I run Linux desktop mostly Debian and Ubuntu in my laptops and computers. Debian Trixie is already running beautifully. But it doesn’t have much of sandboxing. Few AppArmor profiles which are pain to tweak.
I can export the disk to an image or qcow2 or whatever Xen hypervisor needs. I want to then get Linux desktop experience (like with gnome desktop), in a Qubes VM. It seems I have ti create a standalone Qubes.
I will treat it more like a hypervisor. Like I could also install chrome-OS in a disposable Qubes, which might be more secure than Debian due to sandboxing.
I don’t need volatile root for this VM, because I probably won’t install much in it, and will update it as usual (but if installation with volatile root is not complicated, why not turn it to a template).
The Debian template that comes with Qubes has an ugly desktop
Has anyone done this? Will workflow and experience be similar to native Linux desktop ?
This is definitely possible, but this isn’t really the point of QubesOS. If you want to treat Qubes/Xen as “just a hypervisor” you’d probably be better off just having a “normal” OS installed with QEMU/KVM/VBox/Whatever.
You can make a copy of your user directory from GNU/Linux. Adjust chown recursively and accordingly (to the same UID and GID as in Qubes OS) and put files to user directory inside a qube.
The qube can be template-based, in such case you have to configure template manually to fit you. Or you can make standalone qube and install something like Debian manually.
In this case you would actually have a single qube for everything, but occasionally you will be able to create some temporary or testing qube, try something and do not affect your main living qube’s OS.
The main limitation: you will have no video-card hardware acceleration inside your qubes.
