Qubes OS

Reader supplied reviews for Qubes OS Average rating 8.8 from 38 review(s) What are your thoughts on Qubes OS? Please include a few pros and a few cons, along with your overall impression of the operating system. Our FAQ page has tips on writing a good mini-review. Version: -- 4.2.34.1.23.2.121.0 Rating:    -- 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 out of 10 Your review (minimum 250 words): Past reviews - sort by: DateVotes Version: 4.2.3 Rating: 7 Date: 2024-12-11 Votes: 0 I am a non-technical user with experience in Windows, Ubuntu, Manjaro and GhostBSD. Having learned something about virtual machines with VirtualBox, and having heard about the security virtues of Qubes, I decided to give it a try. I read in the supporting documentation that it really cannot run in a virtual machine environment. I tried that nevertheless and it would not install, but of course this was not unexpected. I considered a complete install on a separate laptop, or installation into a partition but rejected both, mainly because I know I don't have enough experience to rescue a laptop from an installation disaster in those two scenarios. This left me with an installation on a live USB disk, which succeeded my first try. However, neither the installation directions nor (as far as I could find) the community comments warned about or explained the issues with allocating sufficient space for the vm-pool - a most critical issue. Once I was installed, with no apparent opportunity to allocate space, I discovered that I did not have enough space allocated to the vm-pool to even run one qube. I still had a chance to test-drive the desktop environment and learn more about how the OS works, but still at this time I don't know how to solve the vm-pool problem with a USB drive (mine has plenty of space). Putting my hands on the system, I find it elegant, and -- once I understood the basic design -- attractive. I am intrigued with the possibility of running different OS's in different qubes, but have since learned that it may not be possible to install ones I need, such as Windows, and am not sure whether it will work with Ubuntu or Manjaro or GhostBSD, which I like. In researching my installation issues, I discovered many limitations when trying to install it on just any laptop. I have decided to explore it later, either if I have an expendable laptop (not likely), or when I need a new laptop and can purchase one with Qubes OS installed out of the box. Even so, I remain nervous about facing hardware compatibility issues in the future with upgrades to the system. This will cause me to watch sources like DistroWatch to get more comfortable with those aspects. Bottom line, I love the idea, but I'm not sure my limited needs for virtual machines will be worth the effort it will require of me. Stay tuned. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 4.2.3 Rating: 9 Date: 2024-10-27 Votes: 1 Qubes is awesome for teaching the basics of how to use virtualization to increase security. I ran it as a daily driver for quite some time until I decided to switch to OpenBSD because not a huge XFCE fan in general. I still use it one my big slow hard drive that I use to back all my other stuff up with. Its great for that in that you can run whatever OS as a guest to back up the filesystem you care about natively. And with LVM it will actually create the filesystem with native performance which is great. Its still probably the most secure OS there is but it has other use cases as well. I deducted 1 point because forced to use XFCE which not a huge fan of. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 4.2.1 Rating: 10 Date: 2024-05-28 Votes: 46 Rocking Qubes on a 2011 laptop (2nd gen Intel i5 (Hyperthreading disabled), 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD) is WAY smoother than you'd think, you can eaisly run up to ~10 VMs without any performance issues, even with a full KDE Plasma desktop which is notorious for being a resource hog Best parts about it are the control over networking, on a VM for accessing your home network you can limit outgoing connections to just the LAN, or for a vault VM you can cut networking altogether for peace of mind, being able to use DisposableVMs for anything that doesn't need persistent storage eg. browsing the web, and the fact it's just a Type 1 Hypervisor, you can literally run Windows on it if you want Even for advanced users it can be difficult to use because of it's abstractions like templates, ServiceVMs and the global clipboard, but the wiki is amazingly written, getting you ready in a couple minutes The pages for advanced users are on par, or even better than Arch Wiki, with pages on practically anything you could ever want to modify on the base system Before installing you should read the Wiki first. At the end of the day Qubes isn't a silver bullet, but a tool (arguably the best one) for keeping yourself safe, and what good is a tool you don't know how to use? Was this review helpful? Yes No See all 38 reader reviews of Qubes OS...