[tor-talk] Pirate Linux - First Release

[AK]

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.

Some features that are perhaps unique when compared to other distros:

- Ubuntu based together with a package called "piratepack" that installs
all the modifications.
- 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.

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