How to properly install the Tor Browser on ChromeOS

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This is just a short write-up of the best way to install the Tor browser on ChromeOS that is currently available. No stupid introduction on what Tor is and whatnot.

  1. Activate the ChromeOS Linux environment if you haven’t already.
  2. Open Google Chrome and go to chrome://flags
  3. Enable #crostini-multi-container and click on restart

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  1. Create a new container (I named mine tor).

Enter the following into the newly created container:

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sudo su

Paste the following command into your terminal (Ctrl+Shift+V ). Yes, that’s one, long command.

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apt update &&
apt upgrade -y &&
wget -qO- https://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org/A3C4F0F979CAA22CDBA8F512EE8CBC9E886DDD89.asc | gpg --dearmor | tee /usr/share/keyrings/tor-archive-keyring.gpg >/dev/null &&
sed -i 's/main$/main contrib/' /etc/apt/sources.list &&
source /etc/os-release &&
apt install -y apt-transport-https apt-transport-tor &&
printf "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/tor-archive-keyring.gpg] tor+http://apow7mjfryruh65chtdydfmqfpj5btws7nbocgtaovhvezgccyjazpqd.onion/torproject.org %s main\n" "$VERSION_CODENAME" | tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/tor.list &&
printf "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/tor-archive-keyring.gpg] https://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org %s main\n" "$VERSION_CODENAME" | tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/tor.list > /dev/null &&
printf "deb-src [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/tor-archive-keyring.gpg] https://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org %s main\n" "$VERSION_CODENAME" | tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/tor.list > /dev/null &&
apt update &&
apt install -y tor &&
systemctl enable --now tor &&
apt install -y --no-install-suggests deb.torproject.org-keyring torbrowser-launcher

As you can see, deb.torproject.org-keyring was installed using the hidden service:

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$ apt-cache policy deb.torproject.org-keyring
deb.torproject.org-keyring:
  Installed: 2024.05.22
  Candidate: 2024.05.22
  Version table:
 *** 2024.05.22 500
        500 tor+http://apow7mjfryruh65chtdydfmqfpj5btws7nbocgtaovhvezgccyjazpqd.onion/torproject.org bookworm/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Open the Tor Browser Launcher Settings application and tick the checkbox “Download over system Tor”.

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And et voilà!

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Good luck.

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