Tails – simplified installation method | Hacker News Reader

Tails – simplified installation method

tails.boum.org

95 pointsSami_Lehtinen16 comments

Very cool, love this. My only hope is that this isn't so successful that they neglect the installer because nobody is using it anymore :-)

For users on another Linux (such as Fedora, Arch, Ubuntu) using USB, this will hopefully be a big improvement. The previous process requiring two USB sticks was a PITA

> My only hope is that this isn't so successful that they neglect the installer because nobody is using it anymore :-)

Wouldn't that be a good thing? I mean, you'd have a tough time finding a computer for sale in 2019 that even has a CD drive, why care about it so much?

My initial thought was that sometimes you want to install it to your hardware, not just a USB stick. If this is a finished install that lacks the installer, then you wouldn't be able to use it to install to a hard drive. I could be wrong tho.

You could write the image to your hard drive like you would your flash drive.

OTH, installing to your hard drive kind of goes against Tails’ ephemeral approach.

Fair enough, but installing Tails onto your hardware is against the spirit of Tails.

https://tails.boum.org/support/faq/index.en.html#index6h2

If you're looking for something Tailsesque for your hardware, have a look at Whonix. Tails is very much made with amnesia in mind.

Is there a difference between CDROM and USB drive images? I write Ubuntu iso images to a USB drive with dd, and it seems to work.

There isn't a difference nowadays as far as I know, but used to have a computer that refused to boot off a USB. Also, with USBs, you can have a "persistent" install, which lets you keep things, but you have to be careful, because flash memory will die after a certain number of writes.

What is 'Etcher'? I wish the docs explained that bit a little better.

Etcher [0] is a flashing tool, mostly for USBs and SD cards. It's supposed to make the process of placing an image onto those devices easier, and with less chance of corruption.

[0] https://www.balena.io/etcher/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etcher_(software)

`dd` usually works fine if you're comfortable with the command line.

Or, you know, cat.

https://www.vidarholen.net/contents/blog/?p=479

Okay, mark me as one of the lucky 10,000.

Getting NET::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID in Chrome when visiting this url.

Mine's OK:

SHA-256 Fingerprint 85 DB 84 70 D7 41 15 0C 30 A0 02 C9 47 DB D8 E8 E5 F6 13 21 5C BE 30 3A 36 3D AB B5 65 9A 86 83

and the creation/expiration dates are not near today. Either they are mistakenly serving different versions from different load-balancing servers, or there's something wrong with your browser's cert store, or TLS is doing its job and telling you that you're getting MITMed.

On a corporate network so it’s very likely the last option!

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