what is tails operating system

The tails operating system

The tails operating system (http://tails.boum.org) is available as a free download on the internet and has been specifically designed keeping security in mind. It is an OS that can run from a bootable live CD or pen drive and gives a user absolute anonymity on the internet. Not only does it protect your privacy on the internet, it can also be used to bypass restrictions that may have implemented by your local system administrator. Tails uses tor to provide users with secure encrypted anonymous access to the internet. It has various in built encryption capabilities which allow user to use encryption to store files, send instant message, do email and browser the internet. It is possible to install tails OS on a bootable CD instead of a pen drive, but I personally prefer using tail on a pen drive in such a manner that the pen drive is bootable is slightly complicated for newbie's and described in detail below:

Step 1:

The first step is to obviously download the tails operating system from its website. Please note that it is approximately a 580 MB download and will take some time to download if you do not have a fast internet connection. You also need to download a special tool called universal USB installer (http://www.pendrivelinux.com/download/universal-usb-installer/universal-usb-installer.exe) which will allow you to install tails on the USB pen drive and make it bootable. Finally you also need USB pen drive with at least 2 GB of free space.

Step 2:

Plug in your USB pen drive to your computer and start the universal USB installer software and follow the Linux distribution you wish to install (we select tails), choose the path name where you wish to install (we select tails), choose the path name where you download the tails ISO image and select the drive on which you wish to install the tails operating system. The complete installation process will take not more than a few minutes.

It is important to pay special attention to the warning message (that will get displayed on the screen) about losing all the data on the pen drive that you want to install the tails OS on.

Step 3:

Once installation gets over, keep the USB pen drive plugged into your computer and restart your computer. Before windows start booting quickly press f8, f11, f1, esc, delete or any other relevant key that you need to press to enter the bios settings page. Look for something known as boot sequence of boot priority and make sure that the priority to boot from the USB device is higher than the priority to boot from hard drive. The idea is to make sure that instead of the computer booting from the hard drive (i.e. windows), it boots from the pen drive (i.e. tails). Save setting or press f10 then yes and restart your computer.

Step 4:

The tails OS should start automatically on your computer. The best part is that since windows has not booted, all the application restrictions that existed on windows will no longer be there. You are free to use whatever application you want however you want and whenever you want.

Tails OS is so popular because of the fact that it comes with various useful application preinstalled (like pidgin instant messenger, browser, 12p, tor and others) which are preconfigured to give you anonymity on the internet. Not only will you be able to unblock application, you will also be able to use those applications to unblocked blocked stuff on the internet. So along with application restrictions, any website restrictions are also removed using tails.