Tails 5.0 Enters Beta Testing as First Release Based on Debian GNU/Linux 11 “Bullseye”

Tails 5.0 Beta

The Tails development team promoted today the upcoming Tails 5.0 release of their amnesic incognito live system to the beta channel for public testing.

Due out next month, Tails 5.0 will be a major update to this GNU/Linux distribution for anonymous surfing of the Internet and the first version to be based on the latest Debian GNU/Linux 11 “Bullseye” operating system series.

As such, it brings new versions of most of the included packages, such as the GNOME 3.38 desktop environment, OnionCircuits 0.7 app for viewing Tor circuits and streams, Pidgin 2.14.1 IM client, Mozilla Thunderbird 91.7.0 email client, LibreOffice 7.0.4 office suite, Inkscape 1.0.2 SVG editor, GIMP 2.20.22 image editor, and Audacity 2.4.2 audio editor.

The Tails 5.0 beta release also comes with some important usability improvements, driverless printing and scanning, as well as the latest and greatest Tor Browser 11.0.10 anonymous web browser based on Mozilla Firefox.

Of course, there are also some bug fixes as Tails 5.0 promises to address locales translation in the Welcome Screen, as well as the opening of a Veracrypt volume that has a long passphrase. For more details, you should check out the full changelog.

“We plan to release Tails 5.0 on May 3 or May 31. It will be the first version of Tails based on Debian 11 (Bullseye),” said the devs. “It brings new versions of most of the software included in Tails and some important usability improvements. You can help Tails by testing the beta for Tails 5.0 before the end of April.”

If you want to help the Tails devs test drive the upcoming Tails 5.0 release and report bugs, visit the release announcement page for download links or hit the direct download button below for the ISO image.

While testing it, please make sure that you’re aware of the known issues listed in the release notes linked above, and please don’t use this pre-release version for any production work.

Also today, the Tails devs released the Tails 4.29 stable release, which comes with Tor Browser 11.0.10, Mozilla Thunderbird 91.7.0, Linux kernel 5.10.103 LTS, and obfs4 0.0.12 to provide more discrete Tor bridges. You can download it right now from the official website.

Last updated 2 years ago

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