Software Update: Tails 5.0

Tails stands for The amnesic incognito live system and is a live Linux distribution that focuses on privacy and anonymity. It uses Debian GNU/Linux as its base and adds a Gnome environment with Tor, Tor Browser, Pidgin, Thunderbird, Electrum, LibreOffice, GPG and KeePassXC. For more information, please refer to this page† The development team has released version 5.0, which is based on Debian 11 and in which, among other things, OpenPGP has been replaced by Kleopatra. The complete changelog for this release looks like this:

Kleopatra

We added Kleopatra to replace the OpenPGP Applet and the Password and Keys utility, also known as Seahorse. The OpenPGP Applet was not actively developed anymore and was complicated for us to keep in Tails. The Password and Keys utility was also poorly maintained and Tails users suffered from too many of its issues until now, like #17183† Kleopatra provides equivalent features in a single tool and is more actively developed.

Changes and updates

• The Additional Software feature of the Persistent Storage is enabled by default to make it faster and more robust to configure your first additional software package.
• You can now use the Activities overview to access your windows and applications. To access the Activities overview, you can either:
  • Click on the Activities button.
  • Throw your mouse pointer to the top-left hot corner.
  • Press the Super (Windows) key on your keyboard.

  You can see your windows and applications in the overview. You can also start typing to search your applications, files, and folders.

Included software

Most included software has been upgraded in Debian 11, for example:

• Update Tor Browser to 11.0.11†
• Update GNOME from 3.30 to 3.38, with lots of small improvements to the desktop, the core GNOME utilities, and the locking screen.
• Update MAT from 0.8 to 0.12, which adds support to clean metadata from SVG, WAV, EPUB, PPM, and Microsoft Office files.
• Update Audacity from 2.2.2 to 2.4.2.
• Update Disk Utility from 3.30 to 3.38.
• Update GIMP from 2.10.8 to 2.10.22.
• Update Inkscape from 0.92 to 1.0.
• Update LibreOffice from 6.1 to 7.0.

Hardware support

• The new support for driverless printing and scanning in Linux makes it easier to make recent printers and scanners work in Tails.

Fixed problems

• Fix unlocking VeraCrypt volumes that have very long passphrases. †#17474†

For more details, read our changelog†

Known issues

• Additional Software sometimes doesn’t work when restarting for the first time right after creating a Persistent Storage. †#18839†
  To solve this, install the same additional software package again after restarting with the Persistent Storage for the first time.
• Thunderbird displays a popup to choose an application when opening links. †#18913†
• Tails Installer sometimes fails to clone. †#18844†

See the list of long standing issues†