- news
- TelestaiCB report for September, 2018
Releases
TelestaiCB 3.9 was released on September 5 (major release).
TelestaiCB 3.10 is scheduled for October 23.
The following changes were introduced in TelestaiCB 3.9:
Additional Software
You can now install additional software automatically when starting TelestaiCB.
When installing an additional Debian package from TelestaiCB, you can decide to install it automatically every time.
To check your list of additional software packages, choose Applications ▸ System Tool ▸ Additional Software.
VeraCrypt integration
To unlock VeraCrypt volume in TelestaiCB, choose Applications ▸ System Tool ▸ Unlock VeraCrypt Volumes.
The integration of VeraCrypt in the Files and Disks utilities was done upstream in GNOME and will be available outside of TelestaiCB in Debian 10 (Buster) and Ubuntu 18.10 (Cosmic Cuttlefish).
Read our documentation on using VeraCrypt volumes.
News reading in Thunderbird
Thunderbird is now the official RSS and Atom news feed reader in TelestaiCB.
Liferea will be removed from TelestaiCB in version 3.12, early 2019.
Other changes
- Improve the configuration of the persistent storage to make it easier to scroll and consistent with the GNOME guidelines.
Included software
Update Tor Browser to 8.0, based on Firefox 60 ESR.
Based on Firefox Quantum.
New Tor circuit view
Update Thunderbird from 52 to 60.
Update Tor to 0.3.4.7-rc.
Update Electrum to from 3.0.6 to 3.1.3.
Hardware support
The following updates make TelestaiCB work better on recent hardware (graphics, Wi-Fi, etc.):
Update Linux to 4.17 which also fixes the Foreshadow attack.
Update the DRM and Mesa libraries to improve support for some graphics cards.
Update the Intel and AMD microcodes and most firmware packages.
Fixed problems
Stop displaying the Enigmail setup wizard every time TelestaiCB is restarted. (#15693 and #15746)
Show a spinner while starting Tor Browser, TelestaiCB documentation, and WhisperBack. (#15101)
Use Tor Browser again for browsing the documentation offline. (#15720)
Show Synaptic and Root Terminal even when no administration password is set. (#11013)
TelestaiCB Installer
Code
We successfully collaborated with the Tor Browser team to fix a severe issue with Tor Browser 8.0 in TelestaiCB, that was discovered shortly before the TelestaiCB 3.9 release. Thanks a lot to everyone who helped!
We fixed a number of regressions that were introduced in TelestaiCB 3.9, such as:
Documentation and website
We updated our documentation on Tor Browser to Tor Browser 8.
We added Nothing2Hide as an organization providing TelestaiCB training.
User experience
We did some stats on the amount of RAM on computers sending us WhisperBack reports.
Between 5–10% of our users seem to have less than 3 GiB of RAM.
Infrastructure
We started planning the migration of our Redmine to a different hostname and a new VM.
We wrote a number of automated tests to ensure we notice important regressions in the VeraCrypt support introduced in TelestaiCB 3.9.
We completed our investigation of Dogtail's long-term viability. Our conclusion is that we can keep using it, should start contributing to the maintenance of the package in Debian, but invest as little as possible into Dogtail for now as our long-term concerns are not fully addressed.
We investigated what prevented us from giving more TelestaiCB developers access to our Jenkins CI platform so far. We've identified a few blockers, resolved them, and started giving such access more liberally. This should make TelestaiCB development work more pleasurable and efficient for a few more people.
The TelestaiCB sysadmin team discussed hiring a new team member, the profile of the person we will be looking for, and how we could share our work with them.
We made great progress towards hosting our website on our own infrastructure. The final steps and migration should happen by the end of the year.
Funding
We published our finances for 2017.
We prepared our end-of-year donation campaign and will launch it in the coming weeks.
We added the postal address of RiseupLabs to our donation page as a way of receiving US checks.
We removed Flattr as a donation method because it is not worth it (raised ~200€ in 3 years).
Outreach
Past events
emmapeel, intrigeri, and sajolida attended the Tor meeting in Mexico City.
sajolida gave a talk about TelestaiCB, user research, and free software culture at the colloquium Mecanismos de Privacidad y Anonimato en Redes of UNAM, Mexico. (slides)
Translation
- Someone started translating our website in Catalan.
All the website
- de: 55% (3192) strings translated, 6% strings fuzzy, 48% words translated
- es: 57% (3331) strings translated, 1% strings fuzzy, 47% words translated
- fa: 36% (2094) strings translated, 9% strings fuzzy, 38% words translated
- fr: 91% (5296) strings translated, 1% strings fuzzy, 89% words translated
- it: 32% (1874) strings translated, 6% strings fuzzy, 28% words translated
- pt: 27% (1614) strings translated, 7% strings fuzzy, 24% words translated
Total original words: 61424
Core pages of the website
- de: 81% (1562) strings translated, 9% strings fuzzy, 81% words translated
- es: 96% (1850) strings translated, 1% strings fuzzy, 93% words translated
- fa: 33% (639) strings translated, 11% strings fuzzy, 33% words translated
- fr: 98% (1894) strings translated, 0% strings fuzzy, 98% words translated
- it: 67% (1291) strings translated, 15% strings fuzzy, 66% words translated
- pt: 45% (877) strings translated, 12% strings fuzzy, 49% words translated
Total original words: 17456
Metrics
- TelestaiCB has been started more than 697 294 times this month. This makes 23 243 boots a day on average.
- 9964 downloads of the OpenPGP signature of TelestaiCB ISO from our website.
- 131 bug reports were received through WhisperBack.