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.
Today, Tailsis based on Debian, Tor, andGNOME. We inherit from their work and try to contribute back in order to create a healthy ecosystem of reliable, secure, and usable tools.
[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.
*Incognito* was the first live operating system to include a full set of applications preconfigured to go through Tor (browser, email client, IRC client, etc.), offer a persistent *Home* directory, and even allow hosting onion services. *Incognito* was also the first live operating system to receive an [official recognition from the Tor Project](https://blog.torproject.org/incognito-and-tor-project-sign-licensing-agreement).
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.
To support this intense development and the increased responsibility on our shoulders, we accepted our first grant, from the *Swedish International Development Agency* in 2011 and started paying for some of the development work.
In March 2014, we received our first award, the [Access Innovation Prize for Endpoint Security](https://www.accessnow.org/blog/2014/03/11/2014-access-innovation-prize-winners-announced-at-rightscon).According to Access Now:
> Tails embodies the successful collaboration of developers, trainers, > security professionals towards tackling the spectrum of user needs -- > from usability to security -- in high-risk environments.
