I’d like to introduce myself. I’m a creative and now diving into cybersecurity, Qubes, and networking. I’ve been exploring Qubes OS for several months. Starting from zero knowledge, I began with a regular Linux desktop, tried a couple of popular distros, and eventually made the leap to Qubes.
I was a lurker on the forum for a long time, and it took me some courage to sign up. Party because of my threat model and partly because I find it hard to ask for help. I’m glad I did, though — I still have many questions and technical problems to solve, and I hope my creative background will be useful to the community.
Today I’m a happy user—Qubes feels mind‑blowing and has given me a new appreciation for compartmentalized security. In fact, I’ve even developed a case of “monolith phobia”: a monolith feels like walking around naked while not being a nudist!
I intend to support Qubes financially and contribute my time and creative skills wherever the community needs them.
Thank you to the entire Qubes team for all the hard work that makes this OS so amazing, and thanks to everyone on the forum for providing information and helping other users. I look forward to learning more from you all and sharing my own experiences.
Welcome! I’m brand new around here as well – just made the move from Windows and Qubes is my first and most likely only distro I’ll use. I started a monthly donation plan as soon as I ordered my NovaCustom laptop a couple weeks ago.
I saw that too! Read through it and I can’t fault NovaCustom since they are technically certified for Qubes OS per the certification criteria pointed out. Although it would be nice to have additional ‘tiers’ of certifications. Something like Qubes OS Bronze Certified and the fancier the material (silver, gold, plat, etc) for more features it supports I’m reserving the Qubes OS Platinum Certified badge for whoever comes out with one that’s OCuLink ready out of the box.
I have no complaints so far. I thought my laptop came defective when my keyboard shortcuts for screen brightness, volume, lcd on/off, etc weren’t working but after some research, I just had to enable them from within Qubes.
Well, perhaps in the future I didn’t know OCuLink - hope it’s more safe then usb. I was looking at that Nova Custom too. So how do you like Qubes so far? Do you miss Microsoft? I don’t miss my old operating system at all and I’m relieved I got out of the Lock-In trap. However moving to Linux has been hard work.
In this case it’s meant to connect to an external GPU (eGPU) to be able to run applications/games that require dedicated graphics card acceleration.
I’m loving it! Still trying to re-wire my brain to get used to running different VM’s under ‘one roof’. I’ll get there eventually, though! Every now and then I’ll be stuck on something wondering why it’s not working and hit that "oh that’s right…" light bulb moment.
I decided to splurge on getting the maxed out NovaCustom Qubes OS laptop and I’m not regretting it at all! Boot up and VM start times are pretty quick - and with plenty of storage (8 TB) and RAM (96 GB), I don’t really have to worry about watching my resource usage (at least right now…).
Just for playing games. My short term plan, once I have moved all my files from OneDrive and Google, is to wipe my gaming laptop and just install Steam and Discord to it – nothing else. That’s the plan until I find a reliable method to play video games on Qubes,
I’m finding out myself! But once I take the time to research and work on replacing a convenience or workflow that I was accustomed to on Windows, it gives me motivation to keep going and chase the next thing to make this OS perfect for my use-case. And that’s something Windows or Apple can’t offer to me anymore.
I gave up on using my external GPU on qubes os. It’s not worth the effort for me, I installed a random distribution (cachysos at the moment IIRC) on a dedicated gaming computer, and I’m fine.
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I’m reserving the Qubes OS Platinum Certified badge for whoever comes out with one that’s 
I didn’t know OCuLink - hope it’s more safe then usb. I was looking at that Nova Custom too. So how do you like Qubes so far? Do you miss Microsoft? I don’t miss my old operating system at all and I’m relieved I got out of the Lock-In trap. However moving to Linux has been hard work. 
