This is a project I have been working on for the Pirate Party of Canada. You can see the feature list and download links at
http://piratelinux.org. The video walk-through is at
http://youtu.be/s9kj4pziojQ?hd=1.
Some features that are perhaps unique when compared to other distros:
- Ubuntu based together with a package called "piratepack" that installs all the modifications.
- Full disk encryption is preseeded for the installation of the OS.
- The piratepack has been tested to work on Ubuntu 10+ and Debian 6.
- Tor & Vidalia run in the background and you can access Vidalia from the icon on the top panel.
- Tor browser uses your current firefox under a profile called "tor".
- Both the Tor browser and the regular firefox get addons automatically installed (your firefox settings and history are still working as usual, it's just as if you installed the addons on top of them).
- Regular Firefox addons: AdBlock Plus, Bloody Vikings, Download Helper, Ghostery, HTTPS-Everywhere.
- Tor browser addons: Bloody Vikings, HTTPS-Everywhere, NoScript, Torbutton.
- Tor browser automatically launches Pidgin in OTR mode connected to the oftc.net server through Tor.
- Bitcoin client (both command line and graphical).
- Cwallet: My own program that lets you list the private keys associated with your addresses in your wallet.dat and make a paper backup of your wallet in QR code format. Also, it checks to make sure that the keys are not corrupted. There's both a command line and graphical version.
- Custom Google Homepage: Google SSL search & Pirate search, plus useful links on top.
- Piratepack modifications can be enabled and disabled through a GUI controller.
- You can launch the Liberte & Tails privacy enhanced distros from the boot menu.
- IMPORTANT: Any binaries that piratepack installs are compiled from source automatically on installation. You don't have to trust my binaries. Of course the dependencies (such as libz1g or firefox, etc...) will not be compiled, but by default come from the standard Ubuntu/Debian repositories. Piratepack also produces a binary version of piratepack and puts it in /opt/piratepack/bin-pack. You can share this binary version with a friend or use it for yourself for installation on another machine. Of course you can also choose to install the binary version of piratepack if you don't want to wait for the compilation and you trust my signed binaries. Also, when doing updates to piratepack, you may want to read the source code first. In this case you can simply download piratepack from the piratelinux.org website instead of using the update manager. Or you can install it from the update manager and then read the source code from the cache directory /var/cache/apt/archives in order to make sure that the code is not malicious.
The Pirate Party's stance on bitcoin is currently unclear, so I'm not promoting it with this distro. I'm just placing it there in case someone wants to use it. Also, note that the current ISO has Bitcoin 0.5.1. The current latest version is 0.5.2. Soon I'll update piratepack to install 0.5.2, so if you do the update from your update manager (or website), you'll get the latest version.
I'm taking a break from this now to focus on other things. But, Ill try to get some small updates done from time to time and I'm keeping an eye out for the release of Ubuntu 12, and that's when the next major update will probably happen.
Cheers
IMPORTANT UPDATES
(piratepack_1.4-4):
- Fixed cwallet-gui to work properly (the 1.4-3 update caused an issue)
(piratepack_1.4-3):
- Tor Browser: I fixed a Torbutton setting to prevent a leak of your IP through FTP. I know, it's a really stupid mistake.
- Bitcoin 0.5.2: This version fixes bugs, especially a Tor IP leak bug (this time it's not my fault).
- qrencode now compiles from source.
After installing Pirate Linux from the ISO, please go to Update Manager and install all updates (especially Ubuntu Security Updates and piratepack). You can of course install the latest piratepack by downloading the DEB from the piratelinux.org website if you want to read the source code first.
Please note that I am not guaranteeing any form of security for my software. I'm trying my best to make it as secure as possible (I use it for myself, so I do care about it's security), but it still needs a lot more testing. Of course since it automatically compiles on your machine, anyone is free to assess the source code and it is easy for you to not have to trust me and run a transparent system.
You can test your browser anonymity on websites such as
http://ip-check.info and
http://panopticlick.eff.org