Hello,
I have freshly installed and tested Qubes 4.3.0 and would like to point out some issues I noticed during the installation and testing.
The computer used is an Intel NUC I 5 MYHE with a Broadwell processor and 8 GB of RAM, and a 24-inch monitor with a resolution of 1920 x 1080.
Before installing, I first created a bootable USB stick with Rufus on a Windows 10 computer. That worked well.
- When trying to select “Test the medium and install Qubes” in the boot menu, the following error message appeared after approximately 4% of the check (see image):
I repeated this several times, both with other USB sticks and on another computer. The error always occurred. It seems to be an issue with Rufus and not with Qubes itself, because then I used BalenaEtcher on a ten-year-old Macbook. The creation worked flawlessly, and the testing of the medium along with the installation went smoothly.
The only exception is that due to the limited storage, no preload disp VMs were installed, which is of course not due to Qubes 4.3.0, but to the computer.
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Generally, Qubes 4.3.0 seems to be considerably slower than 4.2.4, which I had on the same computer before. Scrolling, for example, stutters more often, and opening windows or app VMs takes longer than before.
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The window management is causing problems. Some newly opened windows stick to the left and top edges, and the frame disappears. They cannot be moved, no matter what you change in the window settings. You have to close them again for the window to disappear.
Some windows take up more space than the screen; they can only be removed by closing them, not by resizing or moving them.
The problems mainly occur with the whonix-disp VMs and not with the debian-13-based VMs, but also, for example, with the sound mixer window in the bar.
In general, the window management should be reconsidered and simplified, as it is not optimal and also complicated in XFCE.
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In the app menu, some icons cannot always be clicked; nothing happens. This happens irregularly and is not tied to specific VMs.
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When you call the Template Manager, sys-whonix will automatically start if it wasn’t already on, provided you have defined sys-whonix as the general VM for updates. This is very convenient, but it can pose a security risk if, for example, a sys-whonix clone is already turned on and a user forgets about it.
Maybe a corresponding note in the template switcher would be useful to indicate that this doesn’t happen.
Otherwise, Qubes 4.3.0 is very successful; there have been no major issues so far except for the ones mentioned. Many things are also visually very appealing, such as more readable fonts, the choice between dark and light mode, the warning triangles when assigning dvm templates and the explanations for them, the new settings in the “Global Config,” and the Kicksecure implementation with the boot functions, and much more. It’s a lot of fun!
I still need to test Kicksecure or Whonix-18 thoroughly and will report back there.