I searched the forum and didnt find an answer. If someone can answer here it will be easily discoverable to others in the future.
So I have installed Qubes on a low end laptop and sys-whonix is claimed to be using 4GB of ram in the Qubes domain tooltip.
I only have 16GB of ram and 2 cores/4 threads so I was wondering if sys-whonix needs to be starting automatically or running when I am not using a Whonix VM?
Thank you and a link to a good concise explanation of how to optimize Qubes for a low end system would also be appreciated.
If you have no vm connected, you can shut it down. It’ll automatically restart if you start a vm which uses sys-whonix as gateway.
Btw, you also can reduce the ram for sys-whonix a lot. I have mine limited to 1500MB and it works fine with 3 vms connected to it. Just limit the max ram for sys-whonix in the qubes manager.
Why do you assume this is question someone for sure will be looking for in the future?
Why do you assume it will be easily discoverable in the future?
My sys-whonix runs on 400MB
Because it seems like an obvious question to ask for people with a lower end system.
Also I assume Qubes will be blowing up in popularity as the world gets more and more tyrannical everyday and people like me turn their attention towards preparing for a future where people are imprisoned for their opinions or simply for not wanting the government to know all your opinions.
As far as I know whispering in person is still allowed most places but the logical conclusion of encryption laws is the total ban on having private conversations or keeping a private journal.
I believe I have been told that questions asked in a title are better for discovery. I have been told not to ask a bunch of questions in one post because it makes it hard for others to find the answers and people end up answering the same questions over and over.
If you normally don’t use Tor, you’ll need no sys-whonix. Set its property Start qube automatically at boot to false and stop it. At the next boot, sys-whonix will not start. Only if you start a qube needing Tor, i.e. having sys-whonix and not sys-firewall as its netVM, like the default qube anon-whonix, sys-whonix will start. This causes just a short delay (some seconds), but Tor access will work perfectly. After shuttinbg down that AppVM, you may also stop sys-whonix manually.