Surfing the internet seems impossible but we can always increase our privacy. A good way to do this is through the Tor web browser and its networks. So we’ll show you how to install Tor Browser on Ubuntu 20.04 using two methods.
Tor browser is a Firefox-based web browser that connects to the Tor networks, increasing our privacy while we browse the Internet. This is especially useful if you are in a country with a lot of censorship or if you are concerned about your safety while surfing.
When we refer to security and privacy, we mean that ISPs collect data from our browsing and we don’t know what they do with it. Besides this, you can avoid tracking and similar things.
Installing Tor Browser on Ubuntu 20.04 is not as complicated as it seems, but it can help us on more than one occasion. This is the goal of this tutorial.
So, let’s get started.
Install Tor Browser on Ubuntu 20.04
The Tor Browser has a launcher that will help us set up Tor correctly. Remember that Tor is not just any browser and you need some parameters to make it work, but thanks to this launcher everything is transparent.
To install it, just run the following command:
sudo apt install torbrowser-launcher Reading package lists… Done Building dependency tree Reading state information… Done The following additional packages will be installed: libdouble-conversion3 libpcre2-16-0 libqt5core5a libqt5dbus5 libqt5designer5 libqt5gui5 libqt5help5 libqt5network5 libqt5printsupport5 libqt5sql5 libqt5sql5-sqlite libqt5svg5 libqt5test5 libqt5widgets5 libqt5xml5 libxcb-xinerama0 libxcb-xinput0 python3-gpg python3-pyqt5 python3-sip python3-socks qt5-gtk-platformtheme qttranslations5-l10n tor tor-geoipdb torsocks Suggested packages: qt5-image-formats-plugins qtwayland5 python3-pyqt5-dbg mixmaster socat tor-arm apparmor-utils obfs4proxy The following NEW packages will be installed: libdouble-conversion3 libpcre2-16-0 libqt5core5a libqt5dbus5 libqt5designer5 libqt5gui5 libqt5help5 libqt5network5 libqt5printsupport5 libqt5sql5 libqt5sql5-sqlite libqt5svg5 libqt5test5 libqt5widgets5 libqt5xml5 libxcb-xinerama0 libxcb-xinput0 python3-gpg python3-pyqt5 python3-sip python3-socks qt5-gtk-platformtheme qttranslations5-l10n tor tor-geoipdb torbrowser-launcher torsocks 0 upgraded, 27 newly installed, 0 to remove and 484 not upgraded. Need to get 18.7 MB of archives. After this operation, 84.3 MB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue? [Y/n]
Once you enter your password the process will start and you will be able to run it from the main menu.
Once you open it, you will see a small screen where you can see that Tor Browser is not yet installed.
So, choose a mirror and click on Install Tor Browser
There you will start the process of downloading and checking the program.
Once you run it, click on the Connect button and wait for the settings to be made. In case you live in a country with censorship you can choose Configure and configure the networks yourself.
In my case, I choose Connect. Just wait a while and Tor Browser will be launched.
This method is quite simple and you don’t have any losses, but the package is not always updated. This can lead to some instabilities and security breaches you may not have available.
For that reason, there is another even more secure method and that is through Flatpak.
Alternative method: using flatpak
In Ubuntu 20.04 Flatpak is not available out-the-box but we can always install it with the following command:
sudo apt install flatpak
So quickly, we already have flatpak installed, now we just need to run it:
flatpak install flathub com.github.micahflee.torbrowser-launcher
To start the whole installation process.
After it finishes, you can run it from the main menu or by running the following command:
flatpak run com.github.micahflee.torbrowser-launcher
And proceed as before.
Conclusion
Thanks to the open-source we have an application that can be very important in difficult situations and to jump over the censorship. But not only that, but it also helps in privacy issues. And so you can have a little more security when surfing the Internet.
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