Store virtual machines in a container without leaving traces on the OS

[qn00r3]

All these days I read the forum, documentation, re-read and re-read what @SteveC and @fsflover wrote to me
All this is hard for me, I’m not a Linux master, but I understand something. My native language is not English, which adds to the difficulty in learning information.

What conclusion have I come to?

1. I see that all the people who are in one way or another connected with the development of the Qubes OS are very categorical about encrypted virtual machines, one can only guess what the reason for this is.
   But I myself see little point in this, I prefer the idea of ​​an encrypted container and storing all virtual machines on an encrypted container (possibly because I used something similar on Windows for a long time), but then it makes sense to hide all traces on OS Qubes, but as I understand it is not that simple based on this answer:
   Source: hxxps://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/4444#issuecomment-433662984
   Author: andrewdavidwong
   Comment: One way to do it might be to store them on a hidden encrypted volume, but all traces of their existence outside of the hidden volume would have to be eliminated, which would be very difficult.
   Explanation: An error occurred: Sorry, new users can only put 2 links in a post.

2. At the moment I am considering 2 options in which I can encrypt my data and use the Qubes OS:

2.1. Use an external encrypted SSD disk that I will connect inside a specific virtual machine (most likely a one-time use one), install portable applications on this disk that store data (FTP/SSH/VNC and others). Inspired by this post:

Encryption of app vms?

I don’t know if @Brad had the time to test my idea of hidden appVMs, and by the way it’s not really the same thing as simply encrypting appVMs, but I came with a crude suggestion to use an equivalent of encrypted AppVMs, manually though. You can pop up any disposable VM and attach a disk via xl block-attach DOMID '/path/to/file.img,,xvdX' (changing capital X accordingly, also note this can’t be an hdX/sdX type, as only the PV interface is supported in domUs). The “file.img” is containing TrueC…

2.2. Implement secondary storage as described in the documentation secondary storage.

I still can’t imagine how everything will work with this option, this comment worries me:

Encryption of app vms?

I’m not clear on what you want that isn’t included in secondary-storage As you know, the docs are a a collaborative effort, so feel free to clarify/add matter if you think it is missing. I need to test and maybe sleep on that, but I have preliminary questions : can’t I mess things up by creating a new volume in the main “vm-pool”, and registering that with Qubes ? No - they appear in Qubes manager. I cant speak for the GUI tools but the command line tools fail gracefully if the back…

In fact, when I first learned about the existence of the Qubes OS, I was very inspired and bought a new laptop for this operating system, but with each new day, plunging deeper and deeper into the documentation and forum, fear and depression began to permeate me.
For a very long time I could not bring myself to write a message on the forum, apparently I was stalling for time, thinking that I did not understand something or, on the contrary, I understood that this was not at all what it seemed at first glance.
But now I have calmed down, I have the options that I described above, and I will see how they look in implementation.

For my tasks I need:

1. Using a browser.
2. Using FTP, SSH, VNC, RDP.
3. Using various messengers.
4. Using an email client.
5. Using an IDE for programming.
6. Using of programs for reverse engineering.
7. Using a graphic editor to process photographs.
8. Using crypto wallets.

Perhaps I can use portable versions of some programs that will store confidential data and I can install these programs on an external encrypted drive.

If anyone has any ideas for implementing encryption for my purposes, I would be happy to hear from you.
Thank you for your time.