Many Internet users want to protect their privacy on the Internet, without disclosing personal information unnecessarily. The special Linux distribution Whonix [1], which incorporates The Onion Router (Tor) network, lets you do so for free.

If you want to try out Whonix, your best bet is to install it on a virtual machine (VM). Although physical hardware would work just as well – and you don't even need particularly new or powerful hardware – you would need two machines, because Whonix consistently separates the Internet physically from the computer on which you work, either with the use of two VMs or two separate physical systems. It is easy to set up and use Whonix: You only need to import two VMs, and a wizard then connects them to the Tor network.

The Architecture

Two VMs or two computers form the basis of the Whonix Linux distribution. One machine used as the connection gateway to the Tor network [2] is known as the Whonix-Gateway on the Whonix network. The other machine accommodates the applications with which you work. To begin, you set up the gateway, and it then sets up the connection to the Internet instead of connecting directly to the Internet; the wizard can also connect the gateway via a proxy server.

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