Includes all the latest Tor technologies

Aug 19, 2019 13:50 GMT  ·  By

The Tails development team is currently working on the next major release of the Tails amnesic incognito live GNU/Linux system, also known by many as the Anonymous OS.

Tails 4.0 recently entered beta testing and it's the first release to be based on the just released Debian GNU/Linux 10 "Buster" operating system series, which means that all the pre-installed packages have been updated to newer versions to support the latest hardware components, especially recent Nvidia and ATI/AMD graphics cards, as well as Mac computers.

Tails 4.0 also promises support for Thunderbolt 3 devices, which is now integrated into the latest GNOME 3 desktop environment, with which the upcoming major Tails release will ship by default. Users who own a Thunderbolt device are urged to test the implementation by navigating to Choose Devices > Thunderbolt from the GNOME Settings utility.

Furthermore, in Tails 4.0 users will be able to open persistent volumes from other Tails USB flash drives, add the Files file management app to the list of favorite applications, display the OpenPGP applet on the left side of the TOR status icon, change the default background of the boot menu, as well as to use the default bookmarks from Tor Browser.

Tails 4.0 is coming on October 22nd, 2019

Several default apps that are currently available on supported Tails releases will be removed in Tails 4.0. These include the Scribus desktop publishing software and the Math component of the LibreOffice office suite, which can be installed again using the Additional Software utility. Also, it looks like the KeePassX password manager was replaced with the newer KeePassXC.

Also removed in Tails 4.0 is the Home launcher from the desktop and the default accounts in the Pidgin instant messenger app. You can download the first beta release of Tails 4.0 right now from our free software portal if you want to take it for a test drive, but don't use it on production systems. The final release of Tails 4.0 is expected to arrive on October 22nd, 2019.