Xen
No written verdict yet. Here is what commenters said.
5recommend
1warn against
Dec 30, 2025first mention
Sep 13, 2026latest mention
Why people recommend it
“ripping off the best ideas from xen/Qubes”
“was running Xen happily more than two decades ago”
Show 3 more
“the attack surface of the Xen hypervisor itself is fairly minimal”
“high-quality practical implementations [2]”
Caveats and dissent
No one in these comments warned against it.
Often compared with
Threads where it came up
- Theo de Raadt: "You've been smoking something mind altering" (2007) 2 mentions
- Linux Zoom client proactively reading everything written to X11 clipboard 1 mention
- Arbitrary code execution in QubesOS via copy-to-VM error reporting backchannel 1 mention
- Omarchy: Any User Process Can Escalate to Root 1 mention
- I dream of quieter computing 1 mention
- Ask HN: How to deal with security implications of running/installing projects? 1 mention
Data: xen.json. Quotes are verbatim; the verdict and theme labels are written by a model from these comments, and every clause links to its sources.
All comments 12
> Honestly, I wish there was a Qubes/KVM variant. Relayed Issue: https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/7051
“They use Xens pci passthrough, you can setup a pci device to be assigned to a vm.”
“ripping off the best ideas from xen/Qubes”
“was running Xen happily more than two decades ago”
“It is more secure than Xen, which it relies on”
“the attack surface of the Xen hypervisor itself is fairly minimal”
“Then they talked Xen, which at least has a security boundary. Now everybody switched to kvm with none.”
“We've had this in Xen since forever!”
You know that Xen is just a hypervisor right? Dom0 (the admin Qube) is running the Linux kernel and is vulnerable like any other Linux system. DomU (App Qubes) also run the Linux kernel and are just as vulnerable. You can check your DomU kernels using this guide: https://doc.qubes-os.org/en/latest/user/advanced-topics/managing-vm-kernels.html If your Dom0 or DomU is running kernel < 6.18.22, or between 6.19.0 and 16.
“I used to run Xen back in the early hardware-virt days”
“I do have to somewhat trust Xen”
“high-quality practical implementations [2]”