Fed up with smart phones. What is the smallest QubesOS machine?

As per title, if someone had enough of using insecure smart phones. What is the smallest device that could run QubesOS?

Ideally something pocket size would be nice, I see there are smart phones with 16GB RAM already.

You actually need an x86-64 CPU for running Qubes OS, this rules out most smartphones.

Then, you would need a mouse and keyboard as Qubes OS isn’t meant to be used with a touch screen.

You need something like this https://www.gpd.hk/gpdwin4

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Thanks, I will check this out.

link down, was curious to see what you linked, i’m guessing smallest laptop you could find

I found this 6" laptop [url], runs Ubuntu, so might run Qubes too.

They should’ve gave it a trackpoint instead of wasting so much space on that touchpad.

Liking this one [url] much more! Better stats, screen is actually 1280x800.

There are a few youtube reviews of this device. Tempted to grab one, and check it out!

It works fine for me, but you can watch it on webarchive

https://web.archive.org/web/20231122221314/https://www.gpd.hk/gpdwin4

Ah, a steam deck! I tried one of those, didn’t like it, sent it back. I can’t imagine running qubes on it though, not without an external keyboard and mouse anyways.

Thanks for that link! Odd I couldn’t use the original link, I’m behind a mullvad dns server.

This seems like a beast, do you think it would be fairly easy to set this up with qubes? I am not an expert by any means honestly.

this is not a steam deck, it’s just a small powerful portable device, that also features an integrated keyboard / gamepad :sweat_smile: The steam deck doesn’t have a keyboard

I also just thought that suspend would not work with this device, so it would be impossible to use it like you would use a smartphone for work.

Put it in the pocket, take it out, do what you got to do and put it back in.

But I look forward to be able to use something like this when it will be production ready. It should be way better then GrapheneOS.

This kind of device is expected to be used with suspend/resume regularly, however nobody tested it for Qubes OS yet so you have no guarantee about Qubes OS compatibility. It’s possible it works fine on Qubes OS 4.2 though, but as I said, there are no guarantee.

Holy crap, over $3000 for that thing! Curiosity got me, had to look.

I’m tempted to buy one of these 7" laptops (url) it’s certainly cheap enough, the specs are pretty good, might actually work, and if not, I can always return it, love Amazon’s “no questions” return policy. Sure I can save money by buying direct from China, but can’t return those easily.

I have one of the GPD 7" laptops, I think the one I have is their 2nd gen model.

There is an unofficial Qubes OS for the GPD laptops liteqube, I have not tried it myself, but people say it’s pretty good.

The biggest issue with the 7" laptops is the keyboard, it’s so small it’s impossible to use the device for work you would normally do on a laptop. You can carry it in the pocket of your pants, but it’s not very comfortable, I could consider it too big to be a replacement for a phone.

The small keyboard, the very limited battery life (it’s so small), and the excess heat on the bottom, and yeah, small keyboard not good for big hands. Still, it’s interesting.

I’ve also been looking at an 8" laptop that has much newer/faster cpu N100, ddr5 ram (url) tempting to try it, but probably has the same limitations. Still, tempting!

This might be of interest:

Why should phones be so easy to compromise? A light resource system should be theoretically easier to secure, since there are fewer variables and potential vulnerabilities.