Alternate Qubes iso for business person

General Discussion
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Specifications for a 'ready to use" --businessman’s version of Qubes. Another iso of Qubes with some programs already installed. Obviously this iso is separate from current Qubes.

I believe that Business Person is most likely to be the group to provide donations for the further development of Qubes. And that effort can help develop Qubes for Journalists, and Human Rights Defenders. And the group of Business Person can be the group who buy computers dove tailed to run Qubes. Helps us all.

Right now I feel many of us who use Qubes, are more like graduate students, amateurs who have little money to donate for further development, testing. Including testing the security, safety of using third party programs.

I am sure some of you could put forward a better list of requirements than I can.

First, Updates need to work. I know that there is -sometimes - a need to point at a different “Repository” for a different Kernel. There have been some oddities for updating Whonix.

My point being, for a business person, it is an immediate deal breaker to have problems with one feature that is under the control of those who wrote the OS.

For a business Person, I think the phrase, “Don’t Waste my Time,” is much of the goal in making an Operating System attractive to them. Yes, Security is important, but the user did not think that part of using Qubes would also entail spending hours trying to figure out how to implement, use a feature.

Some features need to just already be there.

After immediate login, the easy start of using some of the more well known, VPN’s with a GUI, (instead of terminal) with only needing a few obvious clicks, and the account information.

Cheers

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Also, I would like to see an “enterprise-ready” version. The current maintenance overhead is something well beyond capabilities of a typical IT department.

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If any organizations are interested in a paid enterprise edition of Qubes OS that meets their specific needs, please contact business@qubes-os.org to discuss the details (serious inquiries only, please).

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Moved to ‘General Discussion’

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What happened to your “journalist/human rights” version? My guess is
that it died because you couldn’t get sufficient input from end users.

I would guess that there are a few more “business people” using Qubes,
but you will find it as difficult to get input from them.

In my experience there is no overarching group of “business people”
with common needs, distinct from other users.
In my experience they want something that is simple, and easy to use,
and their IT departments want something that is locked down, and easy to maintain.
Windows did not achieve supremacy by providing a “business version”.

I have repeatedly said that I find it helpful here to step back from the
implementations and focus on what is to be done: less focus on templates
and qubes, and more on tasks. Shipping a customised menu is key to this.

I never presume to speak for the Qubes team. When I comment in the Forum or in the mailing lists I speak for myself.
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This also goes for journalists.

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This also goes for everyone.
FTFY

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unman has done some awesome, spectacular amount of work, effort in creating much needed templates, applications for Qubes. Programs much needed for a Journalist, or a Businessman.

For my efforts. I am old, I have gone through difficult set of health problems in the last few months. I do not have cable internet at home, just some Hotspot data. I frankly, have been of zero use in the aforementioned Journalists version of Qubes. I have even had issues in trying to implement the installer which unman has created. I think I should solve such things for myself by reading, not coming on here and asking for how to solve this issue or the other. The answer is in the documentation.

Also, I felt that the developers were, momentarily, going to do something interesting with sys-net that I really would not understand all the interesting features of, and would allow for a Human Rights person to be, more, safely online. I thought I should keep my mouth closed.

I would prefer, for a Businessmans version of Qubes, to have the features of what unman has already created, to be already installed, in the first download of the iso.

I recognize that security for a businessperson is not just his computer, but the people he communicates with. Other people in his office.

A specific case of the type of businessperson this iso could be useful to. A person who finds the details of how to do something for a customer. He wants to keep from his competition, the exact details, the money involved, delivery potential. All details he would send to his corporation for their input.

As this businessperson would likely travel to work with other companies representatives. Yes, he would carry his laptop.

His secretary would likely rebel at using Qubes to communicate with the traveling negotiator (salesman.)

Still, fires start with just a little warmth, and suddenly become 5 alarm fires.

I again thank unman for the work he has done. I know others out there have accomplished a great deal of work on the - more user friendly (to the technically inept) versions of Qubes.

I thank unman and those others.

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15 posts were split to a new topic: Cayce has issues with mix of open source and business

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A post was merged into an existing topic: Cayce has issues with mix of open source and business

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Updates. I just installed Qubes 4.2. I did a power down and cold boot up, because I have experienced that in earlier versions, that somethings did not work until a cold boot.

The updates; I started on the upper left. Qubes/ Qubes Update. Directly worked for Debian 11, Fedora 37. Whonix would not update, showed a red x. In my limited experience. Upper left; Slide down to Whonix. Template. Start Tor Browser Update. Maybe I also tried to start Tor, and the Tor check at the same time. Still, it sorted itself out, and after awhile the Tor Browser update finished. Let the Tor browser update.

Out of time at library where I do updates. I had to come back the next day.

So I did a complete power down and later a cold Start Power Up. then with the same thing as before. Upper left, Qubes // Qubes Update. Click on Update the two parts of Whonix. Takes awhile, but it finishes happily.

My thoughts on a Human Rights version of Qubes, the one with the tightest requirement. At first to provide like a airline pilots checklist, a series of trail markers as to how to proceed to prevent the user from violating his own security.

My view morphed, when I read of a Human Rights lawyer who wrote on the issue. I realized my feelings how I would use Qubes was much different than how others would have used it. I would have used end-to-end encrytion, and have assumed that the person I was writing to was as afraid as I was.

The Human Rights lawyer talks of the difficulty of getting people (computer - technically inexperienced) started with Qubes. One said he had used one Qube like a regular Operating System. Until he learned more.

I felt I should create one temporary Qube to face the internet. (Template for this would include nearly all the FOSS Software approved for Qubes.) Where I would mostly download things inside one of these disp Qubes.

Put them into a folder, and copy that entire folder to a Work Qubes.

Work Qubes (No Network access) where I could read files, decrypt things. All Right, it is not necessary to do it that way. but it is a convenient series of events to remember.

Yes, in my mind; That would require that one would spin up a fresh disp of this qube for each kind of contact on the Internet I made. No talking between different websites or —. Worse this Qube is probably so big that one would have to increase the minimum size of the Qube.

The Work Qube was never to be online. And was a permanent App Qube. Some information from there would be transferred into something that one thinks of as a Vault. But I would probably keep the Vault itself, for passwords, names-addresses.

Be better to see a good way to implement the Split versions of applications offered by unman.

I would try to pre-install a qube - means to do "Video Calling’ but with a program to do that is at least somewhat trustworthy. Another for chat rooms. and so on

If it works, I would pre-install a Qube of Ubuntu to use the “Talk to Text” program, which I am guessing is available in a lot of languages. and this Qube would always be kept offline. No listening in by the internet. This a means for someone who can not touch type, to create text.

Put all the Qubes and security documentation into the iso as well. I am astonished at the ways computers can be spied on. New Ways we can be spied on.

Thanks again to all those that contribute to Qubes. Developers, those who answer on forum. Well everyone.

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Overall, my experience in the professional space (public: Got Breach? “Whoopsie!” :person_shrugging: -OPM et al./private: Got Breach? “Whoopsie!” :person_shrugging: -Experian et al.) is directly contrary to your sentiment but, who knows; maybe I need to “get out more”, :thinking:

Most organizations/individuals care very little about security and/or privacy, the focus is on liability. Very few organizations are willing to invest in ~resources~ humans which are able to (over-time) design, develop, document & distribute sound computing processes, procedures & OPSEC; especially when Gartner suggests a new “killer-app” (pizza box or :cloud: ) for CxOs to gobble up, each year. :turkey:

Until the day comes when the consequences of breach match the impact of said breaches (read penalties/fines are percentage-based per revenue … don’t hold your breathe :exploding_head:), C-Levels are MORE than happy to piss in the bucket and keep it moving. :hugs:

Furthermore, I don’t see such an “official” Qubes offering as you suggest becoming a reality unless someone/some group decide to fork and do so.

Until investment (temporal, financial or otherwise) is required. :stop_sign:

[edited]

Perhaps “typical” is the key word in this statement as, most groups seem to have fallen head-over-heels for layer after layer ~of “ease-of-use”/“rapid deployment” complexities~ to create abundantly more opportunities for failure.

* Disclaimer 0 *
  • To date, I’ve not yet the opportunity to admin Qubes in a fortune 500 production environment.
* Disclaimer 1 *
  • Certs are a bit cheesy for my personal taste but, they serve two purposes well:
  1. Offer candidates to display a certain level of awareness related to solutions
  2. Offer hiring managers to promote said awareness to customers (internal & external)

IMO, Qubes is pretty straight forward from a zero-trust admin perspective:

  • Xen is the hypervisor layer (virtualization in production is nothing new and widely adopted & Citrix offers many different certifications in and around Xen use)
  • The rest (whether it be *nix or Winblows also with many certification options) is good old-fashioned, vanilla administration

If this forum is any indicator, the most common challenges users face/speak up about are:

A) Linux-centric hardware troubleshooting (unfortunately, still pretty standard in this day & age)

B) Linux-centric software troubleshooting (thankfully, not the hardest challenge to overcome)

If corporate adoption were a goal, shrink-wrapped, publicly available training(s) and/or certification(s) options are some of the more common options toward said goal.

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Cayce, Thank you for keeping some honesty in expectations. and reminding us what an excellent effort has been made by developers.

I have said it before, I think our Developers have made some great decisions in regarding where to stop integrating more programs to focus on keeping Qubes Trustworthy, while not going off to create ‘bells and whistles,’ which increase complexity for them to keep track of.

Thank you developers.

I will not profit, financially in any way for this suggestion. I do find it interesting, I am in USA, and it is so USA type to think about how money might play into the future of Qubes.

Documentation does fall off when implementing some third party programs.

Creating an alternate ISO with pre-installed third party programs, ready to work. and keeping in mind to only choose third party software from the more trustworthy, preferably FOSS software, is more safe than someone, technically inexperienced, randomly searching the internet for something that does this or that.

Cayce you should keep close watch and tell us when we are getting off course, it is easy to get off course, overly enamored on making the thing less secure, rather than more usable.

Again, thanks to the Developers, I think you have made good decisions as to what to include in the Qubes OS, and what to leave out.

“When I was a baby, I was so ugly my parents had to tie a pork chop around my neck to get the dog to play with me.” Rodney Dangerfield

“I am so ugly, I scare cats.” Lewis Grizzard, writer.

I identify with Grizzard’s life problems a lot.

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This is interesting but, in a world where a thousand solutions have been created to deal with the particularly annoying fact that most people can’t even be bothered to periodically change their passwords, it’s pretty idealistic.

The idea of containerizing and “jailing” the aspects of the internet people generally hate has caught on pretty well, I think, but I also suspect a lot of the acceptance of such a remedy has more to do with the satisfaction of eliminating annoyances and poking the worst offenders in the eye than with security.

And, of course, there’s the media, which doesn’t like internet security and privacy and also happens to be where most people get their information.

Of all sectors of society, the only sector more interested in keeping people vulnerable is the political sector and the very media on which people have become so dependent is not going to promote internet security and privacy so, unless people get a whole lot smarter a whole lot faster, I fear this battle is lost already. If not the actual war.

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It is kind of chicken-and-egg problem, you know.