Qubes OS

Is it cool or literally a freak OS ?

Both, which is its beauty. I should try it one of these days on my desktop. I would have earlier if not for MUH GAMES.

>>19916 It's kinda janky but overall cool. Very powerful and it accomplishes its goals well. I used it for a while but I switched away because of gayming; gpu-passthrough to a qube is possible in theory but very hard to set up and I always got freezes when I tried. I think it might have been some sort of vbios issue with my card.

>>19916 Yes, unless these gayming addicts I essentially exclusively use Qubes now on a machine with a neutered IME. Next order of business is attempting physical isolation with Qubes.

>>19916 Impossible to use anything else after using it. Why would you ever keep your personal data on same VM as Web Browser? Why would you ever not start browsing the web in a new VM each time? Why would your PDF reader be in an OS with access to the network? Qubes makes compartmentalization and enforcing policy easy.

>>19922 >Impossible to use anything else after using it. I used Qubes for about a month on my PC and then went back to arch. I just couldn't justify to myself the fact that everything was so complicated.

Qubes is underrated. I don't use it daily but if you're very security minded can't go wrong with it. Up there with the other security OS's like Whonix and Tails.

Qubes device recommendations? Preferably relatively new and with coreboot?

>>19923 > just couldn't justify to myself the fact that everything was so complicated. Its actually incredibly uncomplicated for what its providing. Arch doesn't automate the creation of disposible VMs and do a 'fusion mode' display of all applications on a single desktop. Imagine how difficult it would be on arch work to simulate Qubes. If I had to toss Qubes, I would switch back to arch, and only work inside virtual machines. I am not putting my Password manager in same VM as Internet browser ever again.

so yeah qubes is usable,if you ain't a gamer if you are the type of guy who simply uses his computer for writing code,doing work,browsing.emailing etc. Qubes is usable with it. There are still some drawbacks is you use this OS,the lack of 3D support/acceleration,if you have an AMD GPU like me,there aren't any issues,everything is rendered correctly,but if you own a NVIDIA GPU well rip buddy,won't or hardly works.On their website they recommend to use intels iGPU.

>>19928 nvidia gpu should work as long as you can get the proper drivers installed into dom0. Qubes ignores gpu acceleration almost everywhere and just software renders everything so gpu doesn't matter as long as you can get a display output

Its an interesting OS, that is safe to say. I've used it for some time, but it has it bugs from time to time. Also takes some time to get used to, when there is some stuff that needs to be configured in order to work probably.

It's a meme OS that's made just to tinker with it and nothing else. No real work can be done with it and it cripples your specs in half. Use it out of curiosity and for fun but never take it seriously

>>19935 but enough about OpenBSD

>Is it cool or literally a freak OS ? Yes.

I don't have a machine that even meets it's minimum system requirements at the moment. I would appreciate any commentary from anons in regard to their experience with it and what sort of specs would be needed to use it comfortably?

>>20099 I used qubes a few years ago. I didn't quite have enough RAM at the time, so I had to husband my resources quite aggressively (could only have 4 or 5 VMs open at the same time before it got stuttery from swapping). Still, it was surprisingly easy to use and I had no problem getting my everyday tasks done. Eventually I stopped using it due to the aforementioned reason, and because I prefer arch to Debian. >and what sort of specs would be needed to use it comfortably The official guidance on the qubes website is quite accurate. I was struggling with 8 gigabytes of DDR3, you will want 16.

>>20100 I should sepcify AppVMs, not any kind of VM is so memory heavy. If I had no AppVM open I think my RAM usage hovered around 1.5 GiB.

>>19916 It's an extremely high quality OS which actually values security. And it doesn't even require much tinkering or very advanced knowledge, it's actually pretty user-friendly. Linux - which I do currently use, as it's FOSS and not privacy-invasive - is still lacking when it comes to security. So, as soon as I get an X230 for a good price and in good conditions, I will definitely install Qubes (along with coreboot).

>>19927 >Arch doesn't automate the creation of disposible VMs Because it's not the job of the operating system but a program. You can do that with QEMU >'fusion mode' display of all applications on a single desktop AKA X11 forwarding >Imagine how difficult it would be on arch work to simulate Qubes Not that difficult

>>19927 I just mean I didn't have any real reason to continue using Qubes. >>20128 Sure Mr hotshot

Pain in the ass to get running but pretty darn good

>>20128 You don't know what you're talking about, and it would be far more difficult than you realize to establish a Qubes-like system on arch. For example, note that Qemu is not actually a trusted component in Qubes, only Xen is. Whenever qemu is required (for an HVM, e.g. for pci device passthrough) a hidden stub-domain VM is created solely to host its qemu process. This is for security reasons. Another feature is the VM templating system, which is a great help to managing updates and applications and state while keeping disk images ephemeral to prevent malware from persisting. Another critical feature not easily replicated on arch is the qrexec framework which is again necessary to integrate the VM workflow with the system. And there are many smaller things like the clipboard management, inter-qube file transfer via gui, split gpg, gui configuration of networking, colored window borders, etc. that make it a reasonably usable and secure system.

I've installed Qubes on a corebooted T420 recently with 8GB of RAM and while I'm almost at the limit of RAM use, it's mostly the CPU that seems to be the bottleneck. Though, the cheap MSATA SSD might also be the culprit. It's pretty cool, though, and I'll definitely use it for cases that need this level of security, but for streaming HD 3D pr0n it's not really suited.

>>20128 Explain how it would "not be that hard" in order to fuarrrking simulate qubes on arch, lol.

>>20585 just run it in qemu lol vms in vms buwhahaha what can go wrong

>>20586 If you think that's how qubes works you're an idiot.

>>19916 NONFREE BLOBS O N F R E E B L O B S

>>20753 The non-free blobs are CPU microcode updates that patch vulnerabilities like Spectre/Meltdown. For an OS that calls itself, fixing such an important exploit is essential, wouldn't you agree? Besides, even without those updates, you are still running non-free CPU microcode (even on a librebooted machine), the difference is that it's outdated/insecure. Even they openly recognize that this is an unfortunate situation: https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/certified-hardware/ >While we recognize the potential problems that proprietary CPU-vendor code can cause, we are also pragmatic enough to realize that we need to take smaller steps first, before we can implement even stronger countermeasures such as a stateless laptop. A switch to open source boot firmware is one such important step. So the problem isn't Qubes, the problem is the liberty disaster that is x86. Hopefully, one day, architectures like RISC-V will rise to mass adoption. And, of course, all the software made by the Qubes project is fully libre: https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/source-code/

>>20760 *calls itself "reasonably-secure"

I've never ran it before but I was curious on trying it with Whonix. I just simply wanted to have dedicated hardware for it more specifically before attempting. I was always curious on roughly how much RAM was really needed since I figured that it was somewhat bloated using GNOME being based off of Fedora as well as running Whonix being a VM inside of a VM.

>>20764 8gb of ram is sufficient

>>19922 I only recently started using it and feel the same. Using anything else now seems absurd. >>19923 I cant see why you would still feel that way after a month. The setup and learning process was quite fuarrrked but now it doesnt seem so bad. For development i feel it may be even more convenient because its so easy to have separate environments and just kill the qube and make another one if i fuarrrk it up

>>19916 I'm interested in using Qubes OS, but I'm confused about some stuff, when the OS opens up a new Qube for let's say a web browser, how does it exactly work? Will be a fresh install of the browser?, or will my settings and stuff be saved?

>>20793 Depends on how you configure your setup. You can have a browser profile with persistent settings just like you normally would. You can optionally run things in disposable VMs, these are one use VMs, they are used once and deleted afterwards so nothing upon them would be persistent.

Would Qubes be just as efficient in a VM or should I only use actual hardware while using it?

>>20797 No. You should either install Qubes OS on your computer or install another distro in your VM.