The first release of Tails, back then *amnesia*, was announced in 2009. Since then we released 98 versions of Tails, which were used more than 40 million times.

Here are some stories about how it all started and some vintage screenshots. But first of all, the birthday cake!

<pre style="width: 29em;">
_____
|_|_|_|
| . . |
|_____|
´ `
| |
| :-) |
{} {}
|| ||
_||_______||_
{} {~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~} {}
|| { ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ } ||
__||__{_____________}__||__
{\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\}
{} { H a p p y \} {}
|| {\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\} ||
__||_{___________________________}_||__
{\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\}
{ B i r t h d a y }
{ ! ! ! T a i ls ! ! ! }
{/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/}
{_______________________________________}

2009&ndash;2010: amnesia, T(A)ILS, and their ancestors

Today, Tails is based on Debian, Tor, and GNOME. We inherit from their work and try to contribute back in order to create a healthy ecosystem of reliable, secure, and usable tools.

When we started the *amnesia* project back in 2009, other projects before us paved the way to what is Tails today:

[Knoppix](http://www.knoppix.org/), born in 2000 and still alive today, was the first popular live Linux distribution. Back then, it was a groundbreaking achievement to be able to start and use Linux without going through lengthy, very complex, and uncertain Linux install "parties". Knoppix was primarily designed for convenience and diagnosis.

[ELE](https://web.archive.org/web/20050422130010/http://www.northernsecurity.net:80/download/ele/), born in 2005 and based on Damn Small Linux, [Anonym.OS](https://web.archive.org/web/20060212030338/http://theory.kaos.to:80/projects.html), born in 2006 and based on OpenBSD, and [Incognito](https://web.archive.org/web/20071213084719/http://www.browseanonymouslyanywhere.com/incognito/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=28&Itemid=41), born in 2007 and based on Gentoo, pushed the concept of live operating systems a bit further by focusing on security, online anonymity, and the use of Tor.

The original author of *Incognito*, *Pat Double*, resigned in 2007 and *anonym*, who
still works for Tails today, took over the maintenance.

On August 16 2009, *intrigeri* announced the first release of *amnesia* on the [*tor-talk* mailing list](https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2009-August/002667.html).

In March 2010, *Incognito* was declared dead and *amnesia* its "[spiritual successor](https://web.archive.org/web/20100728224716/http://www.anonymityanywhere.com:80/incognito)". Some weeks later, *amnesia* would be renamed *T(A)ILS*, *The Amnesic Incognito Live System*, to act the fusion between *amnesia* and *Incognito*.

We quickly realized that having parenthesis in our name looked very
radical but was quite confusing and finally settled on *Tails* in 2011.
Eight years later, we still see most people on the Internet write it
TAILS though it's never been written in all caps on our website.

Hey people, it's Tails not TAILS!

This is how *amnesia* 0.2 and our website looked like in 2009. The browser was *Iceweasel* with *Tor Button* and the Tor controller was *TorK*.

2011-2014: core features, Tails 1.0, and public recognition

Until Tails 1.0 (April 2014), we would develop most of the core features that make Tails today:

**Tails Installer**, forked from the [[!wikipedia Fedora_Media_Writer desc="Fedora Live USB Creator"]]

**Persistence**

**Welcome Screen**

**Automatic upgades**