1. Releases
  2. Code
  3. Infrastructure
  4. Funding
  5. Outreach
  6. On-going discussions
  7. Translation

Releases

Tails 2.11 was released on March 7 (minor release).

Tails 2.12 is scheduled for April 18.

The following changes were introduced in Tails 2.11:

  • If running on a 32-bit processor, notify the user that it won't be able to start Tails 3.0 anymore. (#12193)

  • Notify I2P users that I2P will be removed in Tails 2.12. (#12271)

  • Fix CVE-2017-6074 (local root privilege escalation) by disabling the dccp module. (#12280) Also disable kernel modules for some other uncommon network protocols. (Part of #6457)

  • Tor Browser: Don't show offline warning when opening the local documentation of Tails. (#12269)

  • Fix rare issue causing automatic upgrades to not apply properly (#8449 and #11839)

  • Install Linux 4.8.15 to prevent GNOME from freezing with Intel GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics. (#12217)

Code

I2P to be removed

We are very sad to announce that Tails 2.11 will be the last version to include I2P, an alternative anonymizing network. But we will be happy to reintroduce I2P if we find a volunteer to take care of maintaining it in Tails. If you are a developer and care about I2P in Tails, that person could be you! Come talk to us!

Reproducible builds

We had a very productive 3-days sprint. After many iterations we have finally seen an ISO image build reproducibly on several machines! This implied fixing a number of things, and submitting a number of patches upstream.

The build environment variations we've tested include: build system clock (last month, next month; could not test next year yet), number of CPU cores, CPU brand and model, building in Vagrant or not.

For details, see the full report that was written after the sprint.

Porting Tails to Debian 9 (Stretch)

A bunch of Tails developers and technical writers had a very productive sprint. The remaining work now feels tractable: aside of the documentation update, only a few major regressions and adjustments remain to be dealt with.

So, we are increasingly confident that we can make Tails 3.0 a solid release, published according to schedule on June 13… but possibly a little bit earlier or later, if it allows us to release at the same time as Debian 9 (Stretch).

Two beta releases for Tails 3.0 were published (3.0~beta2 on March 8, 3.0~beta3 on March 19). They introduce the following changes:

  • Upgrade Linux to 4.9.0-2 (version 4.9.13-1).

  • Make it possible to start graphical applications in the Root Terminal.

  • Improve styling of the GNOME Shell window list.

  • Tails Greeter:

    • Make the "Formats" settings in Tails Greeter take effect (it was introduced in Tails 3.0~alpha1 but has been broken since then).
    • Add keyboard shortcuts:
      • Alt key for accelerators in the main window
      • Ctrl+Shift+A for setting an administrator password
      • Ctrl+Shift+M for MAC spoofing settings
      • Ctrl+Shift+N for Tor network settings

  • Remove I2P.

  • Reintroduce the X11 guest utilities for VirtualBox (clipboard sharing and shared folders should work again).

  • Upgrade X.Org server and the modesetting driver in hope it will fix crashes when using some Intel graphics cards.

  • Automate the migration from KeePassX databases generated on Tails 2.x to the format required by KeePassX 2.0.x.

Infrastructure

We upgraded some of our systems to Debian 9 (Stretch), in order to help identify remaining issues before it becomes the new Debian stable release.

All major browsers will now refuse to connect to our website, and to any web service we host in the tails.boum.org namespace, unless HTTPS is used with a valid certificate: they are now on the Google Chrome 57 HSTS preload list, and all other major browsers build their own list from this one.

We started researching our options for upgrading our server hardware.

We made some progress on deploying a web platform for translations and an internal XMPP server.

We started a process to hire a new system administrator.

Funding

We've sent a proposal to OTF, that covers:

  • adding TrueCrypt support in GNOME;
  • adding a graphical interface for the Additional Packages persistent feature;
  • a small fraction of our day-to-day operations budget.

Our budget until the end of March, 2018 was approved by the Tails core contributors.

Outreach

Past events

  • On March 1st, Austin English presented Tails at the Austin (Texas) Linux Meetup.
  • Four of us attended the Tor developers meeting in Amsterdam. It was great! See the first report about it.
  • Two of us gave a training about Tails and digital security at Mediapart. Apparently, everything went fine: attendees where mostly interested and happy with it, and asked a lot of questions, ranging from "How can I manage my passwords" to "How much does it cost to compromise my laptop?".

Upcoming events

  • intrigeri will be giving a keynote at CryptoRave (São Paulo, May 5-6).

On-going discussions

We had a contributors meeting on March 3.

Translation

All the website

  • de: 56% (3189) strings translated, 5% strings fuzzy, 50% words translated
  • fa: 40% (2265) strings translated, 8% strings fuzzy, 44% words translated
  • fr: 82% (4670) strings translated, 1% strings fuzzy, 81% words translated
  • it: 28% (1598) strings translated, 3% strings fuzzy, 25% words translated
  • pt: 27% (1549) strings translated, 8% strings fuzzy, 25% words translated

Total original words: 58396

Core pages of the website

  • de: 82% (1538) strings translated, 10% strings fuzzy, 83% words translated
  • fa: 38% (708) strings translated, 10% strings fuzzy, 39% words translated
  • fr: 99% (1845) strings translated, 0% strings fuzzy, 99% words translated
  • it: 79% (1486) strings translated, 10% strings fuzzy, 79% words translated
  • pt: 49% (922) strings translated, 13% strings fuzzy, 50% words translated

Total original words: 17057