Exit Zen
1
English type: Plain text
[[!meta title="Frequently asked questions"]]
43/450 · 45
5
English type: Plain text
[[!toc levels=2]]
18/180 · 18
6
English type: Plain text
<h1 id="project">Tails project</h1>
35/360 · 36
7
English type: Plain text
<!-- This entire section would be better placed in an "About Us" section. See #17700. -->
90/900 · 90
8
English type: Plain text
<h2 id="tor">What is the relationship between Tor and Tails?</h2>
49/660 · 66
9
English type: Plain text
See our explanation about [[why does Tails use Tor|doc/anonymous_internet/tor/why#relationship]].
80/970 · 97
10
English type: Plain text
<h2 id="debian">Why is Tails based on Debian and not on another distribution?</h2>
88/830 · 83
11
English type: Plain text
We are deeply rooted and involved in Debian. The friendships, relationships, and technical expertise we have in Debian have many benefits for Tails, and we are not ready to build the same relationship with Ubuntu, OpenBSD, or any other distribution. See our statement about our [[contribute/relationship_with_upstream]] for details.
292/3320 · 332
12
English type: Plain text
See also the article [Why there are so many Debian derivatives](http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2011/09/why_there_are_so_many_debian_derivatives/) by Stefano Zacchiroli.
171/1730 · 173
13
English type: Plain text
<h2 id="ubuntu">Why isn't Tails based on Ubuntu?</h2>
57/540 · 54
14
English type: Plain text
First, see the answer to the [[previous question|faq#debian]].
61/620 · 62
15
English type: Plain text
- The rapid development cycle of Ubuntu would be too fast for Tails.
60/680 · 68
16
English type: Bullet: '- '
Ubuntu adds features in ways that we find dangerous for privacy. For example Ubuntu One ([partly discontinued](http://blog.canonical.com/2014/04/02/shutting-down-ubuntu-one-file-services/)) and the [Amazon ads and data leaks](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/privacy-ubuntu-1210-amazon-ads-and-data-leaks).
332/3120 · 312
17
English type: Bullet: '- '
Ubuntu is led by a company that takes most of the important decisions and has the power to make them happen.
111/1080 · 108
18
English type: Bullet: '- '
We usually ship kernels and video drivers from [Debian backports](http://backports.debian.org/). The result is comparable to Ubuntu in terms of support for recent hardware.
172/1720 · 172
19
English type: Bullet: '- '
We think that the general quality of the maintenance work being done on packages matters from a security perspective. Debian maintainers generally are experts in the fields their packages deal with; while it is generally not the case outside of the limited number of packages Ubuntu officially supports.
281/3030 · 303
20
English type: Bullet: '- '
We are actively working on improving [[AppArmor support|contribute/design/application_isolation]] in Tails; a security framework that is already used in a few Ubuntu applications.
183/1790 · 179
21
English type: Bullet: '- '
We are also working on adding compiler hardening options to more Debian packages included in Tails; another security feature that Ubuntu already provides.
173/1540 · 154
22
English type: Plain text
<h2 id="gnome">Why does Tails ship the GNOME Desktop?</h2>
68/590 · 59
23
English type: Plain text
We had users ask for LXDE, XFCE, MATE, KDE, and so on, but we are not going to change desktop. According to us, the main drawback of GNOME is that it requires quite a lot of resources to work properly, but it has many advantages. The GNOME Desktop is:
303/2520 · 252