Interest of qubes on a personal computer

Hello evryone.

I Like a lot how Qubes works but i am asking,
is there any interest to install qubes on a computer used only for personal use, without any work or economical data inside the computer ?

to say this by another manner , does qubes os is useful if i use a signle qube/vm ?

I use Qubes only on my main home desktop computer. There is a definite learning curve and Qubes probably does have some limitations and inconveniences compared to whatever OS you have been using. However I can say, that after getting to grips with Qubes, I am definitely sticking with it as my main OS. I feel much safer and feel I have a better chance of protecting my privacy. For the tasks which require me to do things Qubes cannot, I do have linux and windows on other computers in the house. The benefits far outweigh the drawbacks in my case. Hope this helps.

It’s better to read more about Qubes OS basics to try and understand it.

Why do you want to run everything inside a single qube?
Simpliest example is: do you want to store your passwords in the same qube that you use for browsing?
Read more about security by compartmentalization:
Frequently asked questions (FAQ) | Qubes OS

If you’re genuinely planning to only ever have one Qube running, then there’s no security benefit over just running a standalone Linux distro on your hardware.

But even for personal use, you should consider multiple Qubes for different tasks, because the isolation improves security by a good margin, and you should make liberal use of disposable VMs for casual use.

On a “personal” QubesOS install, without any real work projects on it, I typically split out email, “core web” use (admin accounts, password manager, etc), and then have a “random web use” VM that’s disposable, with nothing of value in it. Even a malicious bit of advertising Javascript can’t find anything useful in it, because there’s nothing useful in it.

I also typically separate out sysadmin tasks to a separate VM - it contains SSH keys and such (one could set up a split SSH key vault VM as well), and means that I’m never typing system passwords in any VMs that may be keyboard sniffing.

I also tend to lob music players in their own VM, as I don’t fully trust the desktop music players.

Then I usually have a “play” standalone VM or two with a full Ubuntu desktop install for doing various other things.

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No, it will only add complexity for no benefit if you use a single Qube. And even more, Qubes isn’t meant to be used by multiple people, so if you share your computer with your family (if any), then it’s really not the right choice.

Even when not working, I split my “personal use” into this:

  • Vault for passwords management
  • Communication for emails and XMPP
  • Web (with some plugins)
  • whonix in a disposable VM if I want to browse websites that looks suspicious
  • Disposables Qubes for experimentations

But you lose ease of use, graphical acceleration (decoding video can be complicated, conferencing use a LOT of CPU).

I keep another Linux in dual boot for multimedia / gaming purpose :slight_smile:

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Qubes OS is a free and open-source, security-oriented operating system for single-user desktop computing.