[mirimir]

Yes, for Whonix it's a VirtualBox internal network. There's no direct routing through the host, only among VMs. You can do much the same on VMware.

Edit: I forget that I'm writing on HN. When I say VM, I'm referring to full OS-level VMs, not namespace, Java, etc VMs.

[houst0n_]

That sounds like a pretty neat setup. I know I can just google all this so please forgive me the inane questions; it depends on virtualbox though?

That's a bit of a nonstarter for a few of.

We probably aren't the target base for the project though so maybe it doesn't matter...

[mirimir]

Yes, it depends on VirtualBox. But there are versions for KVM, and for Qubes. More of a nonstarter, though. Or even using physical devices, such as Raspberry or Banana Pi.

Years ago, I created a LiveDVD with VirtualBox plus Whonix gateway and workstation VMs. I had to hack at both Whonix VMs to reduce size and RAM requirements. But I got a LiveDVD that would run with 8GB RAM. It took maybe 20 minutes to boot, but was quite responsive.