Tor browser install correctly for EndeavourOS

[nicknick]

Hello all friends.

I haven’t been in Linux for a long time and my English is not very good, I have been looking for video tutorials on youtube and reddit to install Tor browser, but there are several ways to install it, and it seems that one of them has no graphical interface, or something similar.

I found this:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/tor
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Tor#Web_browsing
https://archlinux.org/packages/?name=torbrowser-launcher
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/tor-browser

So I’m still in doubt and don’t know what is the correct way to install Tor on EndeavourOS KDE. I want to install Tor and have it work as normal, like Mozilla Firefox, Librewolf, Brave, etc.

After reading ArchWiki, I think -S tor is not correct, I think it should be -S torbrowser-launcher or -S tor-browser.

Maybe it’s always better to install the ARCH version/repository than AUR, but I’m not sure.

How would you recommend me to install it?

Thanks in advance friends.

[dalto]

There is no absolutely correct way.

Some people use torbrowser-launcher from the repos and other recommend manually downloading it from Tor.

My opinion is that both those options are basically the same.

Personally, I would not use tor-browser from the AUR for all the reasons recommended by Tor themselves.

[Kresimir]

Using torbrowser-launcher from the official repos is identical to manually downloading Tor from the Tor website. You get the same binary from exactly the same place. Both options are considered safe. The only difference is a convenience of a little Python script that fetches the data. It’s easy to see what the script does and it is extremely unlikely the version of it from the official repos is ever going to get compromised.

Besides, the mere fact you are using Arch implies that you have unconditional trust in the Arch package maintainers. So anything from the repos should be automatically trustworthy to you.

With Tor it is extremely important not to use any third-party repo. And if you use the AUR, you have to be very careful where it is sourced from. Given how easy it is to use the launcher from the official repos, there is really no justification for using any third party repo.

[nicknick]

@dalto

There is no absolutely correct way.

Some people use tor-browser-launcher from the repos and other recommend manually downloading it from Tor.

My opinion is that both those options are basically the same.

Personally, I would not use tor-browser from the AUR for all the reasons recommended by Tor themselves.

@Kresimir

Using tor-browser-launcher from the official repos is identical to manually downloading Tor from the Tor website. You get the same binary from exactly the same place. Both options are considered safe. The only difference is a convenience of a little Python script that fetches the data. It’s easy to see what the script does and it is extremely unlikely the version of it from the official repos is ever going to get compromised.

Besides, the mere fact you are using Arch implies that you have unconditional trust in the Arch package maintainers. So anything from the repos should be automatically trustworthy to you.

With Tor it is extremely important not to use any third-party repo. And if you use the AUR, you have to be very careful where it is sourced from. Given how easy it is to use the launcher from the official repos, there is really no justification for using any third party repo.

Thank you very much to both friends!

But sorry, a question, did you mean tor-browser-launcher or torbrowser-launcher?

I can’t find tor-browser-launcher in the official repositories, I only found torbrowser-launcher.

I did -Ss tor-browser-launcher to see if it was in the repository, and it didn’t work.

I also searched the official web repository, and it wasn’t there either, so I guess I should install torbrowser-launcher?

[dalto]

Yes, it is torbrowser-launcher

[nicknick]

Thanks again, I thought I was doing something wrong with the terminal commands, thanks!

[Locutus]

@dalto

There is no absolutely correct way.

Actually the correct way is to download directly from the tor site, extract, place where one wants the folder, then either run tor from the short cut in the folder or create a link to the short on your apps menu.

[Kresimir]

@nicknick

But sorry, a question, did you mean tor-browser-launcher or torbrowser-launcher?

Sorry, my mistake. It’s torbrowser-launcher.

The only point I want to stress is that: if it is from the official repos, it is safe, assuming you think Arch in general is safe. It is not logical to consider one thing from the repos to be unsafe, and the rest safe. If you do not trust it, you shouldn’t be using Arch at all.