Let's say for whatever reason I used an outdated Tor browser+whonix. Would whonix still protect me against IP leaks?

Ok so I recently installed Whonix and it seems to me all the tutorials on how to install Whonix on Linux are all out of date now and incorrect. So I thought I'd make a tutorial that's easy to understand for beginners.

Ok so when I was researching how to install Whonix on Linux I came across this tutorial here that is only a year old but it's already out of date and incorrect, a lot of information in this vid is just incorrect and won't work https://youtu.be/yXcFHgGjY6M?si=JSjkK2i73CrLM--v

So here's how I got Whonix to work on my Linux Ubuntu 22.04LTS (this should also easily work for Linux Mint as well because both are based off of Debian).

So first things first you need to install virtualbox, go here and follow these instructions on how to do that https://askubuntu.com/questions/1518223/e-unable-to-locate-package-virtualbox-error-when-i-try-to-install-virtualbox

Alright so once you've got virtualbox installed simply head over to the Whonix website and go to the downloads section and there you'll find the current up to date instructions on how to install Whonix using the command line, choose the GUI option if you're a beginner https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Linux#Debian,_Fedora_and_Derivatives

Now when installing Whonix is might not work at first but if it doesn't work then it should tell you the steps you need to take to get it to work, this is what happened with me, so there might be a little troubleshooting involved but like I said it should tell you what you need to do if it doesn't install properly.

Ok so you've got virtualbox and Whonix installed now right? Ok so go into applications and fire up virtualbox. Now like I said before much of the information in this video is wrong but still take the time and watch it cause you'll learn a lot about Whonix https://youtu.be/yXcFHgGjY6M?si=LmCRY7k83OQ5U_2F so yeah in this video he shows you how to turn on Whonix.

Now when I first tried to launch Whonix in virtualbox it didn't work, it gave me "NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005)" and if I remember correctly it also said "AMD-V is disabled in the BIOS (or by the host OS). (VERR_SVM_DISABLED)" but anyhow I fixed it by going into my PC's BIOS and turning on Secure Virtual Machine SVM mode (my PC is really old so it has the old style BIOS) This source right here helped me out a lot on trying to solve that problem https://www.reddit.com/r/Whonix/comments/vrewih/whonix_ns_error_failure_0x80004005/ and then from there it'll tell you to refer to this guide, where you'll learn about VT-x and SVM https://www.kicksecure.com/wiki/VirtualBox/Troubleshooting#Failed_to_open_a_session_for_the_virtual_machine But of course your Whonix might just boot up just fine on the first try but mine didn't and that was because I didn't have SVM turned on in my BIOS.

Ok so then I was finally able to boot up Whonix. Now if you watch this here tutorial https://youtu.be/yXcFHgGjY6M?si=szl79AxvOnTFmuPL he tells you the first thing you need to do is change the default Whonix password (his instructions for doing this aren't correct anymore because it didn't work for me) so you'll find the current up to date instructions on how to change your Whonix password here https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Post_Install_Advice#Change_Password so in the terminal enter "sudo passwd user" and you'll be able to change the password, oh do this in both gateway and workstation ok? You have to change the password in both gateway and workstation. Once you've changed the password restart Whonix.

Now that you've changed the password the next step is to update Whonix in both the gateway and workstation. In this tutorial https://youtu.be/yXcFHgGjY6M?si=lmfdFiFJdGxU1RJW it says to do "sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y" in the terminal in both gateway and workstation. So make sure you do that.

So thats it you should be good to go.

One last thing though. Check out my thread from a few weeks ago https://www.reddit.com/r/Whonix/comments/1dkqcth/first_time_whonix_user_here_and_ive_got_some/ "First time Whonix user here and I've got some feedback and I have some questions as well."

So one thing that needs to be fixed with Whonix is if you're using your PC on a big screen TV like I am, the text and icons will appear really small (I've got my PC hooked up to my 55 inch TV). And there's no easy way to fix it. I have been able to improve it but it still isn't perfect. Like the settings are just weird and really complicated so I've been able to improve the situation but sometimes the text is WAY TOO BIG and sometimes the icons are way too small, and I've tried my best to fix it but I've given up at this point. This needs to be fixed as soon as possible, so I hope someone does that. So yeah hey Whonix developers can you please look at this problem for me? In Ubuntu if the text and icons are too small you only have to do one thing to fix it, literally just one thing. I wish it was like that for Whonix.

So yeah Whonix devs if you've got your PC hooked up to a giant screen the text and icons will appear very small and the settings are so complicated it is basically impossible to fix it. Please look at how Ubuntu has fixed this issue with small text and icons on large screens.

If I partition my harddrive (500gb) so 400gb is windows and 100gb is for Mint + VM + Whonix. If I decide to delete it can I wipe the new 100gb partition and add the empty storage to Win? Thanks

This shit is getting on my nerves, I've been trying to redownload whonix because I had an issue but now it goes worst. Xfce can't launch, I can't have access to it, someone help me before I throw my shit throught the window?

I tried to add a VPN in workstation a while ago. That didn't work and since then the browser doesn't load anything. That's why I want to reset the workstation. But then it always comes auth username and password but have not created one. Runs in a VM

My PC is fully encrypted so why do I need to change the username and password in whonix?

I was checking my ip on whatismyipaddress.com because I can’t view which node I am on, and every time I go to that website it’s the same ip, I did duckduckgo and it’s a different ip but every time I’m on duckduckgo the ip is the same as the other time

So I installed Whonix in virtualbox on Ubuntu 22.04LTS today.

So the first thing I noticed is the text and icons and everything on the screen is too small, like way too small. So how do you fix this? Well I did some googling and found this https://www.reddit.com/r/Whonix/comments/vrh05n/how_do_i_rescale_the_xfce_ui_in_whonix/ which tells you to go here https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Desktop#XFCE_Scaling

Now that looks daunting as hell to me. So simply figuring out how to get the text and icon size is a huge pain in the ass on whonix. Let me tell you a story, I have Ubuntu on a PC and I decided to hook up my PC to my 55 inch TV and at first the text and icons were way too small but if you go into settings and then go to displays and set "scale" to 200%, thats it, that fixes it, everything will be properly sized for the 55 inch TV at that point. So you only have to do one thing in Ubuntu to fix this problem but in Whonix it looks like you have to do many things to address this issue.

Keep in mind I'm not a computer expert by any means I'd say I'm just an ordinary user. I used to be a lifelong Windows user up til a few years ago. But I love how Ubuntu made fixing that problem so easy and effortlessly.

Yeah I'm getting really frustrated trying to figure out how to fix the "small text and icons" problem in Whonix. So please go here https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Desktop#XFCE_Scaling and go to "Xfce scaling" and you'll see "gtk2 Menus and Buttons", do you see that? You see how complicated that looks? Do you understand how daunting and discouraging this can be for a newbie? I'm feeling truly discouraged here.

So yeah I just installed Whonix today and I still haven't quite figured out how to get all the text and icons to just the right size. And keep in mind how easy Ubuntu made solving that problem for you, I just wish Whonix made it easy as well.

Now you have three shutdown methods: Save the machine state, send the shutdown signal, power off the machine. So which method am I supposed to use normally? I read somewhere that if you use the "save the machine state" you'll probably just encounter a glitched session (I mean is that right?). Well like I said I just installed Whonix today and I wasn't sure so I chose "save the machine state" and indeed in my next session I encountered a bug, Whonix wouldn't shutdown at all, it basically glitched out on me, it seemed to cause a bug with Ubuntu as well. I couldn't shutdown Ubuntu. I would go and choose restart or shutdown but nothing would happen so somehow it also affected my main OS. So i just had to manually turn off my PC. So is it true that if you choose save the machine state you'll probably just run into a glitch?

Now my PC was built in 2015, my PC specs are

AMD FX 4300 quad core CPU (which was released in 2012),

AMD Radeon RX 550 4GB GDDR5,

16GB DDR3 ram,

Asus M5A78L-M/USB3 motherboard and I'm using an HDD so my PC is ancient at this point so my question is this, is my PC capable of running Whonix with no problems?

I'm pointing to that bug I had earlier where Whonix froze up and wouldn't let me close it and then it even prevented me from shutting down my PC (so I had to manually shut down my PC). I'm going to continue to use Whonix for a while but if it starts glitching out on me like it did earlier today then I'm going to come back here and tell you all about my experience and then I'll just have to jump ship and head over and give Tails a shot. I decided to try Whonix first but if Whonix is going to freeze up on my while I'm working then I'll have no choice but to give Tails a shot.

I just can't have this happen where I'm working and then all of a sudden it freezes up on me. So yeah I'll use Whonix for a while and see how it goes but if I decide to abandon it, I'll come back here and create a new post and tell you all about my experience. Hopefully I'll have a great experience with Whonix but you know my PC is super old at this point, so I dunno...

So yeah there's my feedback and questions I have for you.

Is there a clearcut easy solution to fixing the small text and icons in Whonix?

What would be the risk of data contaminating the host computer with Debian as my USB host OS. I dont plan on doing much if anything on Debian just would be using it to boot Whonix. I obviously would be setting a password upon setup would that be enough to encrypt everything? Is there anything I need to be aware of while setting up and using a Debian-Whonix USB?

currently whonix takes a large amount of storage over 8 GB and this actually seems small but imagine if what most would be using it for? mainly connecting to Tor browser, maybe few other apps, sothis got me thinkingg what if Whonix creates a trimmed down version which could further benefit systems running on low specs? thank u for ur work as always

I like whonix but what if I want to do l things like go on eBay and don't want tor ip? Can I install Firefox and use a proxy for this. All I care about is protecting my real ip from leaking for privacy reasons. Whonix Firefox--dedicated proxy --eBay ok for this purpose ?

I'm new to whonix/tor. I plan to use Qubes-Whonix and my question is:

Is it more "secure and anonymous" to use multiple Whonix-Workstations on the same Whonix-Gateway or to have one Whonix-Gateway for each of the Whonix-Workstations?

I also have another question: If I use only one whonix-Gateway for several Workstations, will each one have its own circuit of Relays?

Forgive me for the confusion in case I'm saying it in a way that's hard to understand.

Hi,

I have an HP 650 G1 laptop.

I has an ssd and is setup in UEFI mode. Secure boot is disabled. I already have windows 11 and debian 12.5 installed on the computer.

I'm having alot of problems with installing Qubes-OS. The main issue being that I right after booting to the installer's grub menu, and choosing to install qubes, I just get a black screen.

I've tried following the instructions in the documentation, but those instructions are either not clear or outdated. I can't seem to find the BOOTX64.cfg the instructions are telling me to edit. I grepped the installation media and still couldn't even find any cfg files on the installation media itself.

Some help would be greatly appreciated.

Guys. Software developer. Creator. Traveler.

How to be private on PC?

And still maintain usability

And use a laptop without having most of its performance wasted?

I will have to continuously travel.
I already know all I could find about browser fingerprinting and browser and network setup in general, also the mouse/keystroke fingerprinting thing that as far as I know only kloak tries to prevent. But here I need help for the OS because the OS will be the roots of my setup after the hardware.

From what I know, there are 4 alternatives

1. Windows. Not private, but secure.
2. macOS. Not private, but secure (more than Windows?)
3. Linux. The OS is usually private but there is no sand-boxing so as soon as you install apps, they can fingerprint your device and see also basically everything about the user they're in. Not secure but you can use Kicksecure and that's better.
4. QubesOS. The one with best privacy potential, and also probably the most secure. But you cannot use GPU, it requires higher hardware resources, and even if you have these higher hardware resources, it will "consume" them compared to the other OSes.

Also, on QubesOS you probably can't manage apps, I think, because you don't have the access and context to do that. So this one is, for me, already a tradeoff. The second biggest one is the lack of GPU use. And the third one is the consume of resources (less battery life, more heat, less performance)

I absolutely need the possibility of being able to enforce policies and manage apps.

I don't think QubesOS can do that?

Also I need to be able to do software development and create/edit photos/videos.

And I need to be able to do this on a portable device (as far as I know a laptop or Mini PC are the only possibilities). Because I will be traveling.
Already thought of using cloud PC (even leaving a PC at home in my country), and using it with a thin client remotely, but I realized latency would be too high.

So, am I right to think that QubesOS isn't right for me?

So, I'm left with the first 3 options.

I care only about privacy because I know that I will be able to manage security.

1. Windows. Which version? Which privacy settings (no badness enumeration...)? Is there Windows 11 Enterprise and can it be trusted with disabling telemetry (really), was it tested by someone inspecting network traffic? If having the same telemetry as Linux, this would be the best choice for me I think, even if unfortunately macOS laptops are generally better than Windows ones if you want battery life, nice screen, little heat etc, because Apple uses Arm instead of x86/x64...
2. macOS. I think there is only one "version", right? And it cannot be much customized, or am I wrong? Also, it's closed-source and I won't have privacy in the OS.  
3. A Linux distro. Privacy-safe OS (no telemetry/spying). I could have security using Kicksecure (modified Debian distro). I don't know which apps would be supported, but I seriously think that I will need Windows anyway for app compatibility in everyday use and work.

Each of these three still have anyway complete lack of privacy between the apps.

As far as I know (tell me if I'm wrong), in these OSes if you have an app installed on an user, it can know anything about that user, and probably even lots of hardware details. If you give admin/root permissions, obviously it can do whatever it wants.

So if for example I install Visual Studio Code or Android Studio (with default settings without preventing telemetry in these individual apps in someway), or some closed-source app, like some app for photo/video editing etc, it will be absolutely able to fingerprint all the things on that user and the device in general, see also other apps data etc.

I cannot block Network access like on GrapheneOS or use multiple profiles and prevent, doing this, IPC and seeing other apps installed.

Now: my threat model is preventing fingerprinting and tracking as much as possible by companies. I don't care about the government because, yeah, I just want to have a life, hopefully a decent life.

So what can I do?

Seriously, which OS and eventual settings would you recommend?

Are Windows and macOS already to be discarded because they are closed-source and have telemetry, spying etc? If so, can Linux at least protect me from OS spying? But: any of these 3 can't do shit regarding to protect an app from spying, right?

An app could take screenshots, generally access the filesystem, see all the running processes on the user, get data from registry keys, get hardware details, and much more right?

Could I use a Linux distro (for example Kicksecure) as Host OS and then an offline Windows VM?

Would the offline Windows VM be usable? (probably many apps need some kind of internet connection?)

Please help. I've been studying for months and now I need to show someone in my life that I'm improving our digital life and not just wasted time. Thank you in advance.

For whatever reason geforce experience hates and loves me at the same time because i deleted all the files but it still shows up in control panel and stuff. tried about every fix with regedit and all that other stuff and ive resigned to resetting. technically the vms are saved as files right? so if i choose to just erase apps and settings i should be able to reinstall the vm and pick up where i left off right?

error reads VERR_SUP_VP_UNEXPECTED_VALID_PATH_COUNT

Hi all, I had to re-install my whonix on a USB as I had a tor browser not starting error.

I deleted the files on the USB (encrypted hidden partition) and downloaded the whonix file - imported it with virtual-box onto the USB drive, it has installed the gateway and that is working - but there is only a .vdi file in the workstation folder on the USB.

Did I do something wrong?

Thanks

So if the title doesn't make any sense at all I was asking GPT four If it was possible to replicate a kind of Whonix tunnel VPN instead of the TOR network, simply use a "gateway" VM that tunnels traffic to a "workstation" VM, and then install a VPN on the gateway. Thoughts?

Is this a good way of staying anonymous and undetected? A lot of sites block Tor IPs for spam/abuse and I was wondering if I could do this with a residential RDP to remain undetected using Tor. Any downsides to it? Thanks

Hi r/Whonix, I have been trying to install VirtualBox, but keep getting this error before I can even run the installer. I'm running Windows 11.

Error message: https://imgur.com/a/V7sRDza

I am running both gateway and workstation virtual machines via UTM on a M1 Macbook Pro. I am curious, from a resource perspective, why the default script spins up an UTM image for the gateway with a desktop? Why is there even an option?

PS I know that there is a CLI option but, for whatever reason, I can't get it to start in UTM.

If I have an app installed inside whonix workstation, and I wanted to access it from just inside the workstation, how would that work?

I just want to be able to open the webgui of said app in the browser at 10.152.152.11:9443 or localhost:9443.

Thanks!

after spending many years i thought to write here about this strange thing where earlier when rest of the projects used to lag behind in terms of network connection speed, today Whonix is lagging and I dont know why! Is it because of new more bloated Firefox or something else.

hope this gets sorted and of course a big thanks to you as always for keeping the project running

Hello, I installed Ubuntu via whonix oracle virtual box and created a localhost onion site using nginx in it. My onion site was working fine until I configured the whonix gateway. By manually changing the IPv4 part, the address was 10.152.152.3, the netmask part was 255.255.192.0, and the gateway part was 10.152.152.1. I changed the DNS section to 10.152.152.10. But after that, my onion site stopped working. In the torrc file, HiddenServiceDir /var/lib/tor/hidden_service3/ I have a port as HiddenServicePort 80 127.0.0.1:82. Could it be related to this port? Maybe I should have written 10.152.152.1 instead of 127.0.0.1. I tried this but it didn't work. I don't know much about this. So I might be talking nonsense. It's important for me. I would appreciate it if you could help me. Thank you in advance.

I'm using Whonix, and I've been doing some work on using Tor and anonymity, but I get this error.

(This is what my screen looks like when I open Workstatin. WHAT SHOULD I DO?)

https://preview.redd.it/8vketpcol7xc1.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=3b06d49d4ad0697f267b3d8336a3abffb4699068

https://preview.redd.it/oiadhqcol7xc1.png?width=1027&format=png&auto=webp&s=1db2bfad3aacfec154bb54cb84de9b31adda6970

I'm running a few VMs which rely on TOR, however I want to be able to configure my Whonix gateway to use the fastest TOR circuits possible.

If not, how can I select custom TOR circuits for my Whonix gateway VM?

Whonix

Could someone explain to me how Whonix works? I'm hosting whonix in a VM, and this is the second time that my antivirus has detected a suspicious website, (even though I'm not accessing anything). Can anyone tell me if this is normal?

• I downloaded whonix and virtualbox from the official website 2 days ago.

• Antivirus: Bitdefender