Metrics

  • Tails has been started more than 205 802 times in November. This make 6 860 boots a day in average.
  • 6 270 downloads of the OpenPGP signature of Tails ISO.
  • 80 reports were received through WhisperBack.

Code

Some of the newest contributors were particularly active this month:

  • We have a new and active maintainer for I2P in Tails. Big up to Kytv! So I2P was updated to 0.9.8.1, and the I2P configuration and integration was improved in several ways.
  • SCIM was replaced by IBus as input method to better support various input methods (Closes #5624 and #6206). Thanks to WinterFairy!
  • Kevin C. Krinke has been actively working on a replacement of the clock with configurable timezone. Many thanks!
  • A script has been written to automate the importation process of completed translations from Transifex. Thanks to WinterFairy!
  • The keyboard selection for some languages in Tails Greeter was fixed (Closes #5741). Again thanks to WinterFairy!

We kept on working on some major features, some are about to be released:

  • The real-world deployment of incremental updates has been made ready for beta testing and will be the default way to upgrade Tails, on point-releases at least.
  • The second round of upgrade towards a safer persistence was prepared.
  • A lot of work has been done towards MAC spoofing. See the latest blueprint of our design.
  • The migration to Firefox 24 and Torbutton 1.6 was completed (Closes #6370 and #6371).

Regarding security:

  • The serious security upgrade to NSS 3.15.3 was prepared but we unfortunately didn't have time to make a point release just for that. See CVE-2013-1741, CVE-2013-5605 and CVE-2013-5606.
  • More IP and MAC addresses are sanitized in WhisperBack reports (Closes #6391).

Regarding user experience:

  • DPMS screen blanking has been disabled (Closes #5617).
  • The default system partition size is now 2.5GB.
  • The bug that prevented Vidalia to show up sometimes was fixed.

And also:

  • Tails now have its own shell and perl libraries where we factorize some of our code.
  • Upgrade to Linux 3.11 and got back to Linux 3.10 because 3.11 breaks the shutdown process on some hardware.
  • Uploaded a few packages and backports we need into Debian.
  • Tails Installer does not fail anymore if the tmp directory exists on the destination filesystem.

Documentation and website

  • A draft FAQ was create to answer some questions asked on our previous forum.
  • A calendar was created to centralize all the important dates for the community.
  • A glossary was created on the website to define terms specific to our process.
  • The roles on the Contribute page were described.
  • Two new contribution pages were added: graphics and user interface.
  • Instructions to change the persistence passphrase were drafted.
  • The release schedule was updated to match current practice more closely.
  • The documentation for translators now points to Git tutorials.

Infrastructure

  • We have organized donations of UEFI hardware, and purchased some more.
  • Recovered from disk breakage on our main server.
  • Surveyed operators of HTTP mirrors for SNI availability. The results look good, next step is to get a certificate for dl.amnesia.boum.org.

On-going discussions

  • 2.0 milestone += supporting USB devices exposed as non-removable?
  • Tor Launcher extension
  • WhisperBack launcher should give a hint on its use
  • Glossary for contributors

Funding

  • ThinkPenguin.com donated hardware for us to investigate on UEFI support. Many thanks!
  • We have been working on a proposal with sponsor Golf.

Outreach

  • We submitted a talk for 30C3 but it was rejected.
  • 2013-11-28: Helping Human Rights Defenders to Communicate Securely: TAILS, National Democratic Institute, USA at the World Forum for Democracy

Press and testimonials