Tails

Reader supplied reviews for Tails Average rating 5.5 from 22 review(s) Please specify which version of the distribtion you are reviewing. Please select a rating in the range of 1-10. Please write at least a few sentences about the distribution while limiting your review to 4080 characters. What are your thoughts on Tails? Please include a few pros and a few cons, along with your overall impression of the operating system. Our FAQ page has tips on writing a good mini-review. Version: -- 7.4.26.195.224.293.162.121.8.21.0.10.6 Rating:    -- 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 out of 10 Your review (minimum 250 words): Past reviews - sort by: DateVotes Version: 7.1 Rating: 8 Date: 2025-10-29 Votes: 17 Gnome sucks - let's be honest. Were the developers to switch to something simple, modded how they wish, like OpenBox*, there would be a MUCH SMALLER attack surface, the users would save A LOT of RAM, more space in the distro for more software instead of Gnome bloat, and so forth. At the very least, the user should be presented with an option at boot to use Gnome or something simpler like OpenBox*. The failure to properly spoof MAC Address is foolish. The included feedback program WhisperBack reports too much of the user's sensitive system information. I've experienced a number of freezes when using 7.1 and 7.0 which never occured on previous versions. Using a built in bridge as an alternative should be included. Instead, the user has to jump through the hoop of getting a bridge and adding it manually. Unless the network connection fails to connect to the network, in which case a default bridge is used, the user doesn't have the option built in. There is no simple clipboard application available which is frustrating. One can be added, of course, but this really should be included by default. * However, I don't believe OpenBox would be available because of the garbage known as Wayland. The forced switch to Wayland was not appreciated by my older hardware. Versions 6.x and below worked, 7.0 and 7.1 does not! Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 6.4 Rating: 8 Date: 2024-06-21 Votes: 110 Tails is a great operating system but here are some things that could be improved or some criticisms listed from most important to least. Tails does NOT spoof the full MAC Address which is something that many operating systems now support like android. This means that that the OUI can be used to identify you on the WiFi network. Currently there is no way to spoof the full MAC Address. Tails includes Ublock Origin with Tor Browser which makes Tails users fingerprint different then Tor Browser Bundle (TBB) users. Until Ublock Origin is included in TBB then Tails users browser fingerprint will be different then normal Tor Browser users. It is noted that Mullvad Browser does include Ublock Origin extension and maybe Tor Browser will add it at some time in the future. Tails pings tails.net every time you launch the Tor Browser which this can be used to track tails users on a Tor circuit. Should give users an option to disable this. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 6.1 Rating: 9 Date: 2024-03-28 Votes: 31 Tails is simple and lovely to use. It's even quite speedy to run on some older systems, despite the Desktop Environment they have chosen. Unlike a lot of distros, they use Tor Browser which is based off Firefox, no Google based crap. Tor Browser is fast and fun. While I do not agree with the choice of Desktop Environment (Gnome), preferring something more simple and lightweight like XFCE or even Fluxbox, it does what it says on the tin. The metadata cleaner is great, though I prefer to use Tails command line way with 'mat2'. Check it out: man mat2 it's great! It really strips files from garbage, tracking, and other crap. I especially strip out junk in .PDF and image files before I load them! OnionShare is quite amazing. Give it a try. While people say it includes an IRC client, it only includes, "Pidgin" which I find so terrible to use for IRC, when compared to the others available in the Debian repositories. And speaking of Debian, it's great to use such a project based upon Debian! Despite many new laptops and desktops which don't include a CD/DVD/Blu-ray drive, Tails includes the Brasero burning app which is great! Some distros offer Live Media without a burning app. Hello? A lot of us have older systems and need this on a Live session! It really doesn't take that much space for a burning app, distros who fail to include it on their Live media should be ashamed! If you're simply browsing the web, you might want to set the Tor Browser "Security Level" to "Safest" and disable javascript even further in about:config -> javascript.enabled -> toggled to false. This must be done with each new boot. It looks like they've removed the controversial "libdvdcss" package which used to be included in former versions. NoScript. Despite it not being in the panel of Tor Browser, Tails comes with NoScript installed. Go to Tools -> Add-ons and Themes (or just go to about:addons) and click on the three dots for NoScript and select Manage and then the Toolbar button setting and change it to Show if you'd like to see it and configure it to your liking. Ublock Origin (uBO) is included in Tails. While it is great and all, the settings for the filter lists is somehow 'locked' and I cannot update nor add additional lists. Maybe this is done to provide some blocking on the web with identical settings for every Tails user. Still, I would like the option to install and update lists myself! It's very important to keep Tails up to date. Did I mention it's important to be current? Did I? Remember that. Don't use old versions. I give the 6.1 version a 9 out of 10. I find it lacking in a few areas, but does mostly satisfy me for it's intended purposes. Was this review helpful? 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