Boot

First thing with Tails – it boots fast. Secondly, it is very well designed. Based on a Debian architecture, Tails proposes eleven languages for the system.

As a bonus, there is a camouflage option that makes the Gnome desktop look like Windows XP. No one will suspect what you are doing. To boot with the camouflage option, at the language selection screen, instead of pressing Enter at your selection, press Tab and then add “winxp” to the code that appeared. Here is the result:

Usage

Once your system has booted, you arrive at the simple Gnome desktop and Tor automatically launches itself.

The first evident use of Tails is surfing the web. For that, you are provided with a Vidalia as a GUI for Tor and Iceweasel as a web browser. The latter comes with a plethora of practical add-ons like HTTPS-Everywhere, Adblock Plus, or NoScript. All of these add-ons give you the necessary protection: encryption, protection from tracking cookies, script prevention, etc. Tails guarantees a maximum of privacy possible on the Internet.

As an extra, Tails also comes with aircrack-ng, a non graphical tool for checking the security of your network. If the Wi-Fi you are using is not protected enough, your packets could be sniffed by an intruder. That is why aircrack can try to break into your network as if you were the intruder, and reveal vulnerabilities.

On the other hand, a Tails session can be used as a “safe” environment to work on “sensitive” documents. You are provided with all the necessary software to view and edit files. OpenOffice, Audacity, Gimp, and more are included in the distribution. You will be able to edit Office files, watch videos, record sounds, and more, with the assurance of leaving no trace on the physical computer. Also, in the spirit of Debian, the default file manager to navigate among your folders is Nautilus.

Another usage of Tails would be for secure communications. If you know the chat client Pidgin, you will be glad to know that it comes by default with the plugin OTR, for “Off The Record”, that will encrypt your messages.

And if you are a fan of email clients, Thunderbird is also included with the extension Enigmail for the PGP encryption of your emails.

Finally, Tails can be used for the encryption of physical drives and folders. You can use the program TrueCrypt for a LUKS encryption.

Extras

On the same level, Tails comes with two programs in the system-tray: a copy-paste manager and a virtual keyboard. The latter is useful against key-loggers. In the case that the computer on which you are currently working physically records what you are typing, the virtual keyboard will assure you security.

The copy-paste manager, while useful, is also a security vulnerability by itself. I don’t know about you but I sometimes forget to erase it at the end of my session, and you never know what it might contain. Email addresses, URLs, passwords, any information that you copied into the clipboard can be accessed. Against that, the copy-paste manager in Tails propose a funny option: the encryption of your clipboard.

Also, Nautilus has been installed with the extensions for securely wiping files. In others terms, you can delete and be sure that no one will recover. For that: a simple right-click on a file, and then “Wipe” will do the job. The file will be erased and the space written over with random data in order to make any recuperation impossible. However, if you normally deleted a file and forgot to wipe it, there is also an extension for that. A right-click on a blank space will make the option “Wipe available disk space” appear. By using that command, all the files that were on a USB drive, for example, will be totally eradicated, even if normally suppressed before.

Finally, there is a last attack against which Tails is prepared: the cold-boot attack. When you shut down your PC, the RAM will take several minutes to completely erase its content. A cold-boot attack is when a hacker makes use of the delay to recover all the content of the RAM, which means practically everything you’ve done during your session. Even if the cold-boot attack is not regularly used, it is still a threat that users have to cope with. The good thing is, Tails automatically wipes and fills the RAM with random data at the end of your session.

Conclusion

Although Tails is still in its early version (0.10.1), it presents a couple of very well thought-out abilities. Its goal is very clearly established and developers are actively working towards it. I appreciated even more the invitations to give feedback and to report bugs. It is true that there are still a couple of areas that can be enhanced. There are still a couple of bugs in the winxp camouflage mode, and the mac changer program is currently not working, according to the wiki. But, as I said, Tails seems very promising and I can hardly find any other areas to improve.

And you? Have you tested Tails or something similar? Can you think of any weaknesses or fields that have not been treated? Are you using some other methods to protect your privacy? Please let us know in the comments.

Tails

Image credit: Privacy by BigStockPhoto

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Getting Slackware

Torrent downloads for Slackware 13 can be found here. I’ll be using the full DVD ISO for this article as it includes all the packages necessary for a typical install.

Booting the Installer

After burning the ISO to DVD and rebooting, you’ll be taken to the initial boot screen, pick a keymap, and log in.

Setting up Disks

Chances are, before you can begin the install, you’ll need to set up some partitions. The Slackware Install DVD provides fdisk (purely text-based) and cfdisk (semi-graphical interface) to do the job. In general I’d recommend cfdisk, as I think it’s easier to navigate.

If you’re unsure how to set up the partitions, check out A Quick Guide to Linux Partition Schemes.

Once you’re finished with your partitioning, make sure you write the changes to disk and exit the partitioner. You’ll be taken back to the command line, and we can begin the install. Slackware has an installer built into the install DVD, which you can launch by typing

setup

As long as the partitioning has been done correctly, you’ll be taken to the opening screen of the installer.

The first thing we’ll do is set the target partition. This will be whichever partition you created in fdisk or cfdisk that you intend to be root (/). In my example screenshots above, it would be /dev/hda1. Next you’ll choose your filesystem. There’s no right or wrong choice here, there are pros and cons to most of the filesystem options. If unsure, ext4 is a good choice.

Installing the System

When asked to choose the installation source, pick Install from Slackware CD or DVD and let it scan for the drive. You’ll then be taken to the first package installation screen.

If you’re looking to save on space, some of those can be removed without negatively affecting your installation. Deselecting KDE, for example, would greatly reduce disk space needed.

The next step is choosing just how much detail you want to go into when choosing packages. The Full option will install everything, minus the items you deselected in the previous step and is by far the simplest option. Menu and Expert give a good balance between ease and flexibility, allowing you to choose from groups of packages. If you choose one of those options, you’ll be given several screens, one group per screen. Choose this option only if you’re very familiar with what is and isn’t essential your system. We’ll be proceeding using the Full option.

Once you’ve chosen your packages, installation will truly begin. Chances are this will take a while. A long while. A nice feature of the Slackware installer is that it gives descriptions of each package as it installs. You can learn quite a bit by simply watching the packages install and reading what they do.

Installing the Boot Loader

Once the file copy is complete, you’ll be asked if you want to make a USB recovery key. Take your pick from the suggestions provided and you’ll be brought to the boot loader screen. The somewhat odd thing about this is that Slackware uses the lilo boot loader instead of GRUB. According to their website:

Slackware holds to the “tried and true” standard for what gets included inside the distribution. While GRUB works well and includes some features that LILO does not, LILO handles all the essential tasks of a boot loader reliably with a proven track record.

Our example partitions are quite simple so we’ll proceed with the automatic.

Reminder: Installing any boot loader overwrite whatever boot loader may already be in place.

Once you choose the screen resolution for startup and some other minor prompts, you’ll be taken to the screen asking where exactly lilo should be installed. If Slackware is the only operating system on this computer, it should be perfectly ok to install at the default location, the MBR. If you intend to use lilo with other operating systems or without overwriting the MBR, see a more detailed guide such as this.

After that you choose mouse type (default should be fine) and whether or not to include gpm (recommended).

Network Config

Network configuration in most situations can be left automatic with DHCP. You’d probably know if you needed a special IP or anything. Hostname can be whatever you like, “slackware” is a good standby. When it comes to domain name, unless you have a specific reason, there’s no need to worry about whether or not it’s a “real” domain name, you can put in anything, like mynetwork.rox.

Final Setup

At the Startup Services screen, you can choose… well… startup services. The defaults are all good choices but there are some you may wish to enable or disable, such as CUPS printing or SSH.

Next up is one of the nice little additions that made Slackware a little more endearing to me, a menu to test and set console fonts. Not much utility but a nice touch.

When you’ve finished picking a font and entering time settings, you’ll get to choose which of the desktop environments you’d like to run.

Once you set a new root password, you’re ready to reboot into your new Slackware system. Don’t forget to create a new user once you’ve rebooted so you won’t be running as root. Your desktop environment can be started from the console with the command

startx

Installing New Software

Even if you installed the full 4GB system, there will eventually be some things you want that Slackware doesn’t have preinstalled. This is where a lot of people give up on Slackware, because unlike most other modern Linux distributions, it has no automated online package manager with dependency resolution and such. That means nothing like apt-get or yum or other such tools by default. This can make package management and upgrades a much more tedious process. There is an alternative, however, to get that functionality. To cover all the bases, here are the three main methods for software installation in Slackware:

Method 1: Slackware Packages
This is how it’s “supposed” to be done. Some software developers make Slackware packages (in .tgz format) available for download, and others can be found on sites such as LinuxPackages.net. Once downloaded, you just open a terminal and enter

installpkg package_name.tgz

Update – MTE readers have suggested SlackBuilds.org and Slacky.eu as better places to find Slackware packages and build scripts.

Method 2: Compile From Source
As with all Linux, you almost always have the option of compiling programs directly from the source code. If you need a refresher on that, check out How to Install Software from a Tarball in Linux.

Method 3: Slapt-get
As the name implies, slapt-get is an apt-like tool for Slackware. It can be used to install, remove, and upgrade packages. The output is nearly identical to apt-get in many places so it should be familiar to most Debian/Ubuntu users.

Unlike apt-get, slapt-get parameters start with double dashes (–). Some common ones include:

• –update Refresh lists of packages
• –upgrade Perform system upgrade
• –install Install a specific package
• –remove Remove a package
• –search Find keyword in package lists

That should be enough to get you started. If you run into any trouble, check out the Revised Slackware Book Project. Happy Slacking!

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1) Your hardware specification

Before you choose any distro, first take a look at your hardware specification. If you are using a new or recent computer that are less than one year old, you should not have any issue with any of the distros. However, if you are still using the Pentium 2 PC that you bought 5 years back, selecting a lightweight Linux distro is the best choice you got. A good thing about a lightweight distro is that it is small, fast and yet in no way inferior to those mainstream bulky distros. Even though it is small in size, it still contains a full range of software that you can use, including office suites, browser, media players etc. You might even be surprised by some of the stunning graphical effects that you never thought your Pentium 2 PC can handle.

If you are using a low-end PC, some of the lightweight distros that you can consider are PuppyLinux, Fluxbuntu, WattOS

2) Your usage pattern

The next step is to find out your usage pattern. Are you intending to build a home theater system or a personal video recorder (PVR) for your house? Do you need to do a lot of multimedia stuff on your computer? Do you want to play game like there is no tomorrow? For whatever you want to do, there is certainly a specific distro that can fulfill your needs.

Here are some of the distros that are targeted toward a specific niche:

• Mythbuntu – a popular distro that turns your computer into a PVR system.
• Ultimate Gamer edition – a distro that contains much more software than you ever need and plenty of addictive games to keep you occupied for the whole year.
• gOS – a Linux distro that provides almost all of Google services. This is useful if you are dependent on Google (Gmail, Google calendar, Google docs …) for your bread and butter.
• Ubuntu studio – a multimedia creation favour of the popular Ubuntu distro

If you just need a operating system that allows you to do mundane stuffs like writing docs, read email, surf the Web and listen to songs, any of the mainstream distros (such as Ubuntu, Mandriva, Freespire, or Fedora) will be able to fulfill your needs.

3) Support community

When choosing a Linux distro, it is best to choose one that has plenty of support resources. It can be in the form of forums, wiki or even a community of people that are willing to help you when you need technical support. Most popular distro such as Ubuntu, OpenSuse, Mandriva, Freespire have their own communities. In fact, when I have issues with my Ubuntu, the first place that I head to is UbuntuForums. That is by far, the best place to get free technical support.

4) Test-drive

To determine if the distro is really the right one for you, the best way is to test-drive it in your computer. All you need to do is to download the LiveCD iso file and burn it into a bootable CD (or USB thumbdrive if your computer allows booting from USB). You can then boot up the CD and run it in your computer. There is no installation required. If you don’t like it, simply discard the CD and proceed on with another distro.

Alternatively, you can make use of virtualization software such as Vmware and Virtualbox to create a virtual machine with your favorite distro. You can then test-drive it on your local operating system without having to waste any CD. If you are not satisfied with the distro, simply delete the virtual machine.

Conclusion

There is nothing difficult about choosing a Linux distribution. You just need to know what you want and you will be able to find the right distro. A great site that I strongly recommend new Linux users to visit is DistroWatch.com. This is a site that provides general information and news about the various Linux distribution.

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