Disclaimer: Please remember that Windows is NOT a secure host operating system for a variety of reasons. This Installer was mainly created to make it easy for people to experience Whonix first hand without the requirement of installing an entirely new OS. Under no circumstances, use Windows for sensitive work.
After almost a year of active development, we are releasing the Whonix-Installer which will provide a simple and familiar way for Windows users to gain access to Whonix and its massive capabilities as well as toolset.
Currently, the Whonix-Installer for Windows is based on nsisbi, a fork of the often used “Nullsoft Scriptable Install System”, which was required to circumvent the general size limit of 2Gb usually enforced by “NSIS”. Even with that though, a bit of additional modification was required to include all the files required for Whonix into one simple to use “.exe file”. That’s why for the foreseeable future, a disk-space of 8Gb is required during installation, as the Gateway and Workstation required additional compression, since even “nsisbi” has a single file size limit of 4Gb. Thus, during installation, both Gateway and Workstation take temporarily double the disk space, during the decompression process.
Adding to this however, the Whonix-Installer can be used regardless of whether you’ve installed VirtualBox previously or not. Any older virtual machines should be unmodified by using the Whonix-Installer.
Furthermore, a small, simple user interface, named “Whonix-UI” or alternatively “Whonix for Windows”/“Whonix.exe” has been created to make starting and terminating of both the Gateway and Workstation as simple as possible. It is still very much in the early stages of its development, which is part of the reason for its rather basic appearance though functionally works as intended. By pressing the “Start Whonix Button”, both the Gateway and Workstation are launched and by pressing the “Stop Whonix Button” they are terminated. While Whonix is being used, the window prevents itself from being closed, as to prevent issues.
If you’d like to try the UI with your existing installation of Whonix, you may simply drag-and-drop it into the folder in which you’ve installed VirtualBox.
Download Links:
The Whonix-Installer may be downloaded from here:The Whonix-UI can be found separately here:
https://github.com/Whonix/Whonix-Windows-UI