There is no way for users to post/update/change HCL here:
So as user that look for hardware it more trusted source then forum.
I can’t point nothing and “no way”.
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Qubes certification is difficult to get. It’s not like Thinkpads are Qubes certified, yet people use them. The processor it has is older, but it’s still one the lowest power processors Intel sells. (I was wrong about that processor versus the Core 3 in the Byte)
I was considering the NovaCustom NUC Box, which also didn’t have Qubes certification and asked them about it - they said it was a pain and they didn’t know why it was taking so long.
I’ve found the Starlabs people great for questions. I’m not in the market for a laptop currently, but I like the design concept. I’m very happy with my Starlabs Byte and I’d rather have a multi-core Core 3 processor with all efficiency cores than spend a lot of money on a Core 5 or 7 and have to disable the efficiency cores and end up with just 2 or 4 performance cores.
I just don’t think most people need a high powered system for the typical Qubes OS use case. Lots of ram yes, but XFCE is so efficient, ram is really all that matters.
So I would say email them and they’ll probably respond right away.
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Certified laptops seem like the best bet in terms of support to me.
New non-certified laptops are a dice roll, “Linux support” by the OEM is not a good predictor of Qubes compatibility/usability because you have to account for Xen requirements to run, and most vendors don’t, for consumer hardware.
Old/Refurbished seem like a good budget option, but there is IMO, only a narrow set that will tick most user’s boxes: for Intel, anything before Whiskey Lake is permanently vulnerable to Spectre V2 (includes Thinkpad T480), anything after you have to check if it supports S3 suspend, if not, s0ix suspend support is still experimental AFAIU. AMD is no better, seems generally less well supported and microcode update process differences.
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What makes you think Xen doesn’t work well with P/E cores?
There’s a topic on CPU pinning. Rather than wasting your E cores you can pin your Dom0 and sys-vms to them while giving your other VMs P cores.
However I agree that having Xen 4.19 is not ideal. I would happily help if I can to get a newer version in.
On the contrary, SMT(HyperThreading) has often been touted as vulnerable to side-channel attacks. Most laptop CPUs which aint big-little do have HyperThreading and disabling it would further reduce performance.
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What makes you think Xen doesn’t work well with P/E cores?
There’s a topic on CPU pinning. Rather than wasting your E cores you can pin your Dom0 and sys-vms to them while giving your other VMs P cores.
Can this me set up automatically by the QubesOS installer for the next
releases, maybe?
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It could be part of the installation but thinking about it, all it needs to do is to ask you:
- how much cores do you want in Dom0
- which cores do you want to give Dom0
- this means the installer must analyze your core topology and know that for example 0,1,5,7 are e-cores while 2,3,4,6 are p-cores. Further complicated by which are shared threads if SMT/HyperThreading is enabled. So it could be that 0/1 share and 5/7 share. Because if it is, my understanding is that you should always assign these threads together.(correct me here, since I don’t use SMT and could be wrong)
Note: this kinda ties your Dom0 config to your hardware, if you move your whole drive into a different computer this configuration can be a problem. Not a huge one, unless your new computer has less cores. But this whole thing will not work automatically and you will need to reconfigure.
Thus a better approach would be that this becomes a part of your Dom0, instead of installation, it would be something you do after that.
So if you decide to move to a different machine, you can first delete this configuration before doing so.
That part makes sense for everyone who has e/p cores. Corner cases exist, Xeons can have only e-cores or only p-cores. If all cores look the same this should be treated like a uniform CPU(exactly how you’d treat Intel 11th gen and below or any AMD).
And then the UI for VMs itself can include the whole:
Just P cores, just E cores, any cores
A simple dropdown.
People complain that it’s bad if stuff gets switched, but on Arrow Lake desktop, the cores ain’t that different. A bigger optimization is to set them to max permanently frequency permanently. The downside is a bit more heat but if it’s a Desktop I think it’s worth it. And there’s no lag at all when stuff is switching. Personally I am not doing CPU pinning outside Dom0.
That said, on laptops it’s definitely a must.
To summarize how an MVP could look like:
- nothing during installation
- afterwards a configuration in Dom0 global settings
max cpus, which CPUs(e-cores/p-cores/any) - if the cores chosen have SMT, the numbers would be doubled, meaning you won’t be able to choose an odd number - a drop-down on every VM to select on what cores should it run: e-cores/p-cores/any
- optimization: additional checkbox to tell VM to not use the cores Dom0 is using
Note: these configurations should only be accessible if big/little is detected. If there’s only p or e cores, we shouldn’t show anything. - disabling HT/SMT later can mess up things, so this whole panel should also have that setting
(should you do it from the BIOS instead, it’s on you)
The main trouble is whoever implements this should ideally have a 12th-14th gen Intel. Otherwise there’s no SMT. A 13th gen Desktop is ideal, because it can be configured in different ways, like disabling all P cores or E cores, enabling/disabling SMT.
But to answer your original question:
If this functionality was put inside a built in CLI, similar to qvm-pci, etc. then yes, post-installation could call it with some sensible defaults. But you’d still be responsible on VM creation to choose on which cores to run.
Actually I think I have a more interesting idea I might work on.
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Hi!
At this moment I’m using a NUC from System76 bought 2 years ago and works incredibly well.
I’m sure the laptops they sell will work great.
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