January has been a busy month with two releases including Tails 2.0. Releases Tails 1.8.2 was released on January 10, 2016 (minor release). Tails 2.0 was released on January 26, 2016 (major release). The next release (2.2) is planned for March 08. The following changes were introduced in Tails 2.0: Tails now uses the GNOME Shell desktop environment, in its Classic mode. GNOME Shell provides a modern, simple, and actively developed desktop environment. The Classic mode keeps the traditional Applications, Places menu, and windows list. Accessibility and non-Latin input sources are also better integrated. Update Tor Browser to 5.5 (based on Firefox 38.6.0 ESR): Add Japanese support. Remove the Windows camouflage which is currently broken in GNOME Shell. We started working on adding it back but your help is needed! Change to systemd as init system and use it to: Sandbox many services using Linux namespaces and make them harder to exploit. Make the launching of Tor and the memory wipe on shutdown more robust. Sanitize our code base by replacing many custom scripts. Update most firmware packages which might improve hardware compatibility. Notify the user if Tails is running from a non-free virtualization software. Remove Claws Mail, replaced by Icedove, a rebranded version of Mozilla Thunderbird. HiDPI displays are better supported. (#8659) Remove the option to open a download with an external application in Tor Browser as this is usually impossible due to the AppArmor confinement. (#9285) Close Vidalia before restarting Tor. Allow Videos to access the DVD drive. (#10455, #9990) Allow configuring printers without administration password. (#8443) Code Tails Installer was made available in Debian. Andrew Gallagher wrote a tool to clone and backup the persistent volume. Testing is welcome! Christian Medel is working on a replacement for the defunct Windows Camouflage. Documentation and website All of our documentation was updated to Tails based on Jessie. User experience Tails Installer is now available in Debian and Ubuntu Infrastructure Our test suite covers 208 scenarios, 17 more than in August. We focused on making our test suite more robust. The infrastructure to run our test suite on all the ISO images built automatically from development branches has been deployed, but still needs adjustments. In January 757 ISO images were automatically built and tested by our continuous integration infrastructure. We have a prototype for a monitoring system based on Icinga2, for our services. Outreach A Tails install party took place in Toulouse, France to celebrate the Tails 2.0 release. Upcoming events We will participate at the Internet Freedom Festival in Valencia, Spain from 1st-6th March 2016. We will be at the Logan CIJ Symposium "Challenge Power", 11-12th March 2016 in Berlin, Germany. The Freedom of the Press Foundation will organize a Tails workshop at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, USA on March 19. On-going discussions sycamoreone started started working on a blueprint to find a suitable replacement for Pidgin in the future. A discussion about persistent Tor state has been relaunched. Press and testimonials 2016-01: Several articles cover the release of Tails 2.0: 2016-01-27: Tails 2.0: Das Anonymisierungs-OS im neuen Look by Fabian A. Scherschel in heise (in German). 2016-01-27: Edward Snowden's OS of choice gets a major update by Steve Dent in engadget. 2016-01-12: Tails is listed as best distro for privacy in The Best Linux Distros of 2016 by Swapnil Bhartiya in Linux.com. 2016-01-07: Tails - Soukromí pro každého - kdekoliv a kdykoliv by Václav in Valeas blog (in Czech). Translation Due to the Jessie release, a lot of our translated documentation is now outdated. All website PO files de: 28% (2236) strings translated, 2% strings fuzzy, 24% words translated fa: 60% (4855) strings translated, 3% strings fuzzy, 69% words translated fr: 41% (3301) strings translated, 3% strings fuzzy, 40% words translated pt: 21% (1669) strings translated, 4% strings fuzzy, 19% words translated Total original words: 86910 Core PO files de: 90% (1202) strings translated, 7% strings fuzzy, 88% words translated fa: 83% (1109) strings translated, 11% strings fuzzy, 76% words translated fr: 84% (1125) strings translated, 9% strings fuzzy, 79% words translated pt: 73% (982) strings translated, 16% strings fuzzy, 70% words translated Total original words: 14326 Metrics Tails has been started more than 571,109 times this month. This makes 18,423 boots a day on average. 39,080 downloads of the OpenPGP signature of Tails ISO from our website. 184 bug reports were received through WhisperBack. Continue reading...
