This Linux distribution is now using Debian Wheezy as the base

Jul 23, 2014 08:26 GMT  ·  By

Tails 1.1, a live system that aims to preserve your privacy and that helps you use the Internet anonymously, has been released after just a few development versions.

Tails is a distribution based on Debian and TOR technologies whose purpose is to keep its users as anonymous as possible. Users might have noticed that Tails has been in the news for a while now, especially after Edward Snowden said that he had used it in his covert affairs in order to stay hidden.

His statements really made an impact on Tails, and its developers (who managed to remain anonymous so far) have increased the pace of the releases and they have made numerous improvements in the last few months.

Tails stands for The Amnesic Incognito Live System and aims to do exactly what you would expect, and that is to leave no trace of its users. It's able to run straight from a USB stick or CD and that makes it even harder to trace anything back original users.

The developers say that “it helps you to use the Internet anonymously and circumvent censorship almost anywhere you go and on any computer but leaving no trace unless you ask it to explicitly.”

One of the biggest changes implemented in the latest version of Tails is the rebase of Debian Wheezy, which should have an immediate impact on the system and its responsiveness. The devs have also chosen GNOME 3 for the fallback mode and the system now uses LibreOffice instead of OpenOffice.

According to the changelog, UEFI boot support has been implemented and users should find it much easier to run this OS on modern hardware and Mac computers, the Windows XP camouflage has been replaced with a Windows 8 camouflage, the VirtualBox guest modules have been brought back (it's only available for 32-bit kernels), the write access to boot medium via udisks has been fixed, and the web browser has been updated to version 24.7.0esr-0+tails1~bpo70+1, which actually consists of Firefox 24.7.0esr, Iceweasel patches, and Torbrowser patches.

Also, the Linux kernel has been updated to version 3.14.12-1, the persistent file permissions are now much safer, the quick search in Tails Greeter's Other languages window should now be working properly, checking for updates now requires less memory, the BookletImposer PDF imposition toolkit is now provided by default, and various other fixes have been implemented.

A complete changelog can be found in the official announcement. You can download Tails 1.1 right now from Softpedia.