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QubesOS – A reasonably secure operating system

qubes-os.org

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Re: QubesOS – A reasonably secure operating system

#3

this is my next OS to experiment with. However i'm worried my toy laptop with 16gb of ram (thinkpad t480) wont cut it. Anyone want to chime in here?

16GB of RAM is adequate for Qubes, in practice you end up running a handful of Xen VMs, with most of the VMs (vault, disposable,...) using little RAM.

Re: QubesOS – A reasonably secure operating system

#4
post #3

this is my next OS to experiment with. However i'm worried my toy laptop with 16gb of ram (thinkpad t480) wont cut it. Anyone want to chime in here?

16GB of RAM is adequate for Qubes, in practice you end up running a handful of Xen VMs, with most of the VMs (vault, disposable,...) using little RAM.

The system requirements are specified as:

minimum 6GB RAM; 16GB recommended

https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/system-requirements/

Re: QubesOS – A reasonably secure operating system

#5
I used it when I worked as a hiring manager. For this task it is ideal. All the behavioral security measures, like only to open attachments from people you trust, break down when your job description is basically to figure out who you can trust.

Qubes comes with a "Convert to trusted PDF" out of the box. Joanna Rutkowska explained how it works under the hood pretty nicely[1]. The tldr is that it is very thorough. With Qubes it is convenient too.

I used Qubes to open the application mails and their attachments and converted the interesting ones to trusted PDFs which I then forwarded to the relevant people. All further communication was only with the trusted versions.

[1] https://blog.invisiblethings.org/2013/02/21/converting-untru...

Re: QubesOS – A reasonably secure operating system

#6

this is my next OS to experiment with. However i'm worried my toy laptop with 16gb of ram (thinkpad t480) wont cut it. Anyone want to chime in here?

Last time I tried to throw it on an old box it couldn't handle it due to the lack of IOMMU. Granted this was like... 5 or so years ago? I think my newer laptop could probably handle it, so maybe it would be worth giving another shot.

Re: QubesOS – A reasonably secure operating system

#9

this is my next OS to experiment with. However i'm worried my toy laptop with 16gb of ram (thinkpad t480) wont cut it. Anyone want to chime in here?

I've used this as my daily driver before when my workflow needed more crossplatform operability between windows and different varieties of linux. This was a long while ago on some old 2013 laptop with 16 gigs of ram and it worked fine.

The real thing you gotta watch out for is full compatibility with all the virtualization extensions it needs in the processor. Key in that old laptop working was that it was an i7.

Re: QubesOS – A reasonably secure operating system

#10
I hadn't checked on this project in some time, and last I looked it seemed to be stagnant. Good to see it going strong again.

I just remember that, hardware wise, there wasn't a lot of things that could run all aspects of the OS and be 100% with it. The "certified hardware" on the site also looks like it's out of date.

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