You can help Tails! The first release candidate for the upcoming version 2.2 is out. Please test it and report any issue.

  1. How to test Tails 2.2~rc1?
  2. What's new since 2.0.1?
  3. Known issues in 2.2~rc1

How to test Tails 2.2~rc1?

Keep in mind that this is a test image. We tested that it is not broken in obvious ways, but it might still contain undiscovered issues.

But test wildly!

If you find anything that is not working as it should, please report to us! Bonus points if you first check if it is a known issue of this release or a longstanding known issue.

Download and install

Tails 2.2~rc1 torrent

Tails 2.2~rc1 ISO image

To install 2.2~rc1, follow our usual installation instructions, skipping the Download and verify step.

Upgrade from 2.0.1

  1. Start Tails 2.0.1 on a USB stick installed using Tails Installer and set an administration password.

  2. Run this command in a Root Terminal to select the "alpha" upgrade channel and start the upgrade:

    echo TAILS_CHANNEL=\"alpha\" >> /etc/os-release && \
     tails-upgrade-frontend-wrapper

  3. After the upgrade is installed, restart Tails and choose Applications ▸ Tails ▸ About Tails to verify that you are running Tails 2.2~rc1.

What's new since 2.0.1?

Changes since Tails 2.0.1 are:

  • Major new features and changes

    • Replace Vidalia (which has been unmaintained for years) with: (Closes: #6841)
      • the Tor Status GNOME Shell extension, which adds a System Status icon indicating whether Tor is ready or not.
      • Onion Circuits, a simple Tor circuit monitoring tool.

  • Security fixes

    • Upgrade cpio to 2.11+dfsg-4.1+deb8u1.
    • Upgrade glibc to 2.19-18+deb8u3.
    • Upgrade libgraphite2 to 1.3.5-1~deb8u1.
    • Upgrade libreoffice to 4.3.3-2+deb8u3.
    • Upgrade libssh2 to 1.4.3-4.1+deb8u1.

  • Bugfixes

    • Hide "Laptop Mode Tools Configuration" menu entry. We don't support configuring l-m-t in Tails, and it doesn't work out of the box. (Closes: #11074)
    • WhisperBack:
      • Actually write a string when saving bug report to disk. (Closes: #11133)
      • Add missing argument to OpenPGP dialog so the optional OpenPGP key can be added again. (Closes: #11033)

  • Minor improvements

    • Upgrade I2P to 0.9.24-1~deb8u+1.
    • Add support for viewing DRM protected DVD videos using libdvdcss2. Patch series submitted by Austin English austinenglish@gmail.com. (Closes: #7674)
    • Automatically save KeePassX database after every change by default. (Closes: #11147)
    • Implement Tor stream isolation for WhisperBack
    • Delete unused tor-tsocks-mua.conf previously used by Claws Mail. (Closes: #10904)
    • Add set -u to all gettext:ized shell scripts. In gettext-base < 1.8.2, like the one we had in Wheezy, gettext.sh references the environment variable ZSH_VERSION, which we do not set. This has prevented us from doing set -u without various hacks. (Closes: #9371)
    • Also set -e in some shell scripts which lacked it for no good reason.
    • Make Git verify the integrity of transferred objects. (Closes: #11107)

For more details, see also our changelog.

Known issues in 2.2~rc1

  • Longstanding known issues

  • Tails 2.2~rc1 thinks it is Tails 2.2 in some respects, e.g. that is what the "About Tails" prompt and tails-version command will output, and also what is put in the meta data of the ISO image (and so what burnt DVD's will be titled).