
Qubes OS 3.2 has been released - andrewdavidwong
https://www.qubes-os.org/news/2016/09/29/qubes-32/
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andyjohnson0
If anyone here uses Qubes then I'd be interested in learning about your
experience.

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regecks
Also using Qubes on an old Lenovo Thinkpad.

The only major con for me is that it takes a lot of RAM.The laptop only has
like 4GB so I can barely run my work and 'other work' VMs side by side. Often
one will not boot due to memory constraints.

I think it would be fine on a 16GB laptop. I just can't be bothered upgrading
that old hunk of junk.

I will bring Qubes over to my next laptop, if I ever do end up getting one. I
find it indispensable for traveling - isolating network/proxy VMs from each
other is amazing!

I'd also like to run i3 on it as the main WM. I think it is possible with some
trickery but I didn't try.

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hackermailman
Try djb's qubes manager instead of the default one
[https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/qubes-
users/7-gm_q...](https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/qubes-
users/7-gm_q3nkQ8)

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Taek
I use qubes on my primary work machine. Most of my activity comes out of one
of a few whonix vms.

It's a bit of a hill to climb, but I'm really happy with the result. If I need
to visit an untrusted website or install some garbage dependencies to try out
a new app, all I have to do is clone my current VM and install it in that.

I've been using it exclusively for about 3 weeks. I have compartmentalized my
personal, work, and 'Taek' lives, and even further important things like bank
account logins live in their own VM. Bitcoin in its own VM.

It's a lot of peace of mind. My key information has never been on the same
AppVM as a web browser. The vast majority of security compromises these days
come from web browsers. My password manager isn't even connected to the
internet.

The transition reminds me a lot of the transition I went through when I
switched to using exclusively Linux (from Windows). Some things are more
annoying. Some things you can't really do anymore. Some things are nicer, and
some things are a lot nicer. I'm not switching back, I'll be on Qubes from
here on out.

It took me maybe a full week to get integrated. That week was very low
productivity, but now I'm getting back into the groove. Qubes has i3 support,
which for me was going to be a dealbreaker. But... they support it (kde, xfce,
and i3) and that made me feel like I was at home.

I recommend it, but it's definitely only for power users at this point.

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fulafel
USB passthrough, good stuff. This is starting to sound very usable for
everyday use.

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rwl4
As a person who isn't familiar with Qubes, I wanted to find a nice quick
summary. The homepage didn't give me that. I clicked the Tour tab and was
greeted with this:

"Are you completely new to Qubes OS? We suggest watching the full 33 minute
video"

They really could intrigue more people like me if they would update their site
to be a bit more clear what they do. :)

~~~
nickpsecurity
They basically break your system into different VM's to isolate things from
one another. Compromising the Browser VM shouldn't hurt the Business Secrets
VM. One could even have two Browser VM's to separate risky sites from trusted
ones. There's other advantages to VM's like for software testing, upgrades,
backups, trimming the fat, etc.

The main thing Qubes brings to the table is building one on Xen with lots of
usability features to make things easy.

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cypherpunks01
Can anyone comment on how well the Debian template works for Qubes?

The last time I used Qubes it was pretty much Fedora-only, which I'm not as
comfortable with and it was one of the reasons I don't really use it at the
moment.

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talex5
I use a Qubes Debian VM for dev work. Works fine, except that it runs gnome-
keyring by default, which breaks ssh, and restores this config everytime I
upgrade (but easy to fix when it happens).

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chocolait
Would installing Qubes 3.2 on a Thinkpad X220 with 16GB of RAM provide
sufficiently good experience?

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contingencies
Anyone remember the old MIPS Cobalt Qube/Raq products? I wrote a VPN module
for them years ago, one of my first jobs... IIRC it was perl.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_Qube](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_Qube)

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davidcollantes
I remember then, I used to own one. How is this relevant (other than sharing a
partial name, that is)?

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contingencies
More than tangentially topic related is not a requirement I'm aware of :)

