Sudo apt-get install whonix-gateway-ova and so forth idea

[Patrick]

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This is an idea that may or may not improve usability.

Unrelated to sdwdate… Example instructions:

https://github.com/Whonix/sdwdate#how-to-install-in-debian-using-apt-get

(Usual gpg import key, add Whonix repo, apt-get update.)

Then one could run “sudo apt-get install whonix-gateway-ova” (or workstation, or qcow2) and so forth. The ova or qcow2 image could then be available from /usr/share/whonix/whonix…ova etc. An alternative method to downloading images using the download page. Additionally that package could depend on virtualbox/kvm and perhaps also ship a wizard that does importing if that would simplify things.

Wouldn’t be hard to develop. Maintenance effort (answering support requests) would be another story.

Would that just be “a pretty cool alternative download method some geeks are using” or actually improve usability for most users?

Somehow, I personally guess the former.

Related similar ideas:

• Secure Downloader to Download Whonix
• Installation from Whonix repository – proverbial “sudo apt-get install whonix(-gateway)”
• Future Directions - Where Whonix wants to be in 2 or 5 years?
• USB Image

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[HulaHoop]

Cool idea. I know some free software projects have their own repo that users add once and it keeps track of things.

Would that just be “a pretty cool alternative download method some geeks are using” or actually improve usability for most users?

Somehow, I personally guess the former.

How easy or hard it is, is not really your fault. The difficulty of adding repos by an average user is a problem that should be handled upstream in software manager guis and ux development.

The fact that this proposal uses the trust infrastructure of Linux to keep its users current is something that makes this worth doing.

[Patrick]

Just to prevent a potential misunderstanding. Initially it would only keep the image current. Just as if you always download the latest stable manually yourself. It wouldn’t auto update existing VMs in VirtualBox.

[HulaHoop]

Yes I understand.

It would make image validation a one time thing.

It would be interesting to see if apt-get downloads on the host can be Torrified and add settings for that. Thats for users who want to anonymously update their images and don’t want their ISP to know they are Whonix users.

[Patrick]

It would be interesting to see if apt-get downloads on the host can be Torrified and add settings for that. Thats for users who want to anonymously update their images and don’t want their ISP to know they are Whonix users.

Yeah, each new feature that looks good at first sight quickly expands into new issues we would not have thought of without having that feature. Surely all possible with existing tools, but documentation is lacking and it doesn’t become any simpler.