[tor-reports] Tails report for March, 2013

[Tails folks]

Hi,

here's Tails report for March, 2013.

Releases
========

Tails 0.17.1 was released on March 23rd:
https://tails.boum.org/version_0.17.1/

Metrics
=======

- 115 798 connections of Tails to the Tor network. This makes a boot
  every 23 seconds on average (this number is an approximation from
  the requests made to the security announcements feed. The later is
  retrieved by Tails after being connected to Tor to eventually
  encourage users to update.)

- 75 reports were received through WhisperBack.

- 756 comments were posted on the forum, with 185 signed by Tails.

Code
====

- Some progress has been done on a feature to remember installed
  packages.

  https://tails.boum.org/todo/remember_installed_packages/
  http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/feature/remember_installed_packages

- A "about Tails" launcher was drafted, following-up on some feedback
  from Runa's "Training Journalists in Istanbul report.

  https://tails.boum.org/todo/about_Tails_launcher/
  http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/feature/about_tails

- The Indymedia IRC account was removed.

  http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/bugfix/disable-indymedia-irc-account

- Bugs and todo pages are not shipped any more in ISO images.

- Some work was started to make the system disk read-only (which was
  supposedly fixed months ago, but apparently it either was not, or
  there was a regression).

  https://tails.boum.org/todo/make_system_disk_read-only/
  http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/bugfix/writable_boot_media

- Awesome progress was made to automate our test suite with Cucumber.

  https://tails.boum.org/todo/automated_builds_and_tests/
  https://tails.boum.org/todo/automated_builds_and_tests/cucumber/
  http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/feature/automated_tests/cucumber

- We worked around an unfortunate regression caused by the integration
  of Debian backports into the main archive.

  http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/bugfix/workaround-non-installable-xorg-backport
  http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130320

- NoScript's HTML5 media click-to-play was disabled.

  http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/feature/no-html5-click-to-play

- udisks users (GNOME Disk Utility, tails-persistence-setup, etc.)
  won't reset the system partition's attributes when manipulating the
  partition table anymore.

  http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/bugfix/udisks-do-not-make-Tails-USB-unbootable

- More reliable OpenPGP keyservers were configured.

  http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/bugfix/use-more-reliable-keyserver

Documentation and Website
=========================

- A *Tor check* link was added to the web browser homepage. This link
  hides the "Download Tails 0.17.1" one, so it should both help people
  who want to do this check every time they boot Tails, and clear up
  some confusion reported by Runa about "oh, is this a new version
  available, should I update?"

  https://tails.boum.org/news/
  http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/feature/are_you_using_tor_link

- The reintroduction of hybrid ISO images to simplify Mac USB boot was
  worked on.

  https://github.com/kolohe/amnesia/tree/manual_usb_installation/mac

- The AutoType feature of KeepassX has been documented to allow
  pasting complex passwords into Pinentry.

  https://tails.boum.org/doc/encryption_and_privacy/manage_passwords#index4h1

Translation
===========

- Tails USB installer: update translations for French, German, Spanish,
  Finnish, Greek, Italian, Latvian, Dutch, Polish and Chinese.

- Tails Greeter: update translations for Farsi, Chinese, French;
  new translations: Finnish, Norwegian Bokmål, Galician.

- tails-persistence-setup: update Farsi and Chinese translations;
  import new translations for Finnish and Swedish.

- WhisperBack: update translations for Arabic, French, German, Greek,
  Spanish, Korean, Polish, Russian. New translations: Finnish, Chinese.

On-going discussions
====================

- Some discussions triggered by Runa's "Training Journalists in
  Istanbul" report went on.

  https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2013-March/thread.html

- Some discussion was triggered by a proposed branch that fixes how
  some buggy hard drives don't well the Tails APM settings.

  https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2013-March/002709.html

- We have discussed if and how to better deal, at Tails upgrade time,
  with the situation when the user has added random files on the Tails
  system partition (which is not supported).

  https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2013-March/002716.html

- Some discussions about potentially supported hardware happened.

  https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2013-March/002747.html
  https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2013-March/002748.html

- A discussion about the process to contribute to the documentation
  clarified why the current process works the way it does, and
  resulted in a good compromise to be found.

  https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2013-March/002751.html

- We started discussing with GDM developers if and how they intend to
  support the custom greeter usecase that we depend on.

  https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2013-March/002813.html

- We decided not to include a text web browser in Tails.

  https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2013-March/002794.html

Infrastructure
==============

- Some work was put into foundations we need to set up Jenkins for our
  needs, mainly on the Puppet modules side (e.g. code for safely
  installing Jenkins plugins from the web, an improved Puppet module
  to manage Jenkins).

- A VM to automatically build Tails was created, and the Puppet code
  that describes its initial setup was written.

- We have setup a Debian package builder based on debomatic
  (https://launchpad.net/debomatic). It still has some rough edges,
  but seems to basically do its job.

- The nice folks at immerda (https://www.immerda.ch/) have setup most
  of what's needed to host all our Git repositories in the same place,
  in a way that makes it convenient for us to create new repositories,
  manage access to it, and reintroduce IRC commit notifications.
  Thanks!

Funding
=======

- Tails now accepts Bitcoin donations.

  https://tails.boum.org/contribute/how/donate

- We will soon close the budget for our bounties program. Teaser:
  a handful of great programs, that are useful to Tails, will see some
  bonus activity in the next few months!

- We have filed a grant application that answers Sponsor Echo's call
  for proposals.

Cheers,
-- 
Tails folks