Tor

This page discusses Tor, not to be confused with BitTorrent.

One advantage of GalliumOS is the ability to use software that is not available on ChromeOS. A great example is Tor. Tor is free software and an open network that helps you defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security. Tor can help to keep your internet traffic private from prying eyes, such as your ISP or your employer, plus you can access the elusive Tor location-hidden services, or .onion sites.

Getting started

The easiest way to access the Tor network is using Tor Browser, available on the Tor Project website. Just download the latest version for GNU/Linux 64bit from this page. Once it's finished downloading, open the archive and drag the files into a folder where you can find them. Now, double click on Tor Browser Setup. You'll see a window with two buttons. Click on the top one (called Connect). Wait a few minutes and you should be ready to surf!

Using Tor with other applications

Hold on there, cowboy! This gets a little complicated. We recommend you have at least some experience with Linux and the command line before you try this.

Tor Browser is great for basic Tor usage, but what if you want to use the Tor network in a different browser or in some other application? First, you need to install the Tor daemon. You can do that with sudo apt-get install tor. Now, you need to connect to the Tor network. You can do that with sudo systemctl start tor. If you want your computer to automatically connect to the Tor network on boot, also do sudo systemctl enable tor (this is optional). You can disconnect from the Tor network by doing sudo systemctl stop tor, and disable it from connecting at boot with sudo systemctl disable tor.

Once you have Tor installed and connected, you need to tell your applications to connect to it. For command line (terminal) applications, simply prefix the command with torsocks, so for example, if you wanted to connect to an SSH server through Tor, you would use torsocks ssh [user@]<host>. For graphical applications like web browsers, you need to set up the proxy settings of the application. Note: You can set the proxy settings for your whole computer, but this is not recommended. Usually this will be under network settings. Once you've found the proxy settings, fill in the following information.

• Server: 127.0.0.1
• Port: 9050
• SOCKS Proxy: Yes
• SOCKS Version: SOCKSv5

If you did everything correctly, you should be connecting through the Tor network! You will now be able to access Tor hidden services (.onion sites) and access clearnet sites through the Tor network.

Editor's note: Add more information relating to configuring the Tor daemon soon.