What would be the safest and most anonymous way to run a Windows application on QubesOS? I thought of installing Vine in a template or creating a Windows qube?
Which one of these is safer?
I personally believe that running Vine could be the answer, as Windows qubes from what I read are issue-prone.
Any help is very welcome!
Hi @anoan ,
it depends, what Windows applications do you plan to run. Some Windows applications does not run very well on wine, others perfectly fits to wine.
And running something on Qubes OS (in an App Qube) is not automatically more safer (in terms of anonymity) than running it native.
You can run Windows as a HVM Qube anonym and you can run Windows apps on wine with giving all of your personal identity away.
It depends on you and on the effort, that you are willing to spend for your anonymity.
From your last 2 sentences, I assume that your saying that it’s better for anonymity to create the HVM qube then use Wine, right? I’m planning to run Whatsapp.exe for calls
Crossover has served me well in the past.
But like you suggested, it’s just Wine and WineTricks with a GUI much like Lutris or Bottles.
Your best option probably is to use Jitsi.
If you really think you need WhatsApp, probably your (next) best option is to have something like Windows VM -> outbound proxy -> Whonix Gateway -> sys-firewall -> sys-net.
In outbound proxy you can run a socks5 or https proxy that lets only certain domains through and maybe also use nftables/iptables to control what can go out. Then whatever goes out after outbound proxy goes through Tor.
If you intend to do calls then you probably want a network path like Windows VM -> vpn-02 -> sys-firewall -> sys-net.
If you use WhatsApp at all then your identity will most likely be compromised. Your voice is a biometric and WhatsApp can be decrypted. Most WhatsApp users are running WhatsApp on a smart-phone which have a closed source operating system or if running GrapheneOS have a binary blob running in the kernel. But even without the kernel being compromised by a binary blob, all smart-phone devices have closed source software running on other cores that Linux does not see.
My working assumption is that anyone who uses WhatsApp is a scammer, or is trying to pick up an unconventional form of prostitute in a third-world country, or uses drugs (and not the good ones) too much. I will give you the benefit of the doubt as a fellow user of the Qubes forum and suppose that you do not do these things. But many in the FOSS world view WhatsApp that way because WhatsApp is stupid, and has AIDS, and is dumb.
Try to stay away from WhatsApp and AIDS in general.
No, that was not my point. I would say, that no method is secure and/or anonym by default, especially because anonymity is not the default main target of Qubes OS. No matter what method you use, anonymity requires effort from you, the user.