CyberPunk.Neural.Interface via Tails-dev:
> Looking to help with windows camouflage feature. what GTK version the
> latest TAILS build is using or plan on using?
For the record, the Windows camouflage was dropped from Tails 2.0
(January 2016) because it was not ported to GNOME 3.14:
https://tails.boum.org/news/windows_camouflage_jessie/
https://tails.boum.org/news/version_2.0/
6 years later, I don't think that we should introduce a Windows
camouflage again. I still understand the potential benefits but I don't
think that they outweigh the costs and that our team should spend
resources on this:
- The camouflage can help hiding that you are using Tails to people
who can see your screen. It felt and looked super cool (that's
important!) but it was not a reliable security solution either (that's
important too!).
For example, for it to avoid suspicion in a cybercafé or public
library, or computer room in a school, it would have to mimic the
particular version of Windows or macOS used in the neighboring
computers. That's quite more complex than allowing users to switch
to 1 alternative GNOME theme.
- Even if an external contributor, like you (thanks!), wants to help
with a new camouflage, it will always require our core team to do some
work for it to happen (answering questions, reviewing code, etc.).
Plus, it becomes something that our team will have to maintain in the
future. Lack of maintenance work is precisely what caused the original
camouflage to be dropped.
- Before you start the session, it would be extra hard to make the
Boot Loader or Welcome Screen look like Windows or macOS. Once you
started using Tails and have several windows open, your screen looks
more like a "browser with a website on it" than Tails. At most it
looks like a Linux distribution to people close enough to see the
menus and window frames.
I think that we should instead work on allowing a custom desktop
background (that people could configure to look like Windows or macOS)
and maybe a custom GNOME theme.
That's
https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/7148.
I think that it would be less initial work, less maintenance, and would
cover more use cases.
Customization is an important emotional aspect of technology.
For example, custom background was in the top 5 feature requests in the
2020 survey, along with Monero, VPN, and persistent Tor Browser settings:
https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/blueprints/-/wikis/user_survey/openpgp_and_pidgin#general-purpose-questions
#10830 was rejected 4 years ago by lack of progress. I think that we
should use this thread on tails-dev to clarify whether we might accept
contributions to a new camouflage or not, and document this on #10830
for the future.
My opinion is "no", in favor of #7148 but I'd like to hear more from the
rest of the team.
--
sajolida
Tails —
https://tails.boum.org/
UX · Fundraising · Technical Writing
