I am trying to research a setup for a new desktop box that I can be as sure as reasonably possible will work with Qubes. I only saw one computer in the mobo HCL section that was using a comet lake chipset but no rocket lake chipsets.
So, two questions:
If Qubes works on a rocket lake mobile chipset should it be likely to work on a rocket lake desktop?
Second, qubes 4.1 dom0 is based on fedora 32 I think, which came out in April 2020; but rocket lake came out in Q1/Q2 2021 - so fed32 was out before rocket lake so does it stand to reason that Fed32/Qubes 4.1/dom0 are less likely to work on a rocket lake chipset?
Is there a mobile rocket lake?
It shouldn’t be about code name, but about specific chipset from the 500 Series.
In addition to the motherboard chipset support, both CPU and system firmware (BIOS or UEFI)(you want to check this with OEM for a specific model), need to fully support the IOMMU I/O virtualization functionality for it to be usable.
But, the chipset support for VT-d technology is not very clear to me at the moment. While for the chipset 400 series, this info still can be found, for series 500 and series 600 chipset it’s missing. So, I’d probably wait or stay away from these two latter series. Or, Intel changed the name of VT-d, or is it now exclusively stored in CPU?
Thank you both @fsflover and @enmus for the feedback, very helpful.
So it seems that sticking with the 400 series would be safer. I have been looking at the Asrock z490m Pro4 https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z490M Pro4/index.asp (sorry, the url seems to have a space in it?) as it seems that many people have generally had pretty good luck with Asrock in general and has intel’s virtualization “Intel Virtualization Technology
Intel Virtualization Technology allows a platform to run multiple operating systems
and applications in independent partitions, so that one computer system can
function as multiple virtual systems”, “VT-d Intel® Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O helps your virtual machine monitor better utilize hardware by improving application compatibility and
reliability, and providing additional levels of manageability, security, isolation, and I/O performance. SR-IOV Support: If system has SR-IOV capable PCIe Devices, this option Enables or Disables Single Root IO Virtualization Support.”
Thoughts welcome/encouraged!
Thanks, I had actually looked at this. There is only one desktop at the moment and doesnt quite fit my needs, if my proposed setup works well then i will definitely be submitting it for adding to that list.
for the mobile rocket lake, i had kind of just assumed yes as in the HCL there seems to be numerous comet lake based mobile submissions, but I honestly hadnt looked too closely.
As for staying away from 500/600 series, yeah I am starting to come to that conclusion (actually I wasnt even hoping for 600 but was kinda thinking maybe/possibly for 500… seems to be too much of a risk though).
Anyway, it looks like the 490 chipset (with a BIOS update) would support rocket lake CPUs so I can “go low/slow” for now and upgrade the CPU in a few years
I’d probably do the same. But, whatever you decide, try to buy it in a nearby store (to calm down paranoia of messing with the hardware by the seller) and bring 2 usb sticks with you: one with Qubes 4.1 iso and the 2nd empty to which you would insist to try the hardware and install Qubes on that other stick.
You may then try to check if IOMMU is enabled at the spot.
For ordering online, I’d arrange “return-if-qubes-not-working” policy.
This is only how I’d do it, exclusively personal “how-to-buy” guide.
