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Whonix Upgrade Notification

#1

We might have discussed this after the last upgrade. I’m not sure any decision was made.

Too many people were caught unaware of the Whonix 13 release, which is a failure on so many levels… But if more can be done to keep people informed, I guess it should be done. Plus, we have to pick up the pieces after broken installations happen anyway so might as well reduce the support burden.

Would it be possible for Whonixcheck to spawn a second pop-up for a few weeks before release? (Because any notice attached to the normal pop-up can be easily ignored.)

UPGRADE NOTICE!

Whonix 14 will be released on xxx xx, 2017.

Support for Whonix 13 will end on xxx xx, 2017.

Please visit ... for more information.

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#2

Whonix 12 -> 13 in-place upgrade was too demanding for users indeed. A major upgrade that happens during regular apt-get dist-upgrading, apt-get advertising the apt-get autoremove feature and at the same time that autoremove feature breaking Whonix installations for users who did not notice there are instructions for Whonix 12 -> 13 upgrades.

If Whonix 13 -> 14 upgrades do not introduce such breaking changes, then that should be fine.

Indeed.

I like the idea, but I’d avoid implementing it myself due to time constraints unless Whonix 13 breaking changes are required. It’s because some items on the roadmap to Whonix 14 are really, really time consuming.

roadmap to Whonix 14:
https://phabricator.whonix.org/maniphest/query/5sZ7FpwCEQDz/#R

It would be awesome tackling the “missing project news tool” in a later release of Whonix. Actually the issue goes beyond Whonix. It’s a general Debian or Linux distribution issue. For example, it would have been great, if Debian had notified us of CVE-2016-1252 using such as popup so people have a chance to upgrade from the vulnerable apt to the patched one more cautiously, right?

@HulaHoop and me have been working on a concept for such a tool. The proposal draft is here:

https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Dev/project-news

It would be great if you’d join our efforts!