Releases

The following changes were introduced in Tails 3.2:

We added support for PPPoE and dial-up Internet connections.
We installed BookletImposer to convert linear PDF documents into booklets, and vice-versa.
We added GNOME Screen Keyboard to replace Florence, the previous virtual keyboard, which had many issues.
We now require an 8 GB USB stick to install Tails. 4 GB USB sticks that are already installed can still be upgraded.
Tails Installer now detects when the target USB stick has Tails installed already and automatically proposes to upgrade. This made possible to remove the initial splash screen.
Disabled Bluetooth to protect against the BlueBorne attack. #14655.
Now deny access to the D-Bus service of Pidgin to prevent other applications to access and modify its configuration. #14612.
Fixed the import of secret OpenPGP keys in Password and Keys #12733.

Code

We've continued to work on making Tails ISO images reproducible:
- We fixed all of the issues that were identified by our first build testers.
- So far, everyone who tried reproducing the Tails 3.2~rc1 ISO image succeeded. We've received a couple non-reproducibility reports about 3.2, and they are all explained by a single, one-byte mistake in a translation of the wiki we ship inside Tails (we'll add sanity checks so we never release something with that type of mistake again).
- We published a blueprint which explains how we did it.
We are improving integration of the Orca screen reader and the GNOME screen keyboard into Tails (#14752, #8260). A discussion about the screen reader's user experience has been initiated by Pablo Natalino, and intrigeri started a discussion upstream about the long-press delay for typing special chars with it.
We have formalized how the AppArmor profile for Thunderbird is maintained in Debian and upstream. This clarifies where and how our contributions should be submitted and at the end of the day this should avoid the need to maintain a Tails-specific delta.
We are working on fixing Seahorse buggy interfacing with pinentry-gtk2 upstream (GNOME bug #787543, Debian bug #869416). A workaround was applied in Tails 3.2 already but we try hard to stick to our relationship with upstream statement.

We updated our roadmap with our priorities for the next years.
We greatly improved our instructions for building the Tails ISO image and created a new section about how to verify that the Tails ISO image is reproducible.
We are documenting the process for Tails contributors to request sponsorship when attending events on behalf of Tails, in order to improve fairness and to streamline how the simplest cases are handled. This documentation should land on our website by the end of the year.
We documented hardware limitations for Tails on Intel Atom Cherry Trail tablets.

We designed a new download page, to prepare for the migration of our verification extension to Web Extensions. We started drawing sketchy wireframes, then improved them incrementally after testing them on paper with users, and finally implemented the resulting prototype in HTML.
We benchmarked open source web applications to survey our user base. The best candidate is LimeSurvey and we will do a test deployment in October as part of a user research on the use of VeraCrypt.

We sent a thank you email to everybody who donated in 2016.
We signed a new contract with OTF that will run from September 1, 2017 to August 31, 2018 and that covers mainly:
- VeraCrypt support in GNOME: make it easier to integrate Tails into workflows with other users and operating systems
- Additional software: make it easier to tailor Tails to specific needs for sensitive data manipulation (#14568, #5551 and friends)
We worked on making our Sponsors page easier to translate (#12646).

Some of us will attend the Reproducible Builds summit in Berlin (October 31 to November 2).
Many Tails people will be at the 34th Chaos Communication Congress, aka. 34C3 in Leipzig (December 27 to December 30).

The 5th version of the Guide d'autodéfense numérique was released. This book proposes ways to understand how the digital world functions, what solutions can we organise against certain types of attacks, and which tools can help do that.

Total original words: 53021

Total original words: 17298

Tails has been started more than 652000 times this month. This makes 21700 boots a day on average.
10292 downloads of the OpenPGP signature of Tails ISO from our website.
92 bug reports were received through WhisperBack.