
Andrew (R.S Admin) @ajroach42

If you're not using Tor browser, why not?

@ajroach42 Don't really know how, or whether I need a VPN to use it, or really why it would be necessary for my purposes... plus I tend to associate it with my stalkers.

@hache would you be interested in answers to those unknowns?

@hache @ajroach42 >Don't really know how,

You can download it from the Tor project, its self contained and will run on basically any system.

>or whether I need a VPN to use it,

Nope! It anonymizes the traffic that happens within tor browser without the need for additional software.

@hache >or really why it would be necessary for my purposes...

That depends entirely on your purposes! The more people there are using Tor, generally, the stronger the network is.

You can use tor to anonymize your web traffic, to send and receive files anonymously (using onionshare), and to host websites on your local machine without having to deal with DNS or security certs. It makes it harder for companies (and others!) to track you, when used correctly.

@hache Maybe you don't have a need for it! That's aokay. I am attempting to learn more about the perception and use of Tor.

> plus I tend to associate it with my stalkers.

I'm sorry to hear that.

@ajroach42 IceCat has a Tor addon installed by default and still lets me store my bookmarks, unlike Tor Browser, which loses them after each upgrade :blobsad:

@grainloom @ajroach42 Oh wow, I didn't realise that upgrading wiped bookmarks. What platform is that on?
@grainloom @ajroach42 That is probably the problem. If bookmarks are getting wiped that is a bug. You might be better off just downloading the package from directly, it is self-contained anyway and doesn't need system installation.

@grainloom @irl @ajroach42 Doing it from the self-updating self-contained one that the Tor Project puts as a download on their website has kept bookmarks over upgrades, for me at least.

@ajroach42 I haven't figured out how to install it on #OpenBSD yet. The tor-browser package seems to be missing packages for its dependencies. I suppose I could just build the damn thing from source using the port...

@starbreaker @ajroach42 tor browser is marked broken on current and won't be part of 6.6

@solene @starbreaker @ajroach42 this is sad. should be working on this, but i guess some deadline has been and gone now.

@irl @starbreaker @ajroach42 the port maintainer (Atilla) did not keep the browser up to date during the 6.6 development (it receives minor updates for -stable and also -current at the same time).

Then, a big rust change came and broke firefox, firefox-esr and thunderbird. The fixes seems easy but it wasn't possible to apply it on tor-browser because it was already outdated compared to firefox-esr.

Also, distributing old tor-browser versions to our users is not kind of us to them...

@solene @starbreaker @ajroach42 yes this is the same person I'm thinking of, it looks like they were too busy to keep up.

i'm glad that it just won't be included as opposed to shipping an old/broken version.

@irl @starbreaker @ajroach42 for 6.5 it wasn't a very good experience but not due to porters. Firefox certificates expired a few days after we released 6.5, then tor-browser did not have any plugin.
This was fixed in august when we started shipping -stable packages but meanwhile, it was a poor experience IMO :(

@solene @starbreaker @ajroach42 i remember the certificate issue, that was a fun few days.

for Debian the package is not tor browser itself but just a launcher. it downloads and verifies the package from, extracts it to the user's home directory, and after that the tor browser built-in updater takes over.

@ajroach42 It's slow and buggy and often fails to connect (Android client).