How to Install Tor Browser on Linux

Maintain anonymity and protect yourself online by browsing the internet using Tor Browser. Here's how to install it on Linux.

Privacy and anonymity are hard to come by on the internet. Luckily, there are a few steps you can take to safeguard your personal data from the prying eyes of data collection algorithms, marketers, and advertisers.

This guide will show you how to install Tor Browser on Linux. Tor Browser is an open-source, cross-platform, and modern web browser with privacy at heart. The main purpose of the browser is to give you the basic right to privacy on the internet.

How Tor Browser Protects You Online

There are a few important concepts that Tor Browser uses to ensure that your browsing sessions remain private and anonymous from surveillance and prying eyes.

• Encryption: When you use Tor Browser, your traffic is encrypted multiple times as it passes over the Tor network via Tor relays.
• Resisting fingerprinting: When you use other browsers such as Google Chrome, Firefox, etc., you will be profiled so that it is easy to track your activities on the internet over time. Tor Browser, on the other hand, ensures that all its users look the same, making it difficult for advertisers to profile you.
• Blocks tracking: Most websites keep historical records of your activities in the form of cookies or localStorage sessions. This information makes it possible to easily track you. Tor Browser deletes all cookies and other related information after each browsing session, making it difficult for marketers and advertisers to track you.

Tor Browser also allows you to visit and access sites blocked by punitive government regimes or authorities.

Step 1: Downloading the Tor Browser Package

You can install Tor Browser on your system in three simple steps. First, download the Tor Browser installation files from the official site.

Download: Tor Browser

Click on the Download for Linux button and the browser will start downloading the package to your default downloads location, most likely the Downloads directory.

Alternatively, you can download the browser files from the command line, using a tool such as wget or cURL. To do that, right-click on the Download for Linux button and then select the Copy Link option from the context menu.

Next, go to the Downloads folder using the cd command.

cd ~/Downloads

Then, run wget followed by the link you just copied.

wget https://www.torproject.org/dist/torbrowser/11.0.2/tor-browser-linux64-11.0.2_en-US.tar.xz

Note that the aforementioned method is distro-agnostic and will work on any Linux distribution, including Ubuntu and Kali Linux.

Step 2: Extracting the Installation Files

The Tor Browser installation files are compressed, and you need to extract them before you can proceed further.

To do that, navigate to the Downloads folder or the location where you downloaded the files.

cd ~/Downloads

Run the tar command to extract the TAR archive.

tar -xvf tor-browser-linux64-11.0.2_en-US.tar.xz

As obvious, you should replace the file name with the one you've downloaded.

Step 3: Registering the Browser as an App

Move the extracted installation files to the /opt directory. On UNIX-based systems, the opt directory is reserved for optional or additional software packages that are not part of the core Linux system.

Also, you'll need elevated privileges to copy files to that directory.

sudo mv tor-browser_en-US /opt

Now, go into the Tor Browser installation files directory that you've just copied over.

cd /opt/tor-browser_en-US

If you list the content of this folder, you'll notice that you have the executable file start-tor-browser.desktop. This file is responsible for starting the app.

list -ls

To register the browser as a Linux application, run the following command:

./start-tor-browser.desktop --register-app

Using Tor Browser on Linux

Now that Tor Browser has been successfully installed, search for tor in the Applications menu and launch it to start using the browser.

You can click the Connect button to use the encrypted connections and start your browsing sessions. You can also configure other browsing and privacy options by clicking on the Tor Network Settings button.

Related: Why ProtonMail Thinks Everyone Should Start Using Tor

Securing Browsing Sessions on Linux

This guide has looked at how you can protect your personal data and profile when browsing the web by installing and using Tor Browser. To make the best out of your browsing experience on Tor Browser, you should have a deep understanding of how it works.

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