Development state

How actively are they maintained?

Abitter truth of the open source development model is that projects lose steam and die. The same holds true for security and privacy-centric distros as well and there have been several worthy contenders that have either perished or continue to exist with their development in a state of suspended animation. While we don’t usually rate specialised distros according to their development state, it plays an important role while comparing the distros in this Roundup. After all it’s imperative that the distro you choose keeps pace with the ever evolving nature of threats to your online and offline privacy.

If you’re wary of new projects you may want to stay clear of Subgraph, despite its amazing set of feature, since the project is in the very early phase of development. TENS, which was previously known as Lightweight Portable Security, is updated regularly, typically with quarterly maintenance releases. Similarly, Linux Kodachi which is developed by a professional IT security service provider was first released in 2013 but had been in hibernation until 2016 and is now seeing releases and updates at regular intervals. Whonix has been churning out releases very actively since it began in 2012 and receives updates every few months. Then there’s Tails which is one of the best-maintained security distros, with a fast pace of development and new releases every few months.