Best/most secure host to use with whonix?

Hi guys,

I wonder which host you would recommend to use if you were to install it to a thumb drive ?
A light host is really good since ubuntu tend to get really big with time even if you remove old kernels and cache files etc.

Also full disk encryption would be required of this.

I usually use ubuntu 12.10 but I want to try something new for my bootable OS.

Thanks in advance

How to run Whonix conveniently and securely is one of the bigger issues of the project. There are big advantages and disadvantages to every approach.

This is really more of a “which lightweight linux distro should I use?” question. It will depend on your skills and familiarity with that distro, as well as your hardware requirements. I don’t think it’s a good idea to worry about file size of the distro: It’s easier to buy a large USB stick than to fiddle, fix, and be frustrated with a mini-distro you’re not comfortable in or lacks features.

If you insist, maybe try Slax (Slackware based, 210 megs) or Puppy Linux (runs everything inside RAM).

Any distro will run virtualbox equally well (I assume), as well as support full disk encryption (though some might come with tools that make it easy to set up – I don’t know which ones).

Tell us how it goes.

In the future, if we ever get whonix running inside QubesOS, I suspect that using QubesOS will be the definitive way to do this.

The documentation is quite sparse on that topic:

It links to:

which at least bust some myths about allegedly most secure operating systems.

Most secure would as far I can see be QubesOS. But no instructions exist yet on how to do that. Will take more time. So the most secure option is also the most difficult one to implement. And if you don’t like/trust QubesOS, there is also Hardened Gentoo. Looks quite secure, there is documentation and support available for it on the internet, but it still seems very difficult in comparison to a Debian host. And if the question is, what is a good compromise between security and usability, my answer still is Debian.

@bert
My very personal recommendation would be Whonix Forum