The whole point of Qubes OS is security. Security, security, security. The thing is it is also the best most integrated open source way to virtualize multiple Linux and Windows installs. I have tried it out on a second drive. It’s great. Until you want to copy a file from one qube to the other, copy and paste from one qube to the other etc etc.
Is there such a thing as a less secure Qubes? Something with its VM first user interface but with less friction for operations like moving files from one VM to the other copying from one VM to the other etc etc?
I know Linux with KVM can almost be that, if one had a very minimal linux install, and set up KVM VM’s to run applications in and such. It is almost there but the experience of creating a new Qube is very slick in a way that creating a new KVM VM isn’t. Plus there does not seem to be a way to get BOTH Windows and Linux apps seamlessly on the same desktop from multiple different VM’s.
According to the docs, it looks like copying files between VMs on QubesOS is available as a right-click context item or CLI How to copy and move files | Qubes OS. That’s pretty straightforward given these are separate OSes that are unaware of each other. This is a pretty unique feature they’re providing by orchestrating this through the hypervisor without any direct connectivity between the VMs.
I’m not aware of any other OS that provides pre-defined VM templates in the same way, but it is possible to set up KVM/libvirt with machine templates that you can clone as needed. KVM guests with the latest Spice guest tools Download allow for drag and drop copy between the VM and the host, but I don’t think it supports VM-to-VM direct copy.
I have qubes on another partition. Qubes R 4.2 and it is not showing me a context menu to copy files to another qube. It takes a command line argument to copy files from one qube to another.
This may have been easier in a past version but then in the name of tighter security it was made harder. I’ll take another look to be sure.
Setting up KVM/Libvirt with machine templates sounds like a good option for me. The real advantage qubes has over all of this is the UI which can make different windows in different VMs all appear to be a unified workspace.
I am aware of things like Cassowary that can do that for windows etc etc etc. They involve a lot of fiddling and tinkering that qubes does not. (On the other hand a great many other things are far harder on qubes).
I have set up some SBC with an SSD via USB-to-SATA adapter for file transfer duty before.
Alternatively, you can locally share a directory (or single file) via torrent.
The right-click context menu would have to be added to the Guest OS template image, it’s not something that would be added at runtime. IIUC they don’t provide Windows templates due to licensing concerns, so if you’re rolling your own Windows image you’d have to add that manually. I haven’t used Qubes in a long time though, mostly going off of memory and their published docs.
The real advantage qubes has over all of this is the UI which can make different windows in different VMs all appear to be a unified workspace.
IIRC VMWare workstation supports this, but when I used it last it had a significant performance penalty and that is not a free product.
Yes that would be great. I remember both VM ware workstation (even the free version) and I think Virtual Box had a “seamless mode”. They implemented it differently in both but basically ones Linux windows and WIndows windows lived in the same space. It wasn’t hacky to set up or anything. It is odd to me that something was more advanced in the past on Linux than it is now. (Leaving aside Qubes OS really ultimate expression of this).
By the by you are right the right click context menu item is there. So far it seems to only be for copying files to different App VM’s but not for copying things to Dom0.
Dom0 in Qubes … if this was any linux… would be the base install of the OS in which other things are running. It is necessary to ineract with it for certain things when one is just setting it up. I am going to try and see if I can do the things I want to do with it.
dom0 is another VM in Qubes, just a highly privileged one. Qubes runs on the Xen which is a type 1 hypervisor. Nothing you interact with is not a VM.
I genuinely don’t understand why you are trying to copy files to/from dom0. Its sole purpose is to be a minimal and lean (thus hopefully security-bug-free) coordination/management platform for the other VMs, Dom0 is not intended to be a general purpose OS experience and if you try to use it that way you’re going to have a bad time.
To install certain things requires copying files to Dom0. It’s not a big deal though since that is a rare thing to do. What was really bugging me was that it seemed like it would take terminal commands to copy files or copy and paste at all on a regular basis.
Overall I’m liking how Qubes makes virtualization a relatively simple task and integrates the whole workspace together. Just wish it could be that slick and straightforward on Linux.
Looks neat, but a little bit cumbersome to be practical for daily use. Depending on needs and workflows of course.
Sandboxing could definitely be more seamless and streamlined. Particularly on phones given the landscape of mobile malware (aka: social media apps who ask for unnecessary permissions)
Qubes is definitely a step in the right direction for making proper sandboxing and security the native default, rather than an afterthought.
QubesOS is cool and works well but the security focus makes it cumbersome as a daily driver.
I tried Citrix XenClient when it came out 10+ years ago, great idea but the (laptop) hardware of the day wasn’t powerful enough. Unfortunately XenClient was discontinued 2016.
A couple of years ago I looked for alternatives to QubesOS and found OpenXT, based on XenClient. Not sure how much activity there is in the project judging by the dates on their Confluence, but there are recent builds available. According to the hardware requirements, only Intel CPUs are supported.
