14 DAY TRIAL // Just one day after announcing the general availability of the Tails 2.11 anonymous live system, the development team behind this Debian-based distribution released today the second Beta version of the upcoming Tails 3.0 release.
Tails 3.0 will be a major release that will ship with the long-term supported Linux 4.9 kernel (kernel 4.9.13 is installed in this second Beta release), and include all the goodies from the forthcoming Debian GNU/Linux 9 "Stretch" operating system. Tails 3.0 Beta 2 comes with all the changes included in the Tails 2.11 release.
The developers also made it possible for users to start any graphical application in the root Terminal, and improved the styling of the GNOME Shell window list. All the changes implemented in the Tails 3.0 Beta 2 release have been listed in the Git changelog.
I2P will be removed in Tails 3.0
As mentioned in the release announcement for Tails 2.11, the I2P anonymizing network tool will be removed in Tails 3.0, as well as in Tails 2.11, and it looks like it does not even start in this Beta. Several unresolved known issues remain, such as incomplete documentation, and Tails Greeter's Formats settings don't work.
Additionally, Tails 3.0 Beta 2 comes without a read-only feature for persistent volumes, various CLI apps show misleading error messages in the Terminal, including GNU wget, Git, and Monkeysign, and it looks like you need to manually import your passwords database in the KeePassX program when using the persistence functionality.
"We will provide security updates for Tails 3.0~beta2, just like we do for stable versions of Tails," explain the developers in today's release announcement. "But 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."
Download the Tails 3.0 Beta 2 64-bit Live ISO image right now from our website if you want to take the upcoming anonymous Live CD for a test drive. However, please try to keep in mind that this is a pre-release version with the known issues mentioned above, as well as some undiscovered ones, so don't use it in production work.