The development cycle of the upcoming Tails 2.0 amnesic incognito live system continues today, January 13, 2016, with the RC1 (Release Candidate 1) build, which is now available for download and testing.

Tails 2.0 RC1 brings a great number of changes since the Beta build, among which we can mention support for the passphrase strength indicator in the GNOME Disk Utility (Disks) software, the TOR Browser 5.5 Alpha 6 anonymous web browser based on the Tor project, and the replacement of the Claws Mail app with the Icedove email client.

Additionally, the first Release Candidate version of Tails 2.0, which should see the light of day at the end of the month, on January 26, and will be based on the Debian GNU/Linux 8 (Jessie) operating system, adds support for recent chips, such as Intel Broadwell HD Graphics, and updates xserver-xorg-video-intel to version 2.99.917-2~bpo8+1.

"The most noticeable change is probably the move to GNOME Shell, configured in Classic mode. This desktop environment provides a modern and actively developed replacement for the aging GNOME 'Flashback.' GNOME Shell also paves the way for better supporting touchscreens in the future," reads today's announcement.

Multiple issues have been resolved

Of course, with Tails 2.0 knocking on the door, the development team has had to fix multiple issues reported by users since the previous release. For example, they’ve managed to make the Electrum software work by installing the version available in the Debian 9.0 "Stretch" (Testing) repositories, update the list of enabled extensions for the GNOME Shell interface, as well as to restore default file associations.

The Tails Upgrader utility has been updated as well to apply automatic upgrades a lot faster, and the Dotfiles persistence feature has been repaired. Moreover, the ability to reconfigure existing persistent storage should work as expected, an issue with OpenPGP public keys in the Seahorse app has been fixed, and Tails will no longer offer users the option to open downloaded files with external apps in Tor.

Last but not least, an issue with AppArmor has been addressed in Tails 2.0 Release Candidate 1, which you can download right now from our website if you want to help the Tails development team discover and fix the remaining bugs before the January 26 launch.