I appreciate a lot of the work that the Tails guys do - but for a privacy and security focused distribution there are far too many included apps for my liking[1], which increases the attack surface. LibreOffice, Gimp and Audacity are just some of the apps - and many have a horrible history of vulnerabilities[2].<p>When Tails has had vulnerabilities it is often with one of these included apps[6].<p>The browser isn&#x27;t sanboxed (it&#x27;s in progress[3]), and the machine is still directly connected to the internet, so you&#x27;re a single Firefox vulnerability and a drive-by download away from being deanonymized.<p>It is also a shame that both OS X and Windows make it difficult to write an OS to an USB stick and boot from it - the install requires an intermediary Linux OS either on DVD or USB, which a lot of users won&#x27;t get by.<p>For a different approach, see Whonix[4] - a virtual machine based approach with an isolating proxy (very popular setup amongst black hats) and Qubes OS[4] which is built on Xen and runs processes in separate VM&#x27;s<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tails.boum.org&#x2F;doc&#x2F;about&#x2F;features&#x2F;index.en.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tails.boum.org&#x2F;doc&#x2F;about&#x2F;features&#x2F;index.en.html</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cvedetails.com&#x2F;vulnerability-list&#x2F;vendor_id-11439&#x2F;product_id-21008&#x2F;Libreoffice-Libreoffice.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cvedetails.com&#x2F;vulnerability-list&#x2F;vendor_id-1143...</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.mozilla.org&#x2F;Security&#x2F;Sandbox" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.mozilla.org&#x2F;Security&#x2F;Sandbox</a><p>[4] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.whonix.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.whonix.org&#x2F;</a><p>[5] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.qubes-os.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.qubes-os.org&#x2F;</a><p>[6] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.exodusintel.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;07&#x2F;23&#x2F;silverbullets_and_fairytails&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.exodusintel.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;07&#x2F;23&#x2F;silverbullets_and_fa...</a>