QubesOS looks amazing. I’m impressed by its security design and features.
I tried it out few days and it works fine on a laptop. AppVMs are snappy enough, and performance is OK on AC. No GPU-intensive workload on this machine. I can live without Bluetooth (replaced with teetering).
How is the productivity impacted coming from Debian? I don’t want to spend my time trouble shooting issues to get ordinary things done (and there might be no help outside this forum).
Mounting network storage, Zoom, file sharing using stuff like Dropbox nextcloud etc, projector, one monitor, coding, command line workflows , non-Qubes backups, a lot of fast surfing on clearnet.
One immediate question is secure data transfer between Qubes. This could be one way in some cases, or bilateral. Copy pasting a file is possible, but sometimes i need to rsync data with many files. This all has to be command line using scripts.
What is the meaning of your question? It seems like the answer will obviously depends on what you want to do, what you know, and what’s your own definition of “ordinary things”. In other words, as far as I understand the question, you’re the only one who can answer it.
If what you want to know is if anyone finds Qubes OS a fine daily driver, a little time spent in this forum will give you the answer. Whether these experiences match yours, however, will still be for you to answer!
I’ve been using Qubes for a few years. A few common tasks would take a few seconds more to complete on Qubes vs. another system (attaching a drive or camera to a Qube, copying files from/to Qube). Otherwise, it does not impact my productivity.
Before I was on an airgapped windows 7 machine (which I still have just in case there’s something I can’t do in my windows 7 qube) but I haven’t powered it on in months.
My actual daily internet driver was an Xubuntu box using Oracle Virtualbox. Qubes runs more cleanly than the VirtualBox (which is glitchy with two monitors) and it’s easier to move files from oneVM to the other. (In VMBox I had to do it by mounting a drive on one machine, then the other…what a pain! Plus I exposed that drive to the network by doing so!) Furthermore I never trusted that Oracle Virtual Box didn’t have a backdoor in it nor did I really feel that the host machine was safe from the network.
Qubes is much better than that. I got rid of that box and overwrote the SSD. (Even the windows 7 I kept; the xubuntu system is gone.)
I got huge productivity boost from Qubes, and actually this, not security, is my main driver. I am a consultant and I have multiple work environments and Qubes is the only tool that prevents it from becoming a mess.