Tor Bundle vs. Vidalia Bundle

[Justin Aplin]

On Oct 14, 2010, at 9:14 AM, zzzjethro666 at email2me.net wrote:

> hi.
> What is the difference between a Vidalia Bundle and a Tor Bundle,  
> other than what I perceive as the obvious?
> One without the other? I thought they had to work together.

What they "have" to do depends on what you're trying to do. The Tor  
program by itself does the legwork of building circuits and passing  
data to/from the network. It has no GUI and acts based on settings in  
the torrc text file. Tor is available on its own in the "Expert  
Packages" section of the download page, as the only people using Tor  
on its own are likely bridge, relay, and exit operators who know what  
they're doing. It's not a "bundle" per se.

Vidalia is GUI program that interacts with Tor and makes its settings  
easier to handle, along with other nifty features such as viewing the  
network, logs, etc. The "Vidalia Bundle" on the download page is  
designed to be installed on a computer you'll be using Tor on  
regularly. That is, it isn't "portable", can't easily be carried with  
you on a USB key or CD, and doesn't come with an internet browser. The  
bundle includes Polipo, which makes funneling HTTP and SOCKS proxies  
into Tor easier and safer.

The "Tor Browser Bundle" (the bundle I assume you're talking about in  
your post) is the same set of programs, together with a locked-down  
version of Firefox, that it designed to be completely portable. You  
don't have to install it, so it's easy to carry with you on a USB key  
or CD. Tor, Vidalia, Polipo, and the customized Firefox are all  
seamlessly started with a single button in this package.

All of this information is available on the download pages and in the  
documentation, I'd recommend reading through them.

~Justin Aplin
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/attachments/20101014/c914a7f7/attachment.htm>