Software Alternatives & Reviews

Tails VS XNU

Compare Tails VS XNU and see what are their differences

Tails logo Tails

Tails is a Debian based live CD/USB with the goal of providing complete Internet anonymity for the...

XNU logo XNU

XNU is a hybrid kernel combining the Mach kernel with components from FreeBSD and C++
  • Tails Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-01-25
  • XNU Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-01-12

Tails videos

Tails OS Installation And Review - Access The Deep Web/Dark Net

More videos:

  • Review - Tails Reviews Sonic The Hedgehog Movie | Post Credits Scene Reaction
  • Review - 5 Reasons to Use Tails | Privacy Linux

XNU videos

Great News For JAILBREAK: Apple Open-Sourced The iOS (XNU) Kernel

More videos:

  • Review - [CB18] Smart Fuzzing XPC & XNU by Juwei Lin, Lilang Wu, Moony Li

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Tails and XNU)
Linux
85 85%
15% 15
Operating Systems
89 89%
11% 11
Linux Distribution
87 87%
13% 13
Cryptocurrencies
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Tails and XNU

Tails Reviews

Best Linux distro for privacy and security of 2024
All connections are routed through the anonymity network Tor, which conceals your location. The applications in Tails have also been carefully selected to enhance your privacy – for example, there’s KeePassX - which, while not the best password manager, is still pretty good - and Paperkey, a command line tool used to export OpenPGP secret keys to print on paper. There are...
Top 5 Secure Operating Systems for Privacy and Anonymity
Tails has the option for persistent storage which can improve usability, albeit at the cost of some anonymity. Although it enables saving files across sessions, it creates a trace of your activities, which contradicts Tails' amnesic feature. However, you still preserve a high degree of privacy due to robust encryption. This is made possible due to how the persistent data is...
The 5 Best Privacy-Focused Operating Systems
Tails, short for "The Amnesic Incognito Live System," is a privacy-focused portable Linux distribution, designed with anonymity and security in mind. What makes Tails stand out is its focus on leaving no digital trace. It operates as a live OS, meaning you can run it directly from a USB stick or DVD without leaving any footprint on the host system.
Avoid The Hack: 11 Best Privacy Friendly Operating Systems (Desktops)
TAILS is a live operating system focusing on anonymity in addition to user privacy; TAILS effectively disappears, wiping data when you shut down the system.
Best Secure Linux Distros for Enhanced Privacy & Security
Tails uses the Tor network, a network heralded for its privacy and anonymity benefits, to keep users safe online. All connections run through this network - concealing users’ location and other private information. Tails comes with a secure browser, a secure email client and other secure Internet tools. Tails is the most well-known privacy-focused distro, and a popular...

XNU Reviews

We have no reviews of XNU yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Tails should be more popular than XNU. It has been mentiond 385 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Tails mentions (385)

  • Ten years from Snowden revelations – what's next for Tor and privacy online?
    I’m not sure about the Tor project, but the closely-related Tails project (which is excellent, BTW) seems to be uncomfortably adjacent to far-left anarchist groups. Their website, https://tails.boum.org, is hosted by one such group, and on it they prominently link to another anarchist “collective” called RiseUp. Why are we okay with this kind of implicit endorsement of violence-adjacent groups? It should be just... - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • very strange
    I noticed that the website url https://tails.boum.org/ was changed to https://tails.net/. Does anyone know why? Source: 7 months ago
  • My Mother Found Out I was Installing Linux...
    If you pop this onto a USB you can leave a beautiful Windows installation on your computer unfettled with: https://tails.boum.org/. Source: 10 months ago
  • How does this work in Proton?! I was told it's impossible...
    If you want to factor out your host machine entirely whilst surfing the web, have a look at https://tails.boum.org/ . Source: 10 months ago
  • Is it possible for a skilled hacker or government to remotely access my computer?
    Tails is a security-focused Linux distro that (by default) only runs as a live-USB and is not meant to be used as a traditional daily-driver. As you've probably understood by now, it's a 'limited' system for the sake of security and privacy. At least it's assuring to have a far better protected distro than what distros like Arch/Debian/Fedora offer by default. Source: 11 months ago
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XNU mentions (46)

  • ScummVM officially released in the App Store
    > ...even though they are technically in violation of the GPL by modifying and shipping bash binaries without full source - it is missing rootless.h (not the X11 file) They're not. They've covered this in two main ways: 1) By listing all their source code on https://opensource.apple.com/ (which links to their GitHub with all the source code) 2) By offering a complete machine-readable copy of the source code upon... - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
  • macOS 13.5 source code released
    The XNU kernel has been open source for a very long time. https://opensource.apple.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XNU Note that this is not the full operating system/windowing system, it's just the kernel. - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
  • Apple’s new Proton-like tool can run Windows games on a Mac
    Apple does plenty of open source stuff. Safari's browser engine, Swift, libdispatch, the XNU kernel used by iOS and macOS, etc. And macOS is generally packed with open source things, like the default shell, zsh. Also, Metal actually predates Vulkan, so Vulkan was definitely not established when they started focusing on Metal. Yeah, they probably should consider supporting Vulkan now, but it's nothing to do with... Source: 11 months ago
  • DirectX 12 Support on macOS
    It's still not a great thing to do. Apple used to contribute a lot more, even if some of their stuff was exclusive to their platform. https://opensource.apple.com. - Source: Hacker News / 11 months ago
  • [D] ClosedAI license, open-source license which restricts only OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and Meta from commercial use
    Everything that includes copyleft code is open source. You can see https://opensource.apple.com for a full list. Source: 12 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Tails and XNU, you can also consider the following products

Linux Mint - Linux Mint is one of the most popular desktop Linux distributions and used by millions of people.

Linux kernel - The Linux kernel is the operating system kernel used by the Linux family of Unix-like operating...

Ubuntu - Ubuntu is a Debian Linux-based open source operating system for desktop computers.

GNU Hurd - GNU Hurd (usually referred to as the Hurd) is a computer operating system kernel designed as a...

Arch Linux - You've reached the website for Arch Linux, a lightweight and flexible Linux® distribution that tries to Keep It Simple. Currently we have official packages optimized for the x86-64 architecture.

Linux-libre - Linux-libre is a GNU package that is maintained from modified versions of the Linux kernel.