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2023-08-08 12:12:46Z (last updated 2024-05-15 14:47:15Z)
Qubes OS is what it self describes as "A reasonably secure operating system", and also "a free and open-source, security-oriented operating system for single-user desktop computing".
Qubes OS is basically security by compartmentalization, but as an operating system.
I wanted to try it out. I had a laptop with quite a bit more RAM laying around, so I used it as a Qubes OS install.
The first time I tried Qubes OS... it broke. Somehow. I don't understand.
Much later to now, it is the second time I tried installing Qubes OS. And it went... mostly well.
I was met with an installer, as expected. After the installer, a reboot into the main thing came into the configuration... again? I thought I had configured the system at setup time!
Oh but no, you got to configure how you want the qubes to be organized (or whatever). I'd recommend not touching options as the default seems sane (and my choices of a disposable sys-net qube was not great).
After clicking the "FINISH CONFIGURATION" button, you must now wait. Then the progress bar stops. So I reboot back into configuration and try again. Then it stops. I repeat once more. Progress stops later, but progress is being made!
Finishing the configuration, you should be now on the login screen. You can then login.
Qubes OS certainly takes a much different approach to security and computers. So much so that the recommended system requirements asks for 16 GIGABYTES OF RAM, something which I just somehow don't have in 2023. It's also probably not enough. :P
Qubes OS recommended system requirements
Anyways, I used a laptop. However, the laptop I used is slow. It does have 16 GB of RAM, which is nice. That doesn't make it any fast.
I got some updates, and used the updater. The updater took 300 seconds, and also 600 seconds to update about 2 things. That's 5 minutes and 10 minutes respectively, by the way, which is quite a long time for some updates (although I did download them over tor).
I played around with it, used Tor Browser, searched some stuff related to Qubes OS, and put the computer aside. I might play around with it more later. Maybe Alpine Linux in Qubes OS?