) which can very easily leak private information if not properly set. It does not mean that it is impossible to set them correctly on a different browser, like Abrowser, but you need to know exactly what you are doing, not just tinker until it seems to be working. The Tor Browser does that properly for you by default, although of course it is always a good idea to understand what it is doing.
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It does not mean that it is impossible to set them correctly on a different browser, like Abrowser, but you need to know exactly what you are doing, not just tinker until it seems to be working.
Maybe there could be a way to get configuration files from Tor Browser and then use them in Abrowser or in Icecat?
I had been pondering about doing precisely that some years ago, until I decided that the best option for my use case was Abrowser (or indeed Icecat) for daily needs, and an up-to-date version of Tor Browser to keep at hand as a portable application for increased browsing privacy [0]. Your suggestion would require detailed, updated knowledge about how Tor Browser is fitted into the Tor machinery. One mistake could defeat the whole purpose, and changes seem to happen quite often, so you would need to keep the configuration strictly up to date. That said, some extra configuration work to make Abrowser as "Torefied" as Tor Browser may indeed be worth a try, time permitting.
There are a few things that may be tricky to manage while browsing through Tor anyway, like which default language to choose depending on the default language of the pages you are visiting (I think you mentioned it some time ago), or how to make sure that some trivial JS is not leaking your OS [1]. There are trade-offs to be made between, for instance, not using JS and not being easily recognizable. If your browser says "I am a GNU/Linux-libre user blocking JS on Tor Browser while pretending to be using regular Firefox" you will probably stand out. You are trying to do just the opposite by using Tor: merging with the crowd of non-free software users, most of them not using Tor. In fact most of them are statistically using a mobile device. In any case, the best use for Tor and Tor Browser is in accessing onion services [2].
[0] while browsing for knitting patterns for instance
[1] see for instance "User Agent Spoofing Changes" in https://blog.torproject.org/new-alpha-release-tor-browser-140a4
[2] https://community.torproject.org/onion-services
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My usage is similar to yours (Abrowser for daily usage and Tor Browser for knitting patterns) but what do you mean by "as a portable application" and how are you getting that updated?
I call it a "portable app" because you can just download the tar.xz archive directly from the torproject website, which is the recommended way, and verify its signature. I use it as it is, with its default configuration, so I can install it any time on a different system the same way and use it there, or erase the folder where I uncompressed the tar.xz if I decide not to use it there any more.
It is supposed to be self-updating, but you can always download the latest tar.xz and replace the existing folder.