[Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

Tails seems to be compleatly license under the gpl https://tails.boum.org/doc/about/license/index.en.html so why is it not promoted on gnu's website?: https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html dose it include non-free firmware?

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

> dose it include non-free firmware? Yes.

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

thats not good for a distro about protecting your privacy how can you know what information your giving away if your using non-free software? ill just use a gnewsense usb stick with tor then.

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

Taking a glance at their web page Tails looks like a GNU/Linux distribution and I found several important problems with it: *It asserts to be licensed as a whole under the “GNU/GPL (version 3 or above)” (sic). There are 2 errors with this: The license name is abbreviated “GNU GPL”, not “GNU

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

My first (and perhaps uneducated) impression of TAILS is that its target audience is people who are not particularly tech savvy who will also be using it on other people's computers which may not be freedom friendly. Are there any actual advantages to using this distro instead of Trisquel (or

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

Tails is excellent at protecting your privacy and anonymity - it is actually the best and most powerful tool we have beacuse it is preconfigured with several security enhancements. It is not 100% libre for it is targeted at a very large audience. It is more important to them to give anonymity

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

but if tails includes non-free software then how can you be sure its private? how do you know what that software is doing if you cant see the source code?

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

Exactly, it's a contradiction. With non-free code, tails provides neither freedom nor privacy - so it doesn't satisfy anyone except people who don't know better and believe it makes them anonymous.

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

It does not include non free software - basically it's debian (open source, so you can read the code and free software) -- but its kernel it's not deblobbed so if you use the module of the kernel in order to make for example your ati graphics card work you are using a binary blob and you don'

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

It *does* include non-free software. I guess you mean it doesn't include a proprietary program on top of the kernel and that's right. Clearly, the amount of proprietary code included in tails is very small. But who is using tails? People who really want to stay anonymous, and some of them even

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

Oh, one more thing to note: I think the only proprietary software in Tails is now firmware blobs, but this wasn't always the case. In the past, it was distributed with TrueCrypt.

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

I actually want to point a couple things out: Firstly, network cards aren't typically configured to have access to the rest of the system. Simply encrypt your data, and a network card running non-libre software can't do anything with it. If anything, your ISP is likely to be more of a threa

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

My two cents: TAILS is not a libre distro. It has been discussed in another thread. However, I maintain my opinion that it certainly is the best distro one can use in the specific user-case it targets, and they don't rely on just adding proprietary software for any reason, so it's not as ba

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

>I think the only proprietary software in Tails is now firmware blobs right on onpon4!! that is exactly what I was saying. >TAILS is not a libre distro. It has been discussed in another thread. However, I maintain my opinion that it certainly is the best distro one can use in the specific us

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

After reading onpon's post i actually have to agree. All traffic is encrypted by default and if wifi firmware can't access the rest of the system, then it's no privacy threat. On top of that you can just use a pc which doesn't need non-free firmware in the first place.

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

I wouldn't trust Tails for anything important.

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

Why not just remove the firmware from the image?

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

Snowden used Tails for almost a year while he was stealing the docs and communicating with Poitras and others.. One would think that Mr. Ed knows a thing or two about computer security.. Several other experts suggest you use Tails if you have to do "anything important". See, Tails routes every

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

gluglug laptop + trisquel + tbb would be a good start... but not the end of it. If you wanted to have a secure system that could protect your private communications you would have to go a greater lenght. I would suggest: 1. firewall, close all ports except 80 and 443. 2. use tbb, thunderbird

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

It would be better if Tails did not include any non-free software. Unfortunately they are targeting people who may be using PCs not under the users control (people who may be using a computer at and internet cafe for instance). That use case makes it difficult to exclude non-free driver/fir

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

The problem is the projects use-case makes eliminating the non-free software difficult. I think they'd likely agree that the non-free software is a security risk and the licensing is problematic. They've chosen to remove TrueCrypt as an example for similar issues. While not closed in nature (

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

Has anybody actually confirmed what non-free software is in Tails? I don't think it is as much of a security threat as it is a freedom-threat. I'm pretty sure they're primarily only including non-free firmware. While that is not good it's not loaded unless your using a system that already has

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

There are advantages to using Tails for the use-cases Tails covers. You lose anonymity by deviating software/hardware. So by using Tails you have a larger pool of users to hide between compared running it on Trisquel and at best being able to blend in with a handful of users. There are othe

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

See- here is the problem. Your suggesting people take steps that are way beyond the average user and will actually reduce the anonymity pool. That is also a security risk. This is why Tails is needed. Despite this Tails is not even that easy to use despite it doing a lot of these things. You

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

I don't think this is totally correct. Once the firmware loads it can pretend to be another device, capture keystrokes, etc. There is definitely potential for malice. We shouldn't exaggerate the risk though as it pertains to security. While it is a threat there are lots of threats to security

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

Back to what you were saying in the above post. The source code is available for TrueCrypt and the problem is standards / licensing issues mostly rather than security. However there is a security concern in the way TrueCrypt was being developed behind closed doors. I think the security issue

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

Out of curiosity what would you trust and why? There are so many problems all over the place I have a hard time believing one should have more faith (from a security stand point) in Trisquel for instance than Tails. Tails does a pretty good job of keeping up on patching security-related bug

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

how do you get the libre-linux kernel? dose debian 7 come with it by default?

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

Hi. I think that chris means Linux-libre, which you can get from . Debian doesn't uses Linux-libre, but it removes the proprietary part of Linux and puts it in the “non-free” section of their repositories, give support to in their communi

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

Agree. As you can see I was replying to quantumgravity post. I actually meant to say that security and privacy are not easy to obtain. All the steps I mentioned are not THAT hard, but they are nearly impossible to some friends of mine that have the idea that computers were made to run faceboo

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

A stupid question: is it so impossible to build your own computer? For me it sure is, but I wonder if a tech savvy person who is used to "mod" devices could do it. Apparently there is a home made laptop for sale (about 1500€ IIRC).

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

Yes, when you install Debian you install only FLOSS. Just like Trisquel. Then you can install non free software if you want to. Just like Trisquel. So, I don't understand why so much hate towards Debian (without which, Trisquel wouldn't exist). But yes, I was referring to that kernel, you can

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

Be careful to call debian a floss system in here because thanks to the new voting system, your post gets banned to limbo in no time :P I'm speaking from personal experience!

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

I know :P This voting system is just ridiculous, but I won't stop saying what I believe in just because someone can censor me. Also, this voting system might prove more harmful to the forum than to me. I do know a thing or two about scripts, and it would be very easy to turn the entire foru

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

> Yes, when you install Debian you install only FLOSS. Just like Trisquel. Then you can install non free software if you want to. Just like Trisquel. So, I don't understand why so much hate towards Debian (without which, Trisquel wouldn't exist). Here we go once again. https://www.gnu.org/dis

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

"Also if Debian was free, we wouldn't need to have Trisquel." I don't know about that. There is a benefit to have a free version of Ubuntu, regardless of Debian's own status.

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

trisquel is way better then ubuntu and much better then debian. a free and easy system and very nice looking too :) p.s - once again i'll say this voting ridiculo is useless and stupid. never used a single - or + , never will. Don't use it and it will disappear!

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

Not really sure what you are asking here. I think it depends on what you mean by build. Do you mean assemble from pieces? You can certainly assemble a laptop from pieces, but changing any physical characteristics about those pieces requires mass production-level machinery.

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

well, it was a two different questions in one thing. 1. Can I get different pieces and make them work together (as in connect a GPU and WIFI and MOtherboard that were not supposed to work together)? 2. Can I create a graphics card or a wireless card? As in, create it myself? Make the bluepr

Re: [Trisquel-users] Is tails a libre os?

The answer to (1) is no. The GPU is integrated into the board. You would have to have a company with the machinery manufacture a lot of boards to make design changes. Even a small sample run (which is essentially what it sounds like the Librem people are doing) for quality control purposes is