For hardware compatibility issues, refer to our [[known issues|support/known_issues]].

To learn what you can do with Tails, refer to our [[documentation|doc]].

For questions related to Tor, see also to the [Tor support pages](https://support.torproject.org/).

Tails [[was founded|news/celebrating_10_years]] in 2009 and [[joined forces with Tor|news/tails_tor]] in 2024.

Ubuntu is led by [[!wikipedia Canonical (company) desc="Canonical"]], a for-profit corporation that takes most of the important decisions.

<h2 id="gnome">Why does Tails ship the GNOME Desktop?</h2>

People have asked for Tails with LXDE, XFCE, MATE, KDE, and so on, but we are not going to use a different desktop.

The main drawback of GNOME is that it requires quite a lot of resources, but GNOME has many advantages, especially for users who are new to Linux.

The GNOME desktop is:

Well integrated

Very well translated

Doing relatively well in terms of accessibility features

Actively developed

Well maintained in Debian, where it is the default desktop

We invested quite some time in acquiring GNOME knowledge, and switching our desktop environment would require going through that process again.

That's also why we are not going to provide more than one desktop option.

Yes. Tails requires a USB stick dedicated to running Tails only.

If it were possible to use the same USB stick with another operating system, for example to store files to use on Windows, a virus in the other operating system could corrupt your Tails.

That's why your Tails USB stick is not recognized in Windows and why we discourage installing other live operating systems on the same USB stick.

To store files in your Tails USB stick, use the [[Persistent Storage|doc/persistent_storage]]. To exchange files between Tails and another operating system, use a separate USB stick.