Because the name is used in the logging process - look and see.
I never presume to speak for the Qubes team.
When I comment in the Forum I speak for myself.
The origin story of qubesdb-read /qubes-base-template.
In 2015, at the time of writing around a decade ago, was discussed in public on qubes-devel. The qubes-base-template qubesdb entry was (probably) born there.
https://groups.google.com/g/qubes-devel/c/BhSrzDdB5To/m/RfWLdoxACgAJ
When this was discussed back then, nobody had any objections.
At that time, usability designer @bnvk (Brennan Novak) was still arround which helped to understand newcomers better and improved focus on usability.
Qubes (as well as Qubes-Whonix) were much younger and had much fewer users. The focus was rather on foundations such as “port Whonix to Qubes” and “reliably route all connections over the Tor network” rather than malicious software running inside the VM, System Identity Camouflage and Virtual Machine Cloaking / VM Fingerprinting.
At that time, a graphical Qubes Updater didn’t exist yet.
qubesdb-read /qubes-base-template made it possible to implement a usability feature in systemcheck telling users how to update.
[WARNING] [systemcheck] Debian Package Update Check Result: apt-get reports that packages can be updated.
Please update your 'name-of-template' TemplateVM.
1. Open a TemplateVM terminal. (dom0 -> Start Menu -> Template: name-of-template -> Terminal)
2. Update. upgrade-nonroot
3. Shutdown your TemplateVM. (dom0 -> Qubes VM Manager -> right click 'name-of-template' -> Shutdown VM)
4. Shutdown and restart this TemplateBased AppVM. (dom0 -> Qubes VM Manager -> right click 'name-of-app-qube' -> Shutdown VM)
You could try workaround such as archive.org or others. See also Geo-blocking - Unreachable Websites.
Far from giving up. There is a large amount of Completed Work.
For Qubes that is out-of-scope, which is documented in Qubes FAQ. Primarily the following to entries.
What about privacy in non-Whonix qubes?
The main way Qubes OS provides privacy is via its integration with Whonix. Qubes OS does not claim to provide special privacy (as opposed to security) properties in non-Whonix qubes. This includes disposables.
Privacy is far more difficult than is commonly understood. In addition to the web browser, there is also VM fingerprinting and advanced deanonymization attacks that most users have never considered (and this is just to mention a few examples). The Whonix Project specializes in protecting against these risks.
In order to achieve the same results in non-Whonix qubes (including disposables), one would have to reinvent Whonix. Such duplication of effort makes no sense when Whonix already exists and is already integrated into Qubes OS.
Therefore, when you need privacy, you should use Whonix qubes. Remember, though, that privacy is difficult to achieve and maintain. Whonix is a powerful tool, but no tool is perfect. Read the documentation thoroughly and exercise care when using it.
So only the Whonix has this kind of work in scope. But there’s only a small number of active contributors. → Backlogged.
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Thanks @adrelanos for providing such background about this topic. This kind of historical context is missing from the docs so I will add the needs-doc tag.
“that google thing” = the qubes-devel mailing list, for which there’s also a non-google archive here:
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