The team behind the privacy-oriented operating system, Tails, has launched Tails 4.17. This update includes several important updates to key packages such as the Tor Browser which are essential for maintaining your privacy but it also comes with several improvements to the upgrade process which should result in less failed upgrades.
The first of the reliability improvements to automatic upgrades pertains to the file system. The release notes state that automatic updates were previously failing because of an unclean file system. To address this, Tails now automatically repairs the file system being used during an upgrade to eliminate the issue.
Another change to improve upgrade reliability is the download process of new updates. Each Tails upgrade requires the users to download the new image over Tails’ Tor connection which can sometimes be spotty. With Tails 4.17, downloads will now automatically resume if they do stop so it’ll save users a lot of time.
In terms of new package updates, the Tor Browser has been updated to 10.0.14, Thunderbird has been bumped to 78.8.0, Tor is now on 0.4.5.7, the GRUB bootloader is on 2.04-16, and several firmware packages that improve Intel, Broadcom, and Cypress interfaces have been included too.
If you’re running Tails 4.14 or above you will get a notification telling you to update your system as soon as you connect to the internet. If you do not yet have a Tails USB to boot from but would like one, you can find instructions on downloading and installing Tails on the project’s website.