Okay.
So now that we have cubes installed and we booted into it and we logged in and this lecture, I want
to give you a very basic overview of the operating system, and then we'll get to use it more and more
as we go through the course.
So as soon as you log in, you will probably see this window right here, which is a configuration window
for the Unix gateway.
This is the gateway that will direct all the data that we send to the Internet and force it to go through
the Tor network.
Now, before configuring this, I want to give you an overview of the operating system.
Like I said.
So I'm going to keep this to the side because I want to connect to the Internet first before we configure
this.
The first impression.
You'll probably notice that this looks very similar to a lot of Linux operating systems.
You have a status bar in here that shows the running applications and on the left here you have a menu
which allows you to run various applications in this operating system.
You'll notice we can run a terminal in here, which is very similar to Linux terminals, like I said,
and runs a lot of Linux commands plus some cube specific commands.
Other than this, you will also notice that we have System Tools menu which allows you to access different
applications related to the operating system.
The one that you'll be using the most is the Settings manager.
Again, this is very similar to the settings application.
You get on a lot of Linux distros and it allows you to change the various settings of the operating
system.
You can change the appearance, the desktop, the background, the windows, the mouse and keyboard,
the languages and so on.
I've actually used this to modify the font size and the icons and even the theme here on top.
So you'll notice the theme that I have right now is slightly different than what you see on your desktop
if you just install cubes.
The reason why I did this is just to make it a little bit more readable and easy for you to see what
I'm doing.
If you're watching this from a small screen or from a phone, so very simple settings, you can click
on whatever center you want to modify and then you can modify the different settings just like any other
operating system.
So it's very, very intuitive and there is no point of wasting time on this.
Again, in the system tools other than the settings manager, you will find various settings and various
applications that you can use to configure your system.
So you have the package manager where you can install different programs in different packages.
You have the updater where you can check for updates and update the system.
You will have your cubes manager and we'll talk about that in details.
Later on.
You'll have the global settings for the operating system.
Again, we'll talk about that later on.
You have your backups, you have your updates again, screen saver and so on.
So you can spend some time with this trying to familiarize yourself with it or just keep this in mind
that you have the system tools in here in case you want it to modify any settings related to your system.
Other than this, everything else you see in this menu will allow you to launch applications, and all
of these applications are categorized or grouped based on different security domains and different virtual
machines.
And we'll talk about that in more details later on.
Now, moving on to the right on the status bar, you will see that we have four different boxes.
Each box of these is a desktop.
So again, this is similar to a lot of Linux distros and even OS X.
So you can have multiple workspaces where you can launch different applications and manage your windows
and you can easily navigate through them using the status bar in here by simply clicking on the workspace
you want to go to or using the control alt right or left, so control alt and arrow to navigate between
them.
So for example, we already have this window opening here and if I go to the second workspace in here,
I can open my terminal and I can easily navigate between them and here by simply clicking at the workspace
or by doing control, all are left to go back to the first workspace or control.
All right.
To go back to where I have the terminal open at my second workspace.
Moving on to the right again, we have our time and data calendar.
We have the audio settings.
Beside that, we have the network settings.
So if we click on this, you can see first of all, we have the Ethernet network which is saying disconnected.
This is because I don't have a wire connected to the computer.
If you want to connect to an Ethernet network, just plug the Ethernet cable into your computer and
you should be able to see the network in here.
And all we have to do is literally click on the network and connect to connect to it.
Alternatively, if you want to connect over wi fi again for me, you can see it's saying disconnected,
but it's listing all the wi fi networks around me.
Now if you have a wireless card in your computer but you're not seeing any networks, that means that
you need to install the drivers for your card.
And this really depends on the chipset used in the card.
So you'll have to go and Google and research the chipset used and see if it's compatible with cubes.
If it is, you'll have to see how to install the drivers.
In my case I was lucky.
Cube's is able to detect my wi fi card automatically without having to install anything.
So all I have to do is literally click on the network that I want to connect to put the wi fi password.
And perfect.
As you can see, the icon in here changed to an icon that is showing me the signal strength.
And it's also saying the name of the network that I connected to.
And if I click on it, we can see that we are connected to this network and we can click here to disconnect.
So right now, I should have Internet connection on this computer, but I'm not going to open any websites.
We'll talk about that later on.
So we're just going to move on.
Just talking about the basics of cubes and the next icon that we have in here is the clipboard icon.
And this is basically where you'll see whatever you have copied because copy and pasting in this operating
system is slightly different than what you're used to in other operating systems.
Again, to improve the security of the system.
Next we have the device manager.
So in here you have all of the devices connected to this computer right now.
And using this menu you can select where do you want to connect each of these devices?
So as we mentioned, CUBES is designed to improve the security by separating and isolating the different
components of the system.
Therefore, when you connect a USB device or any type of a device, you'll have to explicitly say which
domain you want to connect this device to.
Now, I know this sounds a little bit vague right now, but we'll use it in the future and you'll see
how you can connect different devices to specific security domains and you'll understand how this actually
improves our security.
Next we have the storage manager and you can see the storage devices connected to this computer right
now.
We can also see the disk usage of our system.
Next, we have the cubes manager, which is something that we will spend a lot of time talking about
again later on.
Basically what it does is it shows you the amount of resources each cube or each virtual machine is
using at the moment.
And by hovering over any of these virtual machines will be able to enter its settings.
We'll be able to pause it, shut it down, or run a terminal inside the virtual machine.
If you just go down to the last option in here, open cubes manager, you'll get the cube virtual machine
manager, which allows us to modify various settings of all the installed virtual machines and see their
status, update them and all of that.
And like I said, we will spend a full lecture talking about this, so don't worry about it for now.
Just wanted to show you what it is and how to enter the cube manager.
Finally, we have the update icon in here.
You'll only see this if there are updates available.
Again, you can click on it and launch the updater to update your installation.
We have the power settings beside it and finally we have our user, which is in my case, John.
Clicking on this will allow you to lock the screen, suspend, shut down or log out.
So as you can see, very simple and intuitive interface, you're probably able to figure out most of
the things that I was speaking about earlier by yourself, but I just wanted to make sure that I cover
everything in here before we dive deeper into this operating system.
And I also wanted to cover how all of these are virtual machines in here so that you get an idea of
what's coming in the next lectures.
Now I'm going to go back to the window that I said, you'll see as soon as you log into the computer.
So like I said, this windows is related to the Unix gateway.
This is the gateway that will force all traffic to go through the Tor network.
So this is something that we actually do want to configure.
And you can see the options in here are very similar to the options that we see when we first launch
the Tor browser.
So we can leave it at connect to just connect simply to the Tor network.
We can click configure if you want to use a bridge or a pluggable transport.
Now, if you don't remember what bridges our pluggable transports are, please go back and revise the
lectures where I cover them because I cover them in details.
And I covered multiple ways on how to get bridges and and pluggable transports and why you might want
to use them.
Therefore, I'm just going to keep this at connect at the basic setting and I'm going to click on next.
And this is just showing us a summary that we're going to be connecting to the Tor network.
The bridges are disabled and we're not using any proxies, so that's fine.
We're going to click on next.
And perfect.
As you can see right now, it's telling us that we are connected to the terror network.
Now, keep in mind, please don't go and start browsing straight away.
Not all web browsers in this operating system will forward traffic through the Tor network.
So don't just go and access dark web websites right now.
Wait for the next lectures.
And I will explain to you the different web browsers and the different gateways inside this cool operating
system.