Releases

• Tails 4.1 was released on December 3.

• Tails 4.3 is scheduled for February 11.

The following changes were introduced in Tails 4.1:

• Use https://keys.openpgp.org/ as the default OpenPGP keyserver.

• Replace the TorBirdy extension with custom settings and patches in Thunderbird that provide equivalent privacy.

• Add back the Show Passphrase check box in Tails Greeter. (#17177)

• Fix the display of the troubleshooting error when GDM fails to start. (#17200)

• Add back the option to Open in Terminal when doing right-click (on Mac, click with two fingers) in a folder in the Files browser. (#17186)

• Make the installation of additional software more reliable. (#17203)

Code

• We published a first alpha with Secure Boot support, which will remove a major blocker for less tech-savvy users to adopt Tails.

• We finalized the implementation of our slightly redesigned upgrade system.

Documentation and website

• Blogged about our plans for 2020.

• Blogged to celebrate 10 years of Tails.

• Wrote some documentation on how to update your OpenPGP keyserver configuration and switch your Persistence to using https://keys.openpgp.org.

User experience

• Published an interview with Roberto, an investigative journalist working on a GlobaLeaks platform in Latin America, called Leaks in the interview.

• Hired Andrés Fernández Cordón to illustrate what is Tails and how it works.

  Welcome Andrés and thanks again to the 40+ other people who applied for this job!

• Hired Odile Carabantes to layout flyers explaining what is Tails and why use it.

• Did a cognitive walk-through of automatic upgrades (#16991) and reported 3 new UX bugs:

  • Add a button to cancel the upgrade while it's downloading
  • Prevent users from closing Tails Upgrader while an upgrade is being applied
  • Tails doesn't restart after applying an automatic upgrade

• Did some design work for small UX debts tickets: (#14544)

  • Ask for confirmation when starting without unlocking the persistent storage (#15573#note-10)

  • Force restarting after creating persistent storage (#16384#note-12)

  • Improve UX when Wi-Fi is not working (#14534#note-26)

  • Customize "Proxy is refusing connections" error messages in Tor Browser and remove the "Tor is not ready" popup (#8061#note-33)

  • Update our list of "Favorites" applications (#16990#note-6)

  • Merge "Delete persistent volume" and "Configure persistent volume" (#17331)

• Created 2 tickets for UX improvements related to Wi-Fi in GNOME:

  • Display an empty Wi-Fi icon when the Wi-Fi is not connected
  • Simplify the process of connecting to a Wi-Fi network

Hot topics on our help desk

1. Users reported various issues related to GPU nvidia and radeon.

2. Seahorse still cannot import GPG keys (#17183) as well as other issues like encrypts file using most recent key only and connect to keyserver.

3. Mac - kernel panic (fixed, caused an emergency release), graphical distortions (there's a workaround), and no boot.

Infrastructure

• We discussed our needs and desires regarding our upcoming GitLab instance and eventually decided to hosting it at immerda.ch.

  Thanks immerda.ch for your support since so many years!

• We taught our CI to reproducibly build automatic upgrades.

Funding

• Wrote to the press and all past funders about our blog post on "Celebrating 10 years of Tails". We sent close to 100 emails in total.

Outreach

Past events

• intrigeri attended the Reproducible Builds summit in Marrakesh.

• Some of us attended the 36th Chaos Communication Congress (36C3) in Leipzig, Germany.

On-going discussions

• Our Release Managers have been discussing how to adapt to the Firefox 4-weeks release cycle.

Press and testimonials

• 2019-12-18: Pourquoi je préfère la BD sur Snowden à son autobiographie (& vive Tails aussi <3) by Jean-Marc Manach in Le Monde.

• 2019-12-17: Sa clé USB qui permet d'aller sur le dark web by Guillaume Pley in Le QG.

• Our blog post on "Celebrating 10 years of Tails" received some press coverage:

  • 2019-12-15: L’outil préféré d’Edward Snowden ne laisse aucune trace depuis dix ans by Christophe Lamfalussy in La Libre Belgique.

  • 2019-12-16: Happy 10th birthday, TAILS -- the real Paranoid Linux! by Cory Doctorow in Boing Boing.

Translations

All the website

• fr: 88% (5418) strings translated, 1% strings fuzzy, 86% words translated
• es: 51% (3137) strings translated, 4% strings fuzzy, 42% words translated
• de: 46% (2832) strings translated, 7% strings fuzzy, 41% words translated
• fa: 32% (1982) strings translated, 10% strings fuzzy, 33% words translated
• it: 32% (1969) strings translated, 5% strings fuzzy, 28% words translated
• pt: 25% (1553) strings translated, 7% strings fuzzy, 21% words translated

Total original words: 65286

Core pages of the website

• fr: 96% (1705) strings translated, 1% strings fuzzy, 96% words translated
• es: 80% (1417) strings translated, 9% strings fuzzy, 82% words translated
• de: 71% (1252) strings translated, 12% strings fuzzy, 74% words translated
• it: 63% (1112) strings translated, 17% strings fuzzy, 65% words translated
• pt: 45% (798) strings translated, 13% strings fuzzy, 48% words translated
• fa: 34% (615) strings translated, 13% strings fuzzy, 33% words translated

Total original words: 16439

Metrics

• Tails has been started more than 819 136 times this month. This makes 26 424 boots a day on average.