Releases

Late May we decided to postpone the release of Tails 1.1, based on Debian Wheezy, to the next release cycle. And instead have Tails 1.0.1 released on June 10.

Tails 1.1~beta1, the first beta version of Tails based on Debian Wheezy, was released on May 30.

Metrics

  • Tails has been started more than 344 328 times this month. This make 11 107 boots a day in average.
  • 31 698 downloads of the OpenPGP signature of Tails ISO.
  • 64 bug reports were received through WhisperBack.

FAQ

  • The development of TrueCrypt was discontinued but our position regarding TrueCrypt has remained the same for years: Tails includes TrueCrypt only for backward compatibility and we are working on choosing a free software as replacement to open TrueCrypt volumes. We hope that this recent announcement encourages users to migrate to other encrypted storage formats such as LUKS, and developers to better support the TrueCrypt on-disk format in Free Software tools.

Code

Still, a lot of work has been done to prepare Tails 1.1:

  • The Windows Camouflage has been upgraded to Windows 8 (#6342). It mostly works but some visual improvements would make it nicer (#7377).
  • Fixed the build of VirtualBox guest modules (#5972).
  • Fixed the starting of ORCA screen reader (#7251).
  • Fixed the keymap selection from Tails Greeter (#7065).
  • Set the background of Tails Greeter to our usual blue color (#7126).
  • Fixed OpenPGP signature verification in Nautilus (#6608). That implied installing a backport of shared-mime-info 1.2+ (#7058).
  • Worked on upgrading liferea (#7154) and adding a persistence feature (#5711), but we discovered that Liferea > 1.10.3 includes a general-purpose web browser with JavaScript, and we don't want that. We are now considering to wait for Icedove, which also has a feed reader, before we add a persistent feeds feature.
  • Fixed the display of non-Latin script in Florence (#7279).
  • Used a solid blue background color to workaround a display bug in GNOME Fallback (#7248).
  • Adapted the test suite to Wheezy was completed (#6559).
  • Used the regular GnuPG agent instead of the one from GNOME Keyring (#7330).
  • Fixed emergency shutdown before login (#7333).
  • Prevented iproute2 from being installed from wheezy-backports (#7337).
  • Purged dselect (#7336).
  • Worked on fixing the migration of NetworkManager persistence settings (#7338).
  • Tails devices are now converted to UEFI on full upgrade (#6577).
  • Imported I2P 0.9.13 packages for Wheezy (#6731).

Apart from all the work directly related to the migration to Wheezy, we also:

  • Backported python-stem (#7318).
  • Installed Linux 3.14 (#7150).
  • Decreased the memory requirements while checking for upgrades (#7235).
  • Disabled the update check mechanism of Torbutton (#7097).
  • Installed Tor 0.2.4.22 (#7342).
  • Included GtkHash to allow checksum computation from Nautilus (#6763).
  • Updated Tor launcher to 0.2.5.4.
  • Worked on using static UID for tails-persistence-setup (#7343).
  • Started evaluating xserver-xorg-video-modesetting, for KMS support with the Cirrus (used e.g. in QEMU), MGA, and maybe other video adapters.

Documentation and website

  • Many parts of our documentation were adapted to Tails Wheezy.
  • Parts of our download page were reworked and simplified (#7163).
  • Removed the "Why do you need anonymity?" page, which was outside of the scope of our documentation.
  • Explain that NoScript is disabled by default.
  • Put it more clearly that most bug reports without an email address are useless.
  • Documented that OTR is not activated by default (#7355).

Infrastructure

  • As our mirror pool grew, we finally hit a bug in the Tor DNS resolver that prevents us from adding more than about 25 servers in our DNS pool. Thanks to foob we put up a blueprint to fix that issue on the long-run. See #7161 and Some research about mirror infrastructure.

  • Contributors were encouraged to migrate their custom build systems to Wheezy, as was done for our Jenkins autobuilder already, and to update our Vagrant basebox to Wheezy.

On-going discussions

  • Create a donation form to receive fiat currencies

  • Sharing wiperam package between Freepto and Tails?

  • Reworking the I2P documentation

  • Signing of the ISO and key material

Funding

  • Special thanks to all the people who donated bitcoins. We received more than 60 bitcoins in May!

  • Received a grant from Debian to fund our yearly summit.

  • Received a grant from Mozilla to pay some travel expenses for our yearly summit.

  • Received a first batch of money from the FPF crowd-funding campaign.

  • Added a donate button in our sidebar, and point it to the FPF crowd-funding campaign which is still running.

  • Finally signed a contract for the OpenITP grant that we were awarded at the end of 2013.

  • We are still in the process of getting the contract signed for the Access Innovation Prize.

  • Were contacted for partnership by the User Verifiable Social Telematics R&D Project.

Outreach

  • Passed a call for help on sysadmin.

  • Organized a first usability testing session in Paris.

  • Organized a Tails 1.0 Launch Party in Washington DC.

  • Organizing the upcoming Tails HackFest and yearly summit: agenda, accommodation, traveling sponsorship, venue, food, etc.

Press and testimonials

In late April and early May, many press articles covered the Tails 1.0 release, including: