Kodachi 8.3
A self-confessed Kodachi fanboy, Mayank Sharma is left speechless by its latest release and doesn’t mind if this review sounds biased (which it is).
T he previous major release of Linux Kodachi saw off competition from its more popular securityoriented peers such as Tails and Whonix. With the latest release, Kodachi further raises the bar with a useful new custom tool that substantially lowers the barrier of entry for the distro and makes it a lot more approachable.
The latest 8.x branch received a few quick updates before settling at v8.3. The 8.x series is based on the Ubuntu 18.04.5 LTS release and its biggest feature is the inclusion of a new dashboard tool.
The release also adds a host of new significant tweaks, and critical functions like VPN and Tor have been made more accessible, while useful features like panic room take on new useful functions.
The distro still boots into a heavily modified Xfce desktop environment that displays plenty of useful information about the system directly on the desktop via Conky applets, including the status and IP address of the VPN, Tor IP, CPU usage, memory and traffic data. It feels a bit cluttered initially, but clock a few hours with the distro and you’ll soon realise the usefulness of all the network information available at a glance.
Another excellent customisation is the right-click context menu that bundles useful functions that you can carry out on individual files. The latest releases adds a few more functions including the ability to encrypt and sign files with GPG and OpenSSL.
The distro includes a healthy dollop of well-known and obscure security, cryptography and privacy tools. The release appends a handful of utilities to that list with the OpenSnitch firewall, an EXIF cleaner and more. On top of that it includes all the tools you’ll find in a regular desktop distro to function and is more than capable of being used as your daily driver. Even its collection of web browsers are equipped with about a dozen privacy and security enhancing extensions
Kodachi’s main attraction is its ability to obfuscate your internet traffic using a combination of VPN, Tor and DNSCrypt. Traditionally, you had to trawl through the distro’s menus to bring these systems online.
Starting with Kodachi 8.x, the distro has a neat dashboard utility that exposes some of the most useful functions. Again, it might feel a bit cluttered to first timers, but enabling users to configure various services through checkboxes and clicks is laudable.
The top of the interface displays useful network information, underneath which are four tabs that house all the key editable parameters. Listing the available functions would probably take up half the magazine; suffice to say that we’ve never seen an easier interface to configure so many VPN and Tor options.
The Panic Room tab offers interesting options to disable various peripherals and adapters including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and USB, and even destroy the installation with a single click. You can also generate random passwords from under this section.
There’s also a System Evaluation option that scores your setup, depending on how you’ve configured it to route the internet traffic. In fact, you can follow the recommendations of the evaluation script to increase the score and make your system more secure.
We have no qualms suggesting Kodachi to anyone who’s interested in privacy and security. It’s created by a security professional who has made Kodachi as the ultimate security/privacy/anonymous workstation environment.
By far the most comprehensive distro for privacy-conscious users, the latest release further lowers the barrier of entry.