Basically if you don't want Tor reliance it's surely that you are not that privacy focused in your use case :)? So there is not really a point of using live/disposable os.. But if you still want to, use any Linux live/testing USB installer Linux mint, fedora and more provide it ;-)
this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2025
13 points (88.2% liked)
Linux
51104 readers
930 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Given the TOR part is kinda the point of tails you may wish to expand on what exactly a "tails like live os without tor" looks like.
The standard Mint iso will boot into a live session with no persistence, click on network icon to join tge wifi and away you go. You can setup a script to install stuff that isnt on the stock build (pretty sure firefox is there but a vpn config for example).
Without a use case description that sounds like what you're asking for.
I'm sure the other distros that offer live usbs will be the same.
I would like an already hardened environment from boot. That includes the kernel hardening and browser hardening that Tor has.
I get what you're saying, a live USB does 80% of that with a bit more work, but I would still like to find a solution to this out there.
If there isn't one, I'm ready to accept that and come up with my own solution.
OP, could you please properly vocalize what you actually want/need?
If you don't know how, consider at least to answer the following:
- Do you need it to be amnesiac? The very thing that defines Tails*.
- What's wrong with Tor? Is your threat model so paranoid that you (somehow) don't even trust Tor? Or, are you not in favor of its (relatively) low bandwidth? Or, is privacy and/or security not even a thing you seek after to begin with? Or, at least not beyond what your average distro provides already*.
- What do you intend to do with it? Daily drive it? If so, do you need persistence?
- What does "Tails without Tor reliance" provide/offer you beyond a LiveUSB from any other distro? Or, rather, what do you hope it will provide/offer you?
FWIW, I'm afraid we might be dealing with a classic XY problem. Hopefully I'm just mistaken...
I appreciate your attempt to help, but I do also realize that what I'm asking for is rather niche and may not exist.
Do you need it to be amnesiac? The very thing that defines Tails*.
Yes. A persistent storage feature would be nice but isn't a requirement.
What’s wrong with Tor? Is your threat model so paranoid that you (somehow) don’t even trust Tor? Or, are you not in favor of its (relatively) low bandwidth? Or, is privacy and/or security not even a thing you seek after to begin with? Or, at least not beyond what your average distro provides already*.
The reason I don't want to use Tor is because I will only connect to plain web websites where I don't care if they know my IP. I also find that CloudFlare and other services can block Tor which sometimes causes issues with my work.
What do you intend to do with it? Daily drive it? If so, do you need persistence?
I mainly plan on isolating certain browser-based work I'm doing with other work on my computer. As I said before, persistence would be nice but is not necessary.
What does “Tails without Tor reliance” provide/offer you beyond a LiveUSB from any other distro? Or, rather, what do you hope it will provide/offer you?
I hope it would offer me a highly hardened environment to do work in, without the requirement to set it up every time on other liveusb OSes.
To put this all together, I want an amnesiac live USB hardened(browser, kernel) environment that does not use Tor.
Thanks OP for the clarification!
Unfortunately, I don't think can I really help ya out here. However, I do wonder: Would a solution involving the (so-called) unsafe browser of Tails satisfy you?
Is that browser hardened to the extent the tor browser is? I looked this up and have seen conflicting reports. If it is, that would probably be a viable solution.
Honestly, I'm not familiar with the specifics. Can't help you out further. Wish ya good luck!
Yes, I'll look into how hardened that unsafe browser is, because that would be an ideal solution for me. Thank you very much.
I have experience doing exactly that with Bazzite, Aurora and Bluefin. Booting from a USB, it works perfectly out of the box. If you want to switch between any of these distros, with one command you can rebase (switch) to another distro without losing any data. Except when you switch between different desktop environments (Bluefin is GNOME based). This is how I use Linux on my work laptop, on a daily basis. I settled on Aurora on an M2 caddy.
To install it to a USB drive, you'll need two USB drives, one to boot to the installer, the other one is the target for the installation.
If you are more security minded, there's also https://secureblue.dev/ but I haven't tried it to be able to recommend it though.
The home dir on all these distros has persistance enabled.
but without the tor reliance.
What's wrong with TOR?
It's frequently blocked by CloudFlare and other "web security" services. I find that I don't need the anonymity that it provides as much as I need working websites.
distrowatch used to have this thing where you would recommend similar distro with similar themes; but i guess it disappeared for the last decade or 2; nevertheless, i would start my search there.