Linux users may be familiar with the various patches for tsocks that make it
safe for use with Tor.
https://wiki.torproject.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TSocksPatches
Torsocks takes all of the patches to tsocks listed at the link above:
http://code.google.com/p/torsocks/source/browse/trunk#trunk/patches
applies some other enhancements:
http://code.google.com/p/torsocks/source/browse/trunk/ChangeLog
and incorporates them into a new project:
http://code.google.com/p/torsocks/
Torsocks allows you to use most socks-friendly applications in a safe way with
Tor. Once you have installed torsocks, just launch it like so:
usewithtor [application]
So, for example you can use ssh to a some.ssh.com by doing:
usewithtor ssh username@xxxxxxxxxxxx
or launch pidgin by doing:
usewithtor pidgin
You can download the current build at:
http://torsocks.googlecode.com/files/torsocks-1.0-beta.tar.gz
Torsocks is released under the GNU GPL licence v2. As far as I can make out
this is compatible with the original tsocks and all subsequent patches.