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Qubes OS: A reasonably secure operating system

qubes-os.org

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Re: Qubes OS: A reasonably secure operating system

#41

Post by accassar »

mtreis86 wrote: post #32
behnamoh wrote: post #7

A simple screenshot of the OS environment would have been nice. But generally, I don't think people adopt operating systems just by seeing new recommendations on Hacker News or different forums. Most people have settled on macOS and then Linux and then Windows. and within the Linux ecosystem most people just use Ubuntu or Fedora and that's it. I don't see anyone using these other esoteric operating systems as a daily…

Qubes is a Linux OS. It's like if you took Fedora and installed xen on it and booted up some VMs and the windows for them opened within the base OS instead of in individual system windows. Plus some cool magic with the file system to reduce redundancy and how many times you have to update things.

And cooler magic to colour code your window borders. Effectively gives you a VM running Firefox and you only see the Firefox window.

This will let you run your email in one window, and click on a link to open it in another VM.

Re: Qubes OS: A reasonably secure operating system

#42

Post by dmm »

irundebian wrote: post #3

Have used it for several months as my daily OS and dropped it because of bad graphics performance (only software rendering supported, many frame drops when watching HD videos on YT) and bad battery management. Due to software rendering the overall systems perfmance also dropped. So I cannot recommend it for people with high requirements on graphics and battery duration. Besides that it was an interesting and good exp…

> dropped it because of bad graphics performance (only software rendering supported, many frame drops when watching HD videos on YT)

Around Firefox 92 or 93 the new GPU-based renderer ported from Servo was made default and performance under Qubes became much worse. Unfortunately, it seems applications increasingly assume the presence of video acceleration and don't prioritize software rendering.

Re: Qubes OS: A reasonably secure operating system

#43

Post by dmm »

jwrallie wrote: post #35
irundebian wrote: post #3

Have used it for several months as my daily OS and dropped it because of bad graphics performance (only software rendering supported, many frame drops when watching HD videos on YT) and bad battery management. Due to software rendering the overall systems perfmance also dropped. So I cannot recommend it for people with high requirements on graphics and battery duration. Besides that it was an interesting and good exp…

I could tolerate no graphic acceleration and battery issues as part of the virtualization overhead, but I had issues with sleep (it would sleep and wake up perfectly only with when plugged in) and other related problems such as Windows VMs crashing when waking up from sleep. I was using it well at home but could not stand it when I travelled around with my laptop. I think Xen is mostly at fault for the issues, but I’…

Does sleep and wake work for you with a standard Linux distro? If so a newer kernel might help,like the kernel-latest-qubes-vm package, might help:

https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/managing-vm-kernels/#installing...

Re: Qubes OS: A reasonably secure operating system

#44

Post by nine_k »

Crontab wrote: post #15

Even though I never used Qubes OS I used to really enjoy Joanna Rutkowska's passion for it. Other women who's computing enthusiasm I enjoyed was Jessie Frazelle's writing and speaking about running everything in Docker on her laptop and Sacha Chua's love for Emacs.

Let me also add the brilliant https://justine.lol

Re: Qubes OS: A reasonably secure operating system

#45

Post by josephcsible »

dmm wrote: post #42
irundebian wrote: post #3

Have used it for several months as my daily OS and dropped it because of bad graphics performance (only software rendering supported, many frame drops when watching HD videos on YT) and bad battery management. Due to software rendering the overall systems perfmance also dropped. So I cannot recommend it for people with high requirements on graphics and battery duration. Besides that it was an interesting and good exp…

> dropped it because of bad graphics performance (only software rendering supported, many frame drops when watching HD videos on YT) Around Firefox 92 or 93 the new GPU-based renderer ported from Servo was made default and performance under Qubes became much worse. Unfortunately, it seems applications increasingly assume the presence of video acceleration and don't prioritize software rendering.

Isn't it reasonable for applications to assume that, now that virtually all hardware has it, even super-cheap computers like the Raspberry Pi?

Re: Qubes OS: A reasonably secure operating system

#46

Post by Narishma »

josephcsible wrote: post #45
dmm wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> dropped it because of bad graphics performance (only software rendering supported, many frame drops when watching HD videos on YT) Around Firefox 92 or 93 the new GPU-based renderer ported from Servo was made default and performance under Qubes became much worse. Unfortunately, it seems applications increasingly assume the presence of video acceleration and don't prioritize software rendering.

Isn't it reasonable for applications to assume that, now that virtually all hardware has it, even super-cheap computers like the Raspberry Pi?

The hardware may be there, but not necessarily the drivers.

Re: Qubes OS: A reasonably secure operating system

#47

Post by abtinf »

armSixtyFour wrote: post #27
zvmaz wrote: post #6

With zero-click exploits that we certainly do not know of, Qubes OS offers some peace of mind.

Unless there's a zero day in Xen in which case the entire security model falls apart. With all these cloud providers using Xen, I have no doubt that there's already one out there.

If there is a zero day in Xen, your attackers are probably also going to be having a very, very bad day.

Re: Qubes OS: A reasonably secure operating system

#49

Post by zamadatix »

Narishma wrote: post #46
josephcsible wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it reasonable for applications to assume that, now that virtually all hardware has it, even super-cheap computers like the Raspberry Pi?

The hardware may be there, but not necessarily the drivers.

The drivers are fine for GPU accelerated rendering of the app surfaces, even on the Pi. Hell, the drivers are even there >98% of the time for accelerated decode of the video format itself to boot.

Qube's unique choice in software only rendering for user applications is one born out of the isolation goals for security, not what the software/drivers/hardware could do.

Re: Qubes OS: A reasonably secure operating system

#50

Post by tasn »

I've always wanted to switch to qubes, but it just feels so constraining. It's safer to never leave the house, but I don't want to live in a self imposed prison. On the other hand, the isolation provided by containers and flatpak is more accessible, but with a much larger attack vector.

Maybe we need immutable OS + an audit layer on anything that could allow exploits to persist (bashrc and the likes).

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