Qubes OS 4.2.1 has been released | Hacker News Reader

Qubes OS 4.2.1 has been released

qubes-os.org

I might be in the minority here, but I haven't fallen in love with Qubes. Or I should say, my use case doesn't work with Qubes and that is generally laptop computing where I am taking my laptop to and from work, to and from school, etc. I felt like the sleep/wake functions were non-existent. Also, my laptop only has 16GB of RAM. Qubes seems to be great if you have a decently powerful desktop pushing several cores and at least 32GB of RAM if you actually want to have multiple VMs up a time.

I love the concept, maybe it would be better if instead of VMs it moved to containers? It would probably be less secure, but be a better use case for laptops.

Can anyone comment on that? Did I do something wrong?

The whole point of Qubes is the security provided by using VMs

I get the point of Qubes. What I am saying is that it doesn't work for my use case and if anyone had a better way of doing it. The solution of running every application inside a VM for security is nice, but also extremely resource intensive on CPU and RAM requirements and do not make the OS ideal for a laptop. Unless you have a pretty maxed out laptop in terms of specs.

While you could argue VM are more secure, other security tools like BSD Jails or containers could offer a similar level of security for a fraction of the resources that QubesOS uses.

And if I am really being honest, not many people need that level of security as the main goal of Qubes is to prevent a system compromise, but most people have cell phones, cloud accounts, and are getting their uses names and passwords leaked through security breaches all the time, something that Qubes cannot prevent.

Spectrum OS aims to more lightweight but its not a drop in replacement nor is it stable afaik. https://spectrum-os.org/

Thanks for the link, reading it now. :)

The livestream recordings page (which I am not suggesting you sit down and try to watch, just have a look at the titles/thumbnails) offers a nice peek into the development. IMO it provides a little better context of where the project is at than the project page.

https://diode.zone/c/spectrum/videos?s=1

Nowhere near ready, but definitely a project to check back in yearly on.

> The solution of running every application inside a VM

This is not how you're supposed to run Qubes: https://www.qubes-os.org/faq/#does-qubes-run-every-app-in-a-...

16 GB of RAM should be sufficient for a simple setup.

> other security tools like BSD Jails or containers could offer a similar level of security

Not really: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39250975

> I felt like the sleep/wake functions were non-existent.

This depends on the hardware. Sleep/wakeup is reliable for me.

> maybe it would be better if instead of VMs it moved to containers?

Don't Flatpak apps run in "containers" already? They're not exactly like Podman but are containerized nevertheless. This should probably work better for you.

I understand that Qubes targets a different threat model.

Qubes creates an amazing feeling of control and confidence, as well as improved organization of my digital life. I tried to list simple advantages of Qubes here: https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/how-to-pitch-qubes-os/4499/15

Interesting discussions in that thread. I also just really enjoyed the excitement that oozes out of the conversation.

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