Qubes OS

[myworkone]

Has anyone been actively running Qubes OS?

I am curious as to peoples experience with it.

Edit: Spelling

[Mastic_Warrior]

I have not used it personally but

Safer Computing

QubesOS and use fresh “untrusted” browsers every time. You can use Whonix and TOR with QubesOS as well. OpenBSD + Firefox. You can use something like IceWeasel if it makes you feel better. Privacy Badger and Privacy Possum are a must if you care about this thing. You can use Ghostery but I find that those two do as good if not a better job. Ubloc…

Safer Computing

I think you’re overestimating how much data is available to a website. I have to say, Qubes really sounds like what @hp185688 is looking for. In order to read the hard drive, you need to do one of two things: open a file dialog and “upload” (either expose it to the local JS, or actually upload it to a server) a file to the website. give the …

Gaming VM on Qubes OS : almost there (I think)

Hi everyone! I’ve attempted and gotten close to getting GPU passthrough to work on Qubes OS. I got a windows VM up and running in Qubes and passed through my 2080 super. It was found by the windows VM, but I couldnt install the drivers because of the infamous code 43 error on the Nvidia GPU. I found out that you can’t bypass the code 43 with Xen (…

[Caped_Kibitzer]

For several years, I have used Qubes OS daily as a “second computer” for most Web access. (This is being written in Qubes.) I am very satisfied with Qubes in this role. Early on, I explored moving my software development work to Qubes, but decided to keep a “regular” Linux for development. And I use other OSes as well.

Used in this way, Qubes offers a strong defense against malware which might be encountered while browsing the Web. It also provides a good way to download and work with untrusted data in a separate VM. That should significantly reduce the attack surface. But quite a bit of data is still available to those who can collect & correlate it: ISP, Google, Facebook, law enforcement, nation-state actors, etc. For Ultimate Privacy, additional measures would have to be taken.

This also “lets Qubes be Qubes”, using it just as intended. I don’t try to get Qubes to do “unnatural acts”.

Some characteristics to be aware of:

• Takes some time & effort to “grok” the Qubes Way;
• Supports only a single user;
• Is primarily, perhaps only, for client computing; is not a server;
• Is based on the Xen hypervisor; for me, each admin activity involves web search;
• the VM isolation essential to Qubes is also a nuisance when it is necessary to move data between VMs. I don’t find much need for this when used as above, but this is why I develop software elsewhere.

I have found Qubes to work well and reliably, except that it may not work on the newest hardware. (Qubes uses a Linux kernel which is updated periodically, but never the cutting edge.) There are frequent, often daily, updates and it is rare for these to cause problems. There is decent support & discussion online, but I don’t regard this as a strength - it can be an effort to track down correct answers to questions. C’est la net!

That’s my experience - quite good on the whole. I recommend it if it suits your needs.

[Caped_Kibitzer]

I would add that Qubes has an old-fashioned look & feel, a little awkward, since it is uses XFCE for desktop. That doesn’t bother me at all, but others may have a different opinion.

[foppe]

Someone’s currently working and had some success getting an rx 580 and GTX 1070 to work in a VM on an alpha of the next release, discussing their issues debugging it here: Ryzen 7000 serie - #70 by neowutran - Hardware Issues - Qubes OS Forum