The new version of Whonix 16 has already been released and comes based on Debian 11

The new version of Whonix 16 has already been released and one of its main novelties is the change of the base which is now Debian 11 with which a large number of system packages have been updated.

For those who do not know about the distribution, I can tell you that it is a system that is geared towards anonymity guaranteed, security and protection of private information. The distribution is based on Debian GNU / Linux and uses Tor to ensure anonymity.

A characteristic of Whonix is ​​the division of the distribution into two components installed separately: Whonix-Gateway with an implementation of a network gateway for anonymous communications and Whonix Workstation with a desk.

Both components shipped within a single boot image. Network access from the Whonix-Workstation environment is via the Whonix-Gateway only, which isolates the work environment from direct interaction with the outside world and allows only fictitious network addresses to be used.

It should be noted that Whonix components are designed to run as guest systemsIn other words, the possibility of exploiting critical zero-day vulnerabilities in virtualization platforms that can provide access to the host system is not excluded. Therefore, it is not recommended to run Whonix-Workstation on the same computer as Whonix-Gateway.

Main novelties of Whonix 16

In this new version of the system, the base of the package of distribution has been updated from Debian 10 (busters) to Debian 11 (bullseye) along with which a large number of packages have migrated to this new version and also of which for example is the repository to install Tor which has been changed from deb.torproject.org to packages.debian.org.

Also the upgrade has been made from Whonix-Gateway 15 and Whonix-Workstation 15 (all with Xfce) which are based on Debian buster to Whonix-Gateway 16 and Whonix-Workstation 16 to the base of Debian 11 bullseye.

The binaries-freedom package has been deprecated, since electrum is now available in the regular Debian repository, while flashproxy-client and fteproxy have been removed from Whonix-Gateway as it is deprecated in Debian bullseye.

The fasttrack repository (fasttrack.debian.net) is enabled by default Through which you can install the latest versions of Gitlab, VirtualBox and Matrix, in addition to the backports repository it is also enabled by default

The apt python-qt4 functionality test package has been replaced with nano as python-qt4 installs too many packages, dependencies and nano is installed by default.

VirtualBox guest additions installer was changed to trigger the use of interest-await instead of interest-noawait, since earlier when the virtualbox guest-additions image was updated at the same time as vm-config-dist the trigger did not run.

Of the other changes that stand out from this new version:

  • The file paths have been updated from / usr / lib to / usr / libexec.
    VirtualBox updated to version 6.1.26 from the Debian repository.
  • The path to the home page of the local browser has also been updated.
  • apparmor-profile-dist
  • Compatibility with LKRG v0.9.1
  • Obfs4proxy and firefox-esr added
  • Automating LKRG port compatibility settings for VirtualBox hosts from
  • systemd to dpkg trigger
  • improve LKRG VirtualBox host configuration
  • Forward port release update enhancements

Finally if you are interested in knowing more about it of this new version, you can check the complete list of changes In the following link.

Download Whonix 16

For those who are interested in being able to test the system, they should know that the Whonix boot images are designed to run under the control of the KVM hypervisor.

In addition to that for the time (of publishing) the builds for VirtualBox and for use in the Qubes operating system are delayed (while the Whonix 16 test builds continue to ship).

The link is this.

And for those who want a comparison of Whonix with Tails, Tor Browser, Qubes OS TorVM, you can find on this page.


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