I’m gradually moving towards Qubes on my second computer. The most difficult part about it is that daily routines which were comfortable and easy with Windows (and even typical Linux distributions) now became a nightmare with Qubes. I have a list of issues that I’m experiencing troubles with right now. However, a more general questions is whether or not there is some guide for making the Windows-to-Qubes transition less painful?
So the issues are…
- Installing an app into a qube with a shortcut on dom0’s desktop.
For example, I’ve installed Brave browser into a qube. Next, I had to make a copy of Firefox’s shortcut on a dom0’s desktop and manually change “firefox-esr” to “brave-browser”. However, the icon of Firefox remained. And I’m not even sure how to find the appropriate icon. In Windows all the apps automatically create a desktop icon (if I ask them to), or I can just right-click and press “make a shortcut”. And also, all the data for each app is stored in one folder, which is not the case with many apps for Linux. So it’s a nightmare searching for this icon. - After installing Brave I was not able to find it in Application Finder. How apps are even getting there?
- Mounting a USB drive or a hard-drive into a qube is also tricky. OK, it’s totally fine with me to assign a USB drive to a qube from dom0’s taskbar. However, how would I make that it automatically mounts to some place? I’m tired of making “sudo mount /dev/xvdj ~/mnt/usb”.
- Is it possible to use the same hard-drive/USB with multiple qubes simultaneously?
What about other resources like camera, sound etc? - What are more Windows-like GUIs for dom0?