Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by BobbyTables2 813 days ago
Why is there so much “branding” to Tails?

I feel like all of tails could simply be a short bash script that uses “debootstrap” to stage a Debian installation and then make it into a squashfs image that is mounted with overlayFS and a tmpfs (which is like a 3-line addition to the main “init” script).

(And yes, I’ve done this before. It’s not hard)

Instead they have a very fancy website and provide binary images without really showing how it works…

Not trying to belittle what they did, I’m sure that took a lot of work.

Just don’t understand the current fads… I feel like they’re trying a little too hard to sell a free product…

1 comments

Tails provides a live ISO that guarantees that everything you do goes through Tor. It seems like a useful thing to have preconfigured. Privacy shouldn't require extensive Linux experience. And even then, I've been using Linux for decades and, whilst I could probably figure it out, I wouldn't trust myself that my setup isn't leaking packets.

Besides, all distributions do some branding (some to the point of obnoxiousness).

HiddenVM, on the other hand, I don't really understand. They make you go through tons of manual steps to achieve the aforementioned hiddenness... Might as well DIY. And their README reads like a VC pitch. "HiddenVM is an innovation in computing privacy." really? You're taking tails and telling the user to install virtualbox, veracrypt, and do the setup...