{"slug": "qubes-os", "name": "Qubes OS", "category": "os", "category_name": "Operating systems and desktop", "description": "Security-focused desktop operating system that isolates apps and tasks in separate Xen virtual machines.", "recommenders": 14, "commenters": 17, "warners": 0, "score": 13.312, "rising": 0.07, "first": "2025-11-21", "latest": "2026-10-30", "why": "Liked for isolating apps and tasks in separate VMs, including throwaway disposable ones, and several commenters run it as a stable daily driver.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 22, "neutral": 2, "compare": 2, "warn": 0}, "spark": [2, 2, 3, 1, 1, 2, 1, 3, 2, 3, 1, 1], "listed": true, "loved": ["VM isolation", "Daily driver"], "caveat": "Graphics acceleration", "short_quote": "Qubes OS, my daily driver. Btw it already exists and is stable.", "icon": true, "domain": "qubes-os.org", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://www.qubes-os.org/", "pricing": "open source", "aliases": ["Qubes OS", "QubesOS"], "verdict": [{"text": "Liked for isolating apps and tasks in separate VMs, including throwaway disposable ones,", "cites": [{"id": 744321728, "item_id": 46520108, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46520108", "by": "ZebusJesus", "date": "2026-01-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Everything is its own VM, you can run apps in secure environments and when you close them it get rid of them.", "excerpt": "Qubes https://www.qubes-os.org/downloads/ Everything is its own VM, you can run apps in secure environments and when you close them it get rid of them. You can even create networking VM's have that connected to a VPN and then make your other VMs go through it for a secure connection. There is a lot you can do with it for privacy. Also in windows pro you have windows sandbox, when you close the sandbox everything is d", "context": "", "use_case": "private, compartmentalized OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Private Operating System"}, {"id": 799764882, "item_id": 49985305, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49985305", "by": "lrvick", "date": "2026-10-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "As a QubesOS user jailing an agent for one job to one VM is easy", "excerpt": "My go to right now is jcode, and doing a lot of one-shot experiments. Like I have a session being my MPD DJ as my local spotify right now. That said for persistent things like interfacing with homeassistant etc I am playing with zeroclaw. I run the same model as you for coding. For more sane automation tasks i recommend doing everything possible with MPCs so you can tell it to only use existing tools. ymmv By no mean", "context": "QubesOS user", "use_case": "isolating agents in VMs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Meta\u2019s Muse is an adorable privacy and security dumpster fire"}, {"id": 736079713, "item_id": 46004982, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46004982", "by": "henrixd", "date": "2025-11-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I also use temporary disposable virtual machines in QubesOS to isolate those kinds of activities", "excerpt": "This might not be exactly what you meant or wanted, but I use OpenSnitch, which alerts me about all new connections. I also use temporary disposable virtual machines in QubesOS to isolate those kinds of activities from my more vulnerable systems.", "context": "", "use_case": "isolating risky activity", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Securing Pip and NPM package use?"}, {"id": 747453920, "item_id": 46715870, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46715870", "by": "nullc", "date": "2026-01-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I used disposable VMs in qubes on a computer with a one way (in only) network connection", "excerpt": "To review documents received from a hostile and dishonest actor in litigation I used disposable VMs in qubes on a computer with a one way (in only) network connection[1], while running the tools (e.g. evince) in valgrind and with another terminal watching attempted network traffic (an approach that did detect attempted network callbacks from some documents but I don't think any were PDFs). This would have been useful", "context": "reviewed documents from a hostile actor in litigation", "use_case": "reviewing hostile documents", "switched_from": "", "story": "Take potentially dangerous PDFs, and convert them to safe PDFs"}]}, {"text": " and several commenters run it as a stable daily driver.", "cites": [{"id": 778179040, "item_id": 48636190, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48636190", "by": "fsflover", "date": "2026-06-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Qubes OS, my daily driver. Btw it already exists and is stable.", "excerpt": "Sounds like security through compartmentalization is more user-friendly: You can run whatever you want and how you want it in a dedicated VM, keeping sensitive things safely isolated, without much thinking of what to enable. Case in point: Qubes OS, my daily driver. Btw it already exists and is stable.", "context": "daily Qubes user", "use_case": "security via compartmentalization", "switched_from": "", "story": "NSA director: 'Mythos \"broke into almost all of our classified systems in hours\""}, {"id": 773726912, "item_id": 48357932, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48357932", "by": "lepuski", "date": "2026-06-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I\u2019ve daily-driven Qubes for about a year and it\u2019s been easier than I expected.", "excerpt": "Given how common supply-chain vulnerabilities have become, I\u2019m surprised more teams haven\u2019t adopted Qubes. To compromise a Qubes setup you\u2019d need a Xen sandbox escape which is possible but vastly more difficult than running a simple bash script from a post-install script. I\u2019ve daily-driven Qubes for about a year and it\u2019s been easier than I expected. The main drawback is gaming because you need a second GPU and the GP", "context": "daily-drives Qubes for a year", "use_case": "daily driver secure OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "QubesOS \u2013 The best defense against (supply chain) attacks"}, {"id": 742997488, "item_id": 46437343, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46437343", "by": "soulofmischief", "date": "2025-12-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've been running either Qubes OS or KVM/QEMU based VMs as my desktop daily driver for 10 years.", "excerpt": "I've been running either Qubes OS or KVM/QEMU based VMs as my desktop daily driver for 10 years. Nothing runs on bare metal except for the host kernel/hypervisor and virt stack. I've achieved near-native performance for intensive activities like gaming, music and visual production. Hardware acceleration is kind of a mess but using tricks like GPU passthrough for multiple cards, dedicated audio cards and and block dev", "context": "does client work, security-conscious", "use_case": "virtualized desktop daily driver", "switched_from": "", "story": "Toro: Deploy Applications as Unikernels"}]}, {"text": " The most common complaint is weak graphics hardware acceleration,", "cites": [{"id": 791957296, "item_id": 49497331, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49497331", "by": "zby", "date": "2026-08-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I am still impressed by QubesOS track and I use it for my dedicated 'financials' laptop.", "excerpt": "I am still impressed by QubesOS track and I use it for my dedicated 'financials' laptop. IMHO the thing that is holding back QubesOS is the lack of hardware acceleration for graphics - maybe now when dual monitor setups are getting popular this could be a workaround for the security considerations?", "context": "", "use_case": "dedicated financials laptop", "switched_from": "", "story": "Arbitrary code execution in QubesOS via copy-to-VM error reporting backchannel"}, {"id": 742997488, "item_id": 46437343, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46437343", "by": "soulofmischief", "date": "2025-12-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've been running either Qubes OS or KVM/QEMU based VMs as my desktop daily driver for 10 years.", "excerpt": "I've been running either Qubes OS or KVM/QEMU based VMs as my desktop daily driver for 10 years. Nothing runs on bare metal except for the host kernel/hypervisor and virt stack. I've achieved near-native performance for intensive activities like gaming, music and visual production. Hardware acceleration is kind of a mess but using tricks like GPU passthrough for multiple cards, dedicated audio cards and and block dev", "context": "does client work, security-conscious", "use_case": "virtualized desktop daily driver", "switched_from": "", "story": "Toro: Deploy Applications as Unikernels"}]}, {"text": " which means gaming needs a second GPU and an annoying passthrough setup.", "cites": [{"id": 773726912, "item_id": 48357932, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48357932", "by": "lepuski", "date": "2026-06-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I\u2019ve daily-driven Qubes for about a year and it\u2019s been easier than I expected.", "excerpt": "Given how common supply-chain vulnerabilities have become, I\u2019m surprised more teams haven\u2019t adopted Qubes. To compromise a Qubes setup you\u2019d need a Xen sandbox escape which is possible but vastly more difficult than running a simple bash script from a post-install script. I\u2019ve daily-driven Qubes for about a year and it\u2019s been easier than I expected. The main drawback is gaming because you need a second GPU and the GP", "context": "daily-drives Qubes for a year", "use_case": "daily driver secure OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "QubesOS \u2013 The best defense against (supply chain) attacks"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "VM isolation", "summary": "Each app or job runs in its own VM, so a compromise or lag stays contained.", "quotes": [{"id": 744321728, "item_id": 46520108, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46520108", "by": "ZebusJesus", "date": "2026-01-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Everything is its own VM, you can run apps in secure environments and when you close them it get rid of them.", "excerpt": "Qubes https://www.qubes-os.org/downloads/ Everything is its own VM, you can run apps in secure environments and when you close them it get rid of them. You can even create networking VM's have that connected to a VPN and then make your other VMs go through it for a secure connection. There is a lot you can do with it for privacy. Also in windows pro you have windows sandbox, when you close the sandbox everything is d", "context": "", "use_case": "private, compartmentalized OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Private Operating System"}, {"id": 792113888, "item_id": 49507118, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49507118", "by": "lrvick", "date": "2026-08-31", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "each of those unprivileged apps runs in a dedicated virtual machine because I use QubesOS", "excerpt": "A bit more than experimenting. I have designed several security hardened linux operating systems for major financial institutions. There are many well established patterns for further segmenting user workloads, once far removed from real system root which is there is no good reason to expose. In my case each of those unprivileged apps runs in a dedicated virtual machine because I use QubesOS, though for many use case", "context": "designs security hardened Linux systems for financial institutions", "use_case": "isolating unprivileged apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Omarchy: Any User Process Can Escalate to Root"}, {"id": 755404128, "item_id": 47212758, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47212758", "by": "diacritical", "date": "2026-03-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The good thing is that if a VM lags, only that VM lags; Qubes itself and other VMs don't.", "excerpt": "Sorry for the late reply. I can't recommend specific HW as I'm not using anything new or beefy and I'm not running any CPU or GPU intensive things on Qubes. There's the Qubes Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) where people have added their hardware: https://www.qubes-os.org/hcl/ If and when I decide to upgrade, I'll also ask in the forums. Not all hardware supports all the features required for the security. Some hard", "context": "runs Qubes on desktop and several laptops", "use_case": "compartmentalized desktop OS", "switched_from": "", "story": null}]}, {"label": "Daily driver", "summary": "Users have run it daily for a year or more and call it stable and easier than expected.", "quotes": [{"id": 778179040, "item_id": 48636190, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48636190", "by": "fsflover", "date": "2026-06-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Qubes OS, my daily driver. Btw it already exists and is stable.", "excerpt": "Sounds like security through compartmentalization is more user-friendly: You can run whatever you want and how you want it in a dedicated VM, keeping sensitive things safely isolated, without much thinking of what to enable. Case in point: Qubes OS, my daily driver. Btw it already exists and is stable.", "context": "daily Qubes user", "use_case": "security via compartmentalization", "switched_from": "", "story": "NSA director: 'Mythos \"broke into almost all of our classified systems in hours\""}, {"id": 773726912, "item_id": 48357932, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48357932", "by": "lepuski", "date": "2026-06-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I\u2019ve daily-driven Qubes for about a year and it\u2019s been easier than I expected.", "excerpt": "Given how common supply-chain vulnerabilities have become, I\u2019m surprised more teams haven\u2019t adopted Qubes. To compromise a Qubes setup you\u2019d need a Xen sandbox escape which is possible but vastly more difficult than running a simple bash script from a post-install script. I\u2019ve daily-driven Qubes for about a year and it\u2019s been easier than I expected. The main drawback is gaming because you need a second GPU and the GP", "context": "daily-drives Qubes for a year", "use_case": "daily driver secure OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "QubesOS \u2013 The best defense against (supply chain) attacks"}, {"id": 742997488, "item_id": 46437343, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46437343", "by": "soulofmischief", "date": "2025-12-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've been running either Qubes OS or KVM/QEMU based VMs as my desktop daily driver for 10 years.", "excerpt": "I've been running either Qubes OS or KVM/QEMU based VMs as my desktop daily driver for 10 years. Nothing runs on bare metal except for the host kernel/hypervisor and virt stack. I've achieved near-native performance for intensive activities like gaming, music and visual production. Hardware acceleration is kind of a mess but using tricks like GPU passthrough for multiple cards, dedicated audio cards and and block dev", "context": "does client work, security-conscious", "use_case": "virtualized desktop daily driver", "switched_from": "", "story": "Toro: Deploy Applications as Unikernels"}]}, {"label": "Disposable VMs", "summary": "Throwaway VMs are used to safely open untrusted files and risky activities.", "quotes": [{"id": 747453920, "item_id": 46715870, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46715870", "by": "nullc", "date": "2026-01-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I used disposable VMs in qubes on a computer with a one way (in only) network connection", "excerpt": "To review documents received from a hostile and dishonest actor in litigation I used disposable VMs in qubes on a computer with a one way (in only) network connection[1], while running the tools (e.g. evince) in valgrind and with another terminal watching attempted network traffic (an approach that did detect attempted network callbacks from some documents but I don't think any were PDFs). This would have been useful", "context": "reviewed documents from a hostile actor in litigation", "use_case": "reviewing hostile documents", "switched_from": "", "story": "Take potentially dangerous PDFs, and convert them to safe PDFs"}, {"id": 736079713, "item_id": 46004982, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46004982", "by": "henrixd", "date": "2025-11-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I also use temporary disposable virtual machines in QubesOS to isolate those kinds of activities", "excerpt": "This might not be exactly what you meant or wanted, but I use OpenSnitch, which alerts me about all new connections. I also use temporary disposable virtual machines in QubesOS to isolate those kinds of activities from my more vulnerable systems.", "context": "", "use_case": "isolating risky activity", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Securing Pip and NPM package use?"}, {"id": 744321728, "item_id": 46520108, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46520108", "by": "ZebusJesus", "date": "2026-01-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Everything is its own VM, you can run apps in secure environments and when you close them it get rid of them.", "excerpt": "Qubes https://www.qubes-os.org/downloads/ Everything is its own VM, you can run apps in secure environments and when you close them it get rid of them. You can even create networking VM's have that connected to a VPN and then make your other VMs go through it for a secure connection. There is a lot you can do with it for privacy. Also in windows pro you have windows sandbox, when you close the sandbox everything is d", "context": "", "use_case": "private, compartmentalized OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Private Operating System"}]}, {"label": "Small attack surface", "summary": "Commenters say attacks would need a Xen sandbox escape, which is much harder than typical supply-chain exploits.", "quotes": [{"id": 792125184, "item_id": 49507824, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49507824", "by": "throwawayffffas", "date": "2026-08-31", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Very small attack surface, I have been using qubes for years", "excerpt": "Very small attack surface, I have been using qubes for years, never had to copy a file from dom0 to a vm.", "context": "", "use_case": "secure desktop OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Arbitrary code execution in QubesOS via copy-to-VM error reporting backchannel"}, {"id": 773726912, "item_id": 48357932, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48357932", "by": "lepuski", "date": "2026-06-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I\u2019ve daily-driven Qubes for about a year and it\u2019s been easier than I expected.", "excerpt": "Given how common supply-chain vulnerabilities have become, I\u2019m surprised more teams haven\u2019t adopted Qubes. To compromise a Qubes setup you\u2019d need a Xen sandbox escape which is possible but vastly more difficult than running a simple bash script from a post-install script. I\u2019ve daily-driven Qubes for about a year and it\u2019s been easier than I expected. The main drawback is gaming because you need a second GPU and the GP", "context": "daily-drives Qubes for a year", "use_case": "daily driver secure OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "QubesOS \u2013 The best defense against (supply chain) attacks"}]}, {"label": "Hardware support", "summary": "It has run well on modern AMD laptops and on a Thinkpad.", "quotes": [{"id": 785269840, "item_id": 49079365, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49079365", "by": "handedness", "date": "2026-07-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've run it on pretty modern AMD mobile chipsets with a lot of success.", "excerpt": "Generally speaking, if your Wi-Fi works on Debian and/or Fedora, it should work on Qubes OS. There are exceptions to that, of course. On a desktop PC you'll have to make some tradeoffs versus most laptops, namely integrating sys-net and sys-usb, but the installer will handle that for you. You'll want to auto-accept your keyboard and mouse, and try not to shut down sys-net. But you'll learn. Since your concern is isol", "context": "Qubes OS user", "use_case": "isolating untrusted software", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: How to deal with security implications of running/installing projects?"}, {"id": 763244064, "item_id": 47702754, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47702754", "by": "niam", "date": "2026-04-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've thrown it on my carry-around Thinkpad to give it a shot and I like it so far.", "excerpt": "Coincidentally I started toying around with it this week. It's pretty cool. I've known about it at least since Snowden namedropped it, but the main reasons I hadn't tried it before: - I already isolate workloads between VMs or containers - Wayland support isn't really there yet without breaking the interop that Qubes provides - Personal Qubes use cases (e.g banking) overlap with GrapheneOS profiles for me, which I al", "context": "", "use_case": "compartmentalized OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Is there some sort of stigma around Qubes OS on HN?"}]}, {"label": "Privacy setups", "summary": "It supports Whonix and VPN networking VMs that other VMs route through.", "quotes": [{"id": 782558321, "item_id": 48909895, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48909895", "by": "fsflover", "date": "2026-07-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Whonix on Qubes to access HN and other websites.", "excerpt": "> You already can't do any of these things without some kind of governmental issued ID which already has your birthdate on it. Do you have to present this ID for every purchase you make or every website you visit? Will it be stored and processed by every shop you enter? If not, how is this relevant here? Currently, the personal data exists but is not accessed by anyone unless it is really required. And even then, the", "context": "privacy-conscious user", "use_case": "compartmentalized desktop", "switched_from": "", "story": "European \"age verification\" \"app\" forcing everyone to use Android or iOS"}, {"id": 744321728, "item_id": 46520108, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46520108", "by": "ZebusJesus", "date": "2026-01-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Everything is its own VM, you can run apps in secure environments and when you close them it get rid of them.", "excerpt": "Qubes https://www.qubes-os.org/downloads/ Everything is its own VM, you can run apps in secure environments and when you close them it get rid of them. You can even create networking VM's have that connected to a VPN and then make your other VMs go through it for a secure connection. There is a lot you can do with it for privacy. Also in windows pro you have windows sandbox, when you close the sandbox everything is d", "context": "", "use_case": "private, compartmentalized OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Private Operating System"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "Graphics acceleration", "summary": "There is no hardware graphics acceleration by default, and gaming needs GPU passthrough.", "quotes": [{"id": 791957296, "item_id": 49497331, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49497331", "by": "zby", "date": "2026-08-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I am still impressed by QubesOS track and I use it for my dedicated 'financials' laptop.", "excerpt": "I am still impressed by QubesOS track and I use it for my dedicated 'financials' laptop. IMHO the thing that is holding back QubesOS is the lack of hardware acceleration for graphics - maybe now when dual monitor setups are getting popular this could be a workaround for the security considerations?", "context": "", "use_case": "dedicated financials laptop", "switched_from": "", "story": "Arbitrary code execution in QubesOS via copy-to-VM error reporting backchannel"}, {"id": 773726912, "item_id": 48357932, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48357932", "by": "lepuski", "date": "2026-06-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I\u2019ve daily-driven Qubes for about a year and it\u2019s been easier than I expected.", "excerpt": "Given how common supply-chain vulnerabilities have become, I\u2019m surprised more teams haven\u2019t adopted Qubes. To compromise a Qubes setup you\u2019d need a Xen sandbox escape which is possible but vastly more difficult than running a simple bash script from a post-install script. I\u2019ve daily-driven Qubes for about a year and it\u2019s been easier than I expected. The main drawback is gaming because you need a second GPU and the GP", "context": "daily-drives Qubes for a year", "use_case": "daily driver secure OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "QubesOS \u2013 The best defense against (supply chain) attacks"}, {"id": 742997488, "item_id": 46437343, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46437343", "by": "soulofmischief", "date": "2025-12-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've been running either Qubes OS or KVM/QEMU based VMs as my desktop daily driver for 10 years.", "excerpt": "I've been running either Qubes OS or KVM/QEMU based VMs as my desktop daily driver for 10 years. Nothing runs on bare metal except for the host kernel/hypervisor and virt stack. I've achieved near-native performance for intensive activities like gaming, music and visual production. Hardware acceleration is kind of a mess but using tricks like GPU passthrough for multiple cards, dedicated audio cards and and block dev", "context": "does client work, security-conscious", "use_case": "virtualized desktop daily driver", "switched_from": "", "story": "Toro: Deploy Applications as Unikernels"}]}, {"label": "Hardware compatibility", "summary": "Not all hardware supports the features Qubes needs, so check the compatibility list.", "quotes": [{"id": 755404128, "item_id": 47212758, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47212758", "by": "diacritical", "date": "2026-03-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The good thing is that if a VM lags, only that VM lags; Qubes itself and other VMs don't.", "excerpt": "Sorry for the late reply. I can't recommend specific HW as I'm not using anything new or beefy and I'm not running any CPU or GPU intensive things on Qubes. There's the Qubes Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) where people have added their hardware: https://www.qubes-os.org/hcl/ If and when I decide to upgrade, I'll also ask in the forums. Not all hardware supports all the features required for the security. Some hard", "context": "runs Qubes on desktop and several laptops", "use_case": "compartmentalized desktop OS", "switched_from": "", "story": null}, {"id": 785269840, "item_id": 49079365, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49079365", "by": "handedness", "date": "2026-07-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've run it on pretty modern AMD mobile chipsets with a lot of success.", "excerpt": "Generally speaking, if your Wi-Fi works on Debian and/or Fedora, it should work on Qubes OS. There are exceptions to that, of course. On a desktop PC you'll have to make some tradeoffs versus most laptops, namely integrating sys-net and sys-usb, but the installer will handle that for you. You'll want to auto-accept your keyboard and mouse, and try not to shut down sys-net. But you'll learn. Since your concern is isol", "context": "Qubes OS user", "use_case": "isolating untrusted software", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: How to deal with security implications of running/installing projects?"}]}, {"label": "Usability", "summary": "One commenter says using it as a daily driver can be painful.", "quotes": [{"id": 754969856, "item_id": 47185616, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47185616", "by": "grouchypumpkin", "date": "2026-02-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "But with some improvements, I think it\u2019s the right way to do it.", "excerpt": "QubesOS was built to give sandboxes kernel isolation via a hypervisor. It\u2019s not surprising that most people don\u2019t know about it, because QubesOS as a daily driver can be painful. But with some improvements, I think it\u2019s the right way to do it.", "context": "", "use_case": "sandbox isolation via hypervisor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Let's Discuss Sandbox Isolation"}]}, {"label": "Wayland support", "summary": "Wayland support isn't ready without breaking Qubes' interop features.", "quotes": [{"id": 763244064, "item_id": 47702754, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47702754", "by": "niam", "date": "2026-04-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've thrown it on my carry-around Thinkpad to give it a shot and I like it so far.", "excerpt": "Coincidentally I started toying around with it this week. It's pretty cool. I've known about it at least since Snowden namedropped it, but the main reasons I hadn't tried it before: - I already isolate workloads between VMs or containers - Wayland support isn't really there yet without breaking the interop that Qubes provides - Personal Qubes use cases (e.g banking) overlap with GrapheneOS profiles for me, which I al", "context": "", "use_case": "compartmentalized OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Is there some sort of stigma around Qubes OS on HN?"}]}], "who": [{"by": "lrvick", "context": "QubesOS user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49985305", "date": "2026-10-06"}, {"by": "nullc", "context": "amateur radio user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49691316", "date": "2026-09-14"}, {"by": "handedness", "context": "Qubes OS user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49079365", "date": "2026-07-27"}, {"by": "fsflover", "context": "privacy-conscious user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48909895", "date": "2026-07-14"}, {"by": "lepuski", "context": "daily-drives Qubes for a year", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48357932", "date": "2026-06-01"}, {"by": "diacritical", "context": "runs Qubes on desktop and several laptops", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47212758", "date": "2026-03-01"}, {"by": "soulofmischief", "context": "does client work, security-conscious", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46437343", "date": "2025-12-30"}], "tags": ["for security-focused users", "for privacy", "for sandboxing AI agents", "for opening untrusted files", "for laptops"], "use_cases": ["isolating untrusted software", "daily driver secure os", "hardening desktop", "security domains", "isolating agents in vms", "daily os with vm isolation"], "compared": [{"slug": "fedora", "name": "Fedora", "co": 2, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "grapheneos", "name": "GrapheneOS", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50264368", "title": "Partitioning my digital life into security domains (2011)", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49496918", "title": "Arbitrary code execution in QubesOS via copy-to-VM error reporting backchannel", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49977588", "title": "Meta\u2019s Muse is an adorable privacy and security dumpster fire", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49675902", "title": "Linux Zoom client proactively reading everything written to X11 clipboard", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49587903", "title": "Research carried out using NetBSD", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49499854", "title": "Omarchy: Any User Process Can Escalate to Root", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"recommend": 2}, "2025-12": {"recommend": 2}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 1}, "2026-02": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-03": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-04": {"recommend": 2}, "2026-05": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-06": {"recommend": 3}, "2026-07": {"recommend": 2}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 3}, "2026-09": {"compare": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-10": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 1, "compare": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 804790992, "item_id": 50299437, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50299437", "by": "Terr_", "date": "2026-10-30", "stance": "compare", "quote": "perhaps Qubes is still something to look into", "excerpt": "Recently I've been musing about how to harden my home desktop setup, and perhaps Qubes is still something to look into. At present, I still feel a little pang of paranoia/guilt whenever I use sudo from the same account I do most of my web-browsing on. I can put most software-development stuff into a rootless Docker container to deter supply-chain attacks--I'm not sure how that compares to Qubes virtualization--but if", "context": "home desktop user", "use_case": "hardening desktop", "switched_from": "", "story": "Partitioning my digital life into security domains (2011)"}, {"id": 804789008, "item_id": 50299313, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50299313", "by": "kristianp", "date": "2026-10-30", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Looks like Qubes OS is still alive", "excerpt": "Looks like Qubes OS is still alive: https://github.com/QubesOS/", "context": "", "use_case": "security domains", "switched_from": "", "story": "Partitioning my digital life into security domains (2011)"}, {"id": 799764882, "item_id": 49985305, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49985305", "by": "lrvick", "date": "2026-10-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "As a QubesOS user jailing an agent for one job to one VM is easy", "excerpt": "My go to right now is jcode, and doing a lot of one-shot experiments. Like I have a session being my MPD DJ as my local spotify right now. That said for persistent things like interfacing with homeassistant etc I am playing with zeroclaw. I run the same model as you for coding. For more sane automation tasks i recommend doing everything possible with MPCs so you can tell it to only use existing tools. ymmv By no mean", "context": "QubesOS user", "use_case": "isolating agents in VMs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Meta\u2019s Muse is an adorable privacy and security dumpster fire"}, {"id": 795061056, "item_id": 49691316, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49691316", "by": "nullc", "date": "2026-09-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Ultimately because qubes is a system of VMs based on commodity OS migrating OUT shouldn't be fundamentally hard.", "excerpt": "> How is remoting performance e.g. via VNC/RDP or particularly via Moonlight+Sunshine (intended for gaming and such)? I've used RDP w/ remmina and found the performance somewhat poor but usable-- I think it does too much video writes, so it's more like playing a video I expect Moonlight+Sunshine would be equal or worse. Xpra seems to work better than RDP for me. I didn't try to optimize the RDP since I tried xpra and", "context": "amateur radio user", "use_case": "daily OS with VM isolation", "switched_from": "Fedora", "story": "Linux Zoom client proactively reading everything written to X11 clipboard"}, {"id": 793426722, "item_id": 49589170, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49589170", "by": "3eb7988a1663", "date": "2026-09-06", "stance": "compare", "quote": "it seems prudent to switch to a NetBSD/OpenBSD/Qubes system for the next few years", "excerpt": "How usable are the BSDs as a GUI daily driver? Like 99% of Linux applications work out of the box or more like 50%? With new CVEs being discovered in ancient bedrock code on the daily, it seems prudent to switch to a NetBSD/OpenBSD/Qubes system for the next few years until some vulnerabilities might get smoothed over.", "context": "", "use_case": "security-minded daily driver", "switched_from": "", "story": "Research carried out using NetBSD"}, {"id": 792125184, "item_id": 49507824, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49507824", "by": "throwawayffffas", "date": "2026-08-31", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Very small attack surface, I have been using qubes for years", "excerpt": "Very small attack surface, I have been using qubes for years, never had to copy a file from dom0 to a vm.", "context": "", "use_case": "secure desktop OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Arbitrary code execution in QubesOS via copy-to-VM error reporting backchannel"}, {"id": 792113888, "item_id": 49507118, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49507118", "by": "lrvick", "date": "2026-08-31", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "each of those unprivileged apps runs in a dedicated virtual machine because I use QubesOS", "excerpt": "A bit more than experimenting. I have designed several security hardened linux operating systems for major financial institutions. There are many well established patterns for further segmenting user workloads, once far removed from real system root which is there is no good reason to expose. In my case each of those unprivileged apps runs in a dedicated virtual machine because I use QubesOS, though for many use case", "context": "designs security hardened Linux systems for financial institutions", "use_case": "isolating unprivileged apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Omarchy: Any User Process Can Escalate to Root"}, {"id": 791957296, "item_id": 49497331, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49497331", "by": "zby", "date": "2026-08-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I am still impressed by QubesOS track and I use it for my dedicated 'financials' laptop.", "excerpt": "I am still impressed by QubesOS track and I use it for my dedicated 'financials' laptop. IMHO the thing that is holding back QubesOS is the lack of hardware acceleration for graphics - maybe now when dual monitor setups are getting popular this could be a workaround for the security considerations?", "context": "", "use_case": "dedicated financials laptop", "switched_from": "", "story": "Arbitrary code execution in QubesOS via copy-to-VM error reporting backchannel"}, {"id": 785269840, "item_id": 49079365, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49079365", "by": "handedness", "date": "2026-07-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've run it on pretty modern AMD mobile chipsets with a lot of success.", "excerpt": "Generally speaking, if your Wi-Fi works on Debian and/or Fedora, it should work on Qubes OS. There are exceptions to that, of course. On a desktop PC you'll have to make some tradeoffs versus most laptops, namely integrating sys-net and sys-usb, but the installer will handle that for you. You'll want to auto-accept your keyboard and mouse, and try not to shut down sys-net. But you'll learn. Since your concern is isol", "context": "Qubes OS user", "use_case": "isolating untrusted software", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: How to deal with security implications of running/installing projects?"}, {"id": 782558321, "item_id": 48909895, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48909895", "by": "fsflover", "date": "2026-07-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Whonix on Qubes to access HN and other websites.", "excerpt": "> You already can't do any of these things without some kind of governmental issued ID which already has your birthdate on it. Do you have to present this ID for every purchase you make or every website you visit? Will it be stored and processed by every shop you enter? If not, how is this relevant here? Currently, the personal data exists but is not accessed by anyone unless it is really required. And even then, the", "context": "privacy-conscious user", "use_case": "compartmentalized desktop", "switched_from": "", "story": "European \"age verification\" \"app\" forcing everyone to use Android or iOS"}, {"id": 778179040, "item_id": 48636190, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48636190", "by": "fsflover", "date": "2026-06-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Qubes OS, my daily driver. Btw it already exists and is stable.", "excerpt": "Sounds like security through compartmentalization is more user-friendly: You can run whatever you want and how you want it in a dedicated VM, keeping sensitive things safely isolated, without much thinking of what to enable. Case in point: Qubes OS, my daily driver. Btw it already exists and is stable.", "context": "daily Qubes user", "use_case": "security via compartmentalization", "switched_from": "", "story": "NSA director: 'Mythos \"broke into almost all of our classified systems in hours\""}, {"id": 777309344, "item_id": 48581834, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48581834", "by": "fsflover", "date": "2026-06-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I would only trust Qubes OS with that, since it relies on strong, hardware-assisted virtualization", "excerpt": "> Maintaining one's data as private requires that it is protected as a baseline. So you're conflating privacy with security, as I expected. These are separate matters, although I agree that privacy can't exist without security. And security can be achieved by different means, e.g., by choosing what to run. You can't force your threat model and security approach on everyone and claim that everybody who disagrees with ", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop daily driver", "switched_from": "", "story": "GrapheneOS has been ported to Android 17 and official releases are coming soon"}, {"id": 774292561, "item_id": 48393285, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48393285", "by": "jazzyjackson", "date": "2026-06-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "you might check out how Qubes handles clipboard access", "excerpt": "It's similar to the \"Tin Foil Chat\" [0] project for preventing exfiltration on a network connected device. You have 3 CPUs, one that's offline and accepts user input, has and creates encryption keys. When you want to send a message you create an encrypted blob and bitbang it over an optical diode (one way serial data flow) and the network connected CPU, which is untrusted and considered hostile, is simply asked to se", "context": "", "use_case": "clipboard isolation", "switched_from": "", "story": "The ways we contain Claude across products"}, {"id": 773726912, "item_id": 48357932, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48357932", "by": "lepuski", "date": "2026-06-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I\u2019ve daily-driven Qubes for about a year and it\u2019s been easier than I expected.", "excerpt": "Given how common supply-chain vulnerabilities have become, I\u2019m surprised more teams haven\u2019t adopted Qubes. To compromise a Qubes setup you\u2019d need a Xen sandbox escape which is possible but vastly more difficult than running a simple bash script from a post-install script. I\u2019ve daily-driven Qubes for about a year and it\u2019s been easier than I expected. The main drawback is gaming because you need a second GPU and the GP", "context": "daily-drives Qubes for a year", "use_case": "daily driver secure OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "QubesOS \u2013 The best defense against (supply chain) attacks"}, {"id": 770850896, "item_id": 48178181, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48178181", "by": "fsflover", "date": "2026-05-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "My daily driver, can't recommend it enough.", "excerpt": "It looks like you you may be interested in Qubes OS, security oriented operating system relying on strong, hardware-assisted virtualization: https://qubes-os.org. My daily driver, can't recommend it enough.", "context": "", "use_case": "daily driver secure OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "The foundations of a provably secure operating system (PSOS) (1979) [pdf]"}, {"id": 768964368, "item_id": 48060273, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48060273", "by": "fsflover", "date": "2026-05-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "My daily driver, can't recommend it enough.", "excerpt": "Alternatively, consider using Qubes OS, which isolates untrusted software using strong hardware virtualization. My daily driver, can't recommend it enough. Examples of usage patterns: https://doc.qubes-os.org/en/r4.3/user/how-to-guides/how-to-organize-your-qubes.html", "context": "daily driver user", "use_case": "isolating untrusted software", "switched_from": "", "story": "Maybe you shouldn't install new software for a bit"}, {"id": 765967648, "item_id": 47872978, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47872978", "by": "fsflover", "date": "2026-04-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I run Qubes as a daily driver according to the docs, and my workflow was not vulnerable to the discussed attack.", "excerpt": "> one would need to spawn new disposable VMs for each identity This is by design how everyone should always be using Qubes OS for any task, according to its documentation and approach to security. > relying on the Tor Browser's new identity creation within the same disposable VM would be little different from running Tor Browser on a traditional OS Yes, if you use a single VM on Qubes OS for everything, then all secu", "context": "Qubes daily driver user", "use_case": "daily driver, compartmentalized security", "switched_from": "", "story": "We found a stable Firefox identifier linking all your private Tor identities"}, {"id": 763244064, "item_id": 47702754, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47702754", "by": "niam", "date": "2026-04-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've thrown it on my carry-around Thinkpad to give it a shot and I like it so far.", "excerpt": "Coincidentally I started toying around with it this week. It's pretty cool. I've known about it at least since Snowden namedropped it, but the main reasons I hadn't tried it before: - I already isolate workloads between VMs or containers - Wayland support isn't really there yet without breaking the interop that Qubes provides - Personal Qubes use cases (e.g banking) overlap with GrapheneOS profiles for me, which I al", "context": "", "use_case": "compartmentalized OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Is there some sort of stigma around Qubes OS on HN?"}, {"id": 755404128, "item_id": 47212758, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47212758", "by": "diacritical", "date": "2026-03-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The good thing is that if a VM lags, only that VM lags; Qubes itself and other VMs don't.", "excerpt": "Sorry for the late reply. I can't recommend specific HW as I'm not using anything new or beefy and I'm not running any CPU or GPU intensive things on Qubes. There's the Qubes Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) where people have added their hardware: https://www.qubes-os.org/hcl/ If and when I decide to upgrade, I'll also ask in the forums. Not all hardware supports all the features required for the security. Some hard", "context": "runs Qubes on desktop and several laptops", "use_case": "compartmentalized desktop OS", "switched_from": "", "story": null}, {"id": 754969856, "item_id": 47185616, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47185616", "by": "grouchypumpkin", "date": "2026-02-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "But with some improvements, I think it\u2019s the right way to do it.", "excerpt": "QubesOS was built to give sandboxes kernel isolation via a hypervisor. It\u2019s not surprising that most people don\u2019t know about it, because QubesOS as a daily driver can be painful. But with some improvements, I think it\u2019s the right way to do it.", "context": "", "use_case": "sandbox isolation via hypervisor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Let's Discuss Sandbox Isolation"}, {"id": 748210912, "item_id": 46763182, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46763182", "by": "fsflover", "date": "2026-01-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "This is why my daily driver is https://qubes-os.org", "excerpt": "This is why my daily driver is https://qubes-os.org", "context": "", "use_case": "daily driver, sandboxing", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Browser Is the Sandbox"}, {"id": 747453920, "item_id": 46715870, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46715870", "by": "nullc", "date": "2026-01-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I used disposable VMs in qubes on a computer with a one way (in only) network connection", "excerpt": "To review documents received from a hostile and dishonest actor in litigation I used disposable VMs in qubes on a computer with a one way (in only) network connection[1], while running the tools (e.g. evince) in valgrind and with another terminal watching attempted network traffic (an approach that did detect attempted network callbacks from some documents but I don't think any were PDFs). This would have been useful", "context": "reviewed documents from a hostile actor in litigation", "use_case": "reviewing hostile documents", "switched_from": "", "story": "Take potentially dangerous PDFs, and convert them to safe PDFs"}, {"id": 745604320, "item_id": 46600270, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46600270", "by": "throwawayffffas", "date": "2026-01-13", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use qubes OS and don't fear they will destroy my system.", "excerpt": "I use qubes OS and don't fear they will destroy my system. But I have never seen them try to do stuff outside of the working dir. Has your experience been different?", "context": "", "use_case": "isolating AI coding agents", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Yolobox \u2013 Run AI coding agents with full sudo without nuking home dir"}, {"id": 744321728, "item_id": 46520108, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46520108", "by": "ZebusJesus", "date": "2026-01-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Everything is its own VM, you can run apps in secure environments and when you close them it get rid of them.", "excerpt": "Qubes https://www.qubes-os.org/downloads/ Everything is its own VM, you can run apps in secure environments and when you close them it get rid of them. You can even create networking VM's have that connected to a VPN and then make your other VMs go through it for a secure connection. There is a lot you can do with it for privacy. Also in windows pro you have windows sandbox, when you close the sandbox everything is d", "context": "", "use_case": "private, compartmentalized OS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Private Operating System"}, {"id": 742997488, "item_id": 46437343, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46437343", "by": "soulofmischief", "date": "2025-12-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've been running either Qubes OS or KVM/QEMU based VMs as my desktop daily driver for 10 years.", "excerpt": "I've been running either Qubes OS or KVM/QEMU based VMs as my desktop daily driver for 10 years. Nothing runs on bare metal except for the host kernel/hypervisor and virt stack. I've achieved near-native performance for intensive activities like gaming, music and visual production. Hardware acceleration is kind of a mess but using tricks like GPU passthrough for multiple cards, dedicated audio cards and and block dev", "context": "does client work, security-conscious", "use_case": "virtualized desktop daily driver", "switched_from": "", "story": "Toro: Deploy Applications as Unikernels"}, {"id": 740548882, "item_id": 46284305, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46284305", "by": "lrvick", "date": "2025-12-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "along with QubesOS depending on use case.", "excerpt": "Privacy is like diet, it is not a zero sum game. The less data we give to advertisers and governments the better. The point is to increase the expense of tracking and create as many holes in their databases as possible. > You can be tracked with flock cams, ring cams, or any other thousands of cams out there that are already recording you and logging your car and your details. That grocery store you went to yesterday", "context": "security practitioner advising financial institutions", "use_case": "protecting journalists and targeted individuals", "switched_from": "", "story": "Former CIA spy: agency's tools can takeover your phone, TV, and even your car"}, {"id": 737062848, "item_id": 46066428, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46066428", "by": "fsflover", "date": "2025-11-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Qubes is a much more secure alternative to Android without its main downside", "excerpt": "Qubes is a much more secure alternative to Android without its main downside, which is that Google owns it and steers its development toward enshittification and control [0]. The latter even affects security directly [1]. Android's sandboxes are weaker and AFAIK rely on closed, non-auditable hardware (which is owned by Google in, e.g., GrapheneOS). Qubes protects you more reliably and doesn't require to abandon root ", "context": "Qubes user", "use_case": "compartmentalized secure desktop", "switched_from": "", "story": "Google's new 'Aluminium OS' project brings Android to PC"}, {"id": 736079713, "item_id": 46004982, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46004982", "by": "henrixd", "date": "2025-11-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I also use temporary disposable virtual machines in QubesOS to isolate those kinds of activities", "excerpt": "This might not be exactly what you meant or wanted, but I use OpenSnitch, which alerts me about all new connections. I also use temporary disposable virtual machines in QubesOS to isolate those kinds of activities from my more vulnerable systems.", "context": "", "use_case": "isolating risky activity", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Securing Pip and NPM package use?"}]}