Hi,
I would like to know about the history of Whonix as part of the Qubes project.
@unman - I am tagging you as you have mentioned you don’t use Whonix and you are a Qubes developer. Would you mind sharing what your reasons are?
Just for a start…
There were early efforts to port Whonix to Qubes R2 by a specific user.
Prior to that Qubes used a TorVM - a small qube that proxied network
traffic to Tor.
As I remember WhonixQubes left the project very shortly before
integration was announced. I found that odd. (You can read this in the
mail archives around April 2015)
There were perceived to be issues with updates using the TorVM - the
hope was that Whonix would solve these issues (Ha). There were also
perceived benefits in linking with a project that provided a focus on
anonymity. Reading the mailing list archives is the best way to get
background on this.
I dont use Whonix - among other reasons, I find it unwieldy and a resource
hog. I use a TorVM - packaged at https://qubes.3isec.org. It’s a base
package that you install in a minimal Debian template (or clone), that
provides a Tor gateway: no traffic is passed in the clear. Unlike Whonix
it supports the Qubes firewall. It runs with about 400M.
Thanks for the reference @unman. That sounds odd indeed, as well as the lack of clear answers to all your technical questions (at least I couldn’t find any):
Were those actually answered at any point in time?
I hope we can talk about the TorVM in another thread where I tagged you too.
That sounds odd
lack of clear answers
If you want clear answers, go to the Whonix forum and ask them there. Don’t spread FUD while pretending to fill in the blanks of your documentation. If you don’t like Whonix, explain clearly why. @unman hasn’t done so.
As I remember WhonixQubes left the project very shortly before
integration was announced. I found that odd.
Who or what is “WhonixQubes”? Is that a user? Was that a project group name? If you’re demanding clarity, demand it from all sides. I’m willing to hear what @unman has to say.
I’m always open to reading about people’s skepticism about Whonix, because I want to know where it stands. However, what I find is almost always paranoia, vibes, FUD, and no clear technical criticism beyond “not minimal enough” or “OpenBSD is better”.
If the underlying aim of this conversation is to quietly dislodge Whonix from Qubes, I think you’re going to get a lot of vigorous pushback.
I hope that doesn’t sound odd to you.
I will add that Whonix has TONS of documentation for anyone who wants to bother reading it. The idea that Whonix doesn’t answer questions is false. What is odd is that people don’t read the documentation.
Please read what is actually being said instead of loudly criticizing what was not.
If you complain that this post doesn’t adhere to strict standards of historiography, I remind the reader that _unman’s post, and _qubist’s response to it, made a purely historical discussion out of the question. If moderators find that a problem, maybe they should rein in their users, not from asking questions, but from presenting in the most lazy way the most superficial, conspiratorial insinuations about Qubes-related technologies.
If this post is removed by the moderators, I’ll repost it on the Whonix forum.
Since demands I respond to what has been written, let’s focus on the exact language used.
_unman introduced the term “odd” into the conversation. The choice of “odd” is important. First, it means “suspicious”, a “red flag”, a sign that all is not right. Not merely that a box has not been ticked. When _unman describes the situation where so-and-so disappeared after Whonix was accepted into Qubes as “odd”, he means to say that the motivations of the person are suspect. So “odd” is not just any adjective. It’s doing political work.
Of course, _unman did not state openly what he was insinuating. I will let the reader decide if it’s because he lacks the courage of his convictions, or for some other reason. It most certainly wasn’t to be clear and provide even-handed historical explication.
That _qubist jumps on the “odd” bandwagon is also illuminating. It’s one thing for _unman, in his opinion, given his personal history, to frame something as odd. It is quite another for _qubist to do so. It provides insight into his thinking, and especially his feeling. _qubist initiated the thread as an inquiry into the historical facts about the link up between Qubes and Whonix. But at the first opportunity, _qubist leapt to grab the first pejorative offered to him, as if it provided special insight. Though he retroactively demanded “clarity” from the Whonix team, he did not require clarity from _unman. _qubist does not ask who or what “WhonixQubes” was. Instead, he seems to be more interested in taking _unman’s side. This is not the attiude of a historian. It is the attitude of a operative revealing his confirmation bias. He was biased to view Whonix in a negative light, and _unman confirmed that bias. _qubist’s enthusiasm revealed his cards.
We know for a fact that there are two prongs to _qubist’s efforts: the thread on the history between Qubes and Whonix, and another thread about TOR-VM, which _unman has been tinkering with for 11+ years. It’s not me saying there are two threads. _qubist himself has invited _unman to the second thread in this one.
I think it’s fair to assume the one leads into the other, revealing that _qubist is not disinterested. If I may be so bold, allow me to guess _qubist’s aim: (a) to discredit Whonix by embracing and spreading as much FUD as he can through a superficial glance at history that exists just to dig up dirt, and (b) present a solution that will replace Whonix.
If I am mistaken, _qubist can explain to us all what exactly his motivations are. Why have these two threads of his design come back-to-back? If he has innocent intentions, why did he fail to demand clarity from _unman, and embrace the FUD?
_unman’s first reply in this thread is unprofessional. It is unacceptable to spread FUD about Whonix in a casual, unthinking, unproven way. It is unacceptable to make statements without clarity, allowing implication and hot button language to do all the work. It is especially unacceptable to dump a Twitter-grade drama into the forum, taking no responsibility for it. If _unman has special insight, let him prove it. If he has evidence, let him provide it. If he is unwilling to put in the work to make the insinuations of his statements stick, then he should find something better to do.
Are we to trust the judgment of someone who, since 2015 has been (a) nursing suspicions about Whonix and (b) maintaining a partial solution without doing anything with it? Why would we think such a person has the best interests of the Qubes community at heart? This may seem like a rather forward way of putting it, since _unman has an outsized reputation on the Qubes forum. However, what does it say about someone who feels the way he does, has the capability that he does, and yet never in 11 years put together a team to solve the problem, to resolve his suspicions? Are we to believe _unman is sitting in his corner smirking as he observes people’s lives destroyed by an inferior software package, placed into the Qubes ecosystem by “odd” occurances and mysterious circumstances?
If I thought the car you were driving had faulty brakes, shouldn’t I do something about it? _unman suspects for 11 years, but stands idly by. It makes me think even he doesn’t view his suspicions as legitimate. Or if he does, then his ethics are put into question: why has he casually accepted “odd” software in the heart of Qubes? If it was wrong to place it there, why hasn’t he resisted it more openly, with more determination? Is it because _unman’s opinion on the matter is basically BS, and he knows it?
I’m not accusing _unman. His own behavior and statements accuse him. As someone who doesn’t worship at the feet of _unman, I’m perfectly willing to permit a man his contradictions. But it seems I need to underline this possibility for people whose judgment is clouded by their admiration.
Specifically I mean _unman could have gathered a team and developed a Whonix replacement. If TOR-VM indeed serves perfectly well as a Whonix gateway replacement, then the only missing part would be the workstation. I see no evidence that _unman has undertaken this project. He cannot claim that he is unable to gather the requisite social resources. If _qubist is any indication, there are many people in the Qubes forum who would fall over themselves to join _unman wherever he may lead. With his considerable talents, surely a prototype could be knocked together in a month. Isn’t it “odd” that _unman has never done so?
Why, instead of doing this, does _unman continue to nurse suspicions which he never bothers to answer, but merely tosses casually into conversation when the opportunity arises?
Speaking of reading the Whonix documentation, anyone who has done so will realize that the Whonix developers have already answered to vague calls to replace Whonix with something else. If perhaps it doesn’t rise to _unman’s standard of a “design document”, it has nevertheless lists all the things that Whonix does, inviting one and all–including _unman and _qubist–to maintain their own better solution.
_unman says he has read the Whonix documentation, but if he has, why does he casually put forward TOR-VM as a plausible replacement for Whonix gateway, when Whonix has two parts to its approach? What about the workstation? Before I entertain more nonsense about Whonix, I would like to see a detailed response to this list of Whonix features, and a sketch of a proposal about which OS could replace it, using what methods.
Or, is the “solution” that we should all become as smart as _unman, and just magically know how to plug all the holes in our workstation as it passes traffic through TOR-VM? If so, then whatever nascent proposal is being developed here hasn’t surmounted the first hurdle, which is to consider who is the target audience of Qubes+Whonix: a normie who needs the default solution that Whonix provides and TOR-VM alone doesn’t.
There is a great danger in the Qubes Community that a few–maybe 20–people with loud voices on the forum come to mistakenly believe they are the target audience of Qubes. We see no end of proposals, small projects, fine tunings, and deep dives on the forum. But this interested community is, what, 5% of the Qubes userbase at most? The 20 core movers-and-shakers–a club _qubist and _unman belong to–by my estimation is about 0.0007% of the Qubes userbase. In socializing with one another and sharing their good ideas, they will come to believe that their better ideas are the best ideas. But they’re wrong.
I’m often annoyed at how Tor Browser works, but then I realize its defaults are in place to please the normie user who just wants to visit social media sites. That’s why javascript is open 100%, for maximum vulnerability. It’s not my taste, and in fact I think it’s insane. But there is method in the madness: more users mean more cover traffic means better anonymity for Tor users. That’s why it’s tuned that way.
If I said that Tor would be better if it was tuned to my expectations–Javascript turned off by default, for example–I’d be wrong. I have to consider more than my own peculiar interests when judging what counts as a good design decision. If I posted messages accusing the Tor project of something “odd” because they didn’t disable Javascript by default, as I asked them to 11 years ago, it would be myself that was silently discredited.
Design choices for Qubes should not be determined by bleeding edge users who think they know better, because in knowing better they no longer represent the audience for Qubes. Just because you know of a better technique doesn’t mean that technique is the best under the circumstances. Technical superiority isn’t the only consideration, as the Tor Project proves.
Of course, it is just a fact that in this thread _unman hasn’t proved his solution is technically superior to Whonix. That may seem irrelevant, since this is a thread about history. But his implicit argument hinges on the assumption that TOR-VM was a plausible alternative to Whonix, and was only overlooked or pushed aside due to some “odd” happenings. If TOR-VM wasn’t a plausible alternative, then that pretty much explains why Qubes didn’t wait around for it to suddenly become one, when Whonix already provided the desired functionality.
Maybe _unman is just mad–for 11 years–because his pet project was [EDIT] overlooked?
The fact that the person who pushed for the inclusion of Whonix left thereafter is hardly mysterious. I myself left the Qubes forum. Does that make me a suspect?
Is there a moral obligation that contributors to Qubes become _unman’s personal friends and stick around and chat? Once Whonix was included in Qubes, what more was there to say? It’s ridiculous to cast suspicions upon someone leaving. Maybe he left because he talked to _unman and didn’t want to continue the conversation. That’s a perfectly good reason to leave, and has no air of mystery about it whatsoever.
Maybe this person has another name in the scene and hasn’t left at all. How would _unman know? And why would it be his business? Who is _unman to demand such knowledge, and having not received it, authorize himself to cast suspicions over Whonix?
I remind _unman that having made a hobby of living in the shadow world, he cannot expect to know everything that happens behind the scenes. If that isn’t to his liking, perhaps he should find another passtime. Maybe Facebook.
As an aside, to anyone who thinks OpenBSD is the natural alternative to janky Whonix, I remind you that OpenBSD isn’t perfect. Wade through this to see some of the debates.
Highlights:
The point is, there’s a debate and differing opinions about the security profile of OpenBSD. It is not a universally held and unimpeachable belief.
I also remind you that OpenBSD usability is questionable. Perhaps most crucially, system crashes lose filesystem data. Qubes own _solene can testify to the limits of OpenBSD, since she announced to the world she left OpenBSD because she found she couldn’t use it as her daily driver:
Solene'% : Why I stopped using OpenBSD
If an OpenBSD expert can’t use OpenBSD as a daily driver, what hope does a normie have?
People who think “OpenBSD is better than Whonix” haven’t put 10 seconds of critical thought into that statement. As with everything, there are compromises. But people looking for a reason to attack Whonix think they have a free pass to spread superficial and even fictional comparisons without ever doing the work: not only in terms of technicals, but useability, maintainability, user-friendliness, and ecosystemic considerations. When taking in the widest view, it is not at all clear that OpenBSD bests Whonix for the purpose Whonix sets out, certainly not stock OpenBSD.
I’m so tired of hearing vague FUD BS about Whonix from lazy snipers. It is not up to Whonix users to prove some alternative is worse. It is up to the FUD purveyors to do the work of providing an alternative, including a working prototype.
OpenBSD is only a viable alternative to Whonix IF your users are happy with stock OpenBSD, and therefore don’t want to do much with it. If you do more with your OS, you might find OpenBSD to be a straightjacket. Whonix strikes a balance between security and useablity. Is it the right one? That’s a debate the snipers don’t want to have. They just want to raise their eyebrows and look down their long noses at people who make “wrong” security decisions, while spreading FUD.
By the way, the reason I’m not running OpenBSD right now isn’t because I don’t want to. It’s because the last time I tried (v7?) I couldn’t get it to install. Whatever failings Whonix has, at least average people can install and use it. If you think that doesn’t matter, maybe you’re not the target market for Qubes.
A bridge that exists is worth more than a thousand pontificating r/iamverysmart engineers who think they can do better. Whonix exists. Whatever solution you think is preferable doesn’t exist, or hasn’t been packaged together, is irrelevant to Qubes, doesn’t have a dedicated team, hasn’t been around for a decade+, or is HALF the solution at best, and is therefore just a twinkle in your eye. Nobody cares how smart you think you are, what insights you think you have. You haven’t built your bridge. Your opinion is irrelevant. Put in the work and build an alternative, and prove it has staying power. If _qubist and _unman and friends want to try their hand at it, let them. And if the project is still active after five years, let’s debate replacing Whonix.
Yes, five years. The last thing we all need is a Whonix replacement that ends up gathering moth balls because the principles wandered off to do more interesting things. Something _adrelanos has that his critics don’t: staying power. But I guess that’s just part of the conspiracy theory, too?
_unman said he asked for a design document, and did not receive it. _qubist seconded the peculiarity of this omission. I find it “odd” that someone is still nursing suspicions about not having received a design document 11 years later. And I note that it takes a remarkable ego to snap one’s fingers and expect a design document to be delivered to you on a silver platter.
As a matter of fact, most software projects do not have design documents.
Markdown began without a specification. Only after it had been widely taken up by diverse projects did anyone think about the problems that caused. _jgm took up the challenge, lead the Common Mark specification and parser efforts. _jgm didn’t sit around posting 11 years later about how nobody handed him a Markdown specification. Instead, he solved problems.
_unman has had 11 years to contribute the missing design document to the Whonix project. I assume, like most other open source projects, the Whonix team is not resistant to accepting good faith contributions. But as a matter of fact, John Gruber, who created Markdown, was resistant to such efforts. That’s why _jgm led an independent effort. And so there is no reason whatsoever that _unman could not have contributed his design document independently, and could not have organized efforts around it to design a superior solution to replace Whonix.
Why hasn’t _unman contributed to Whonix to make it better?
If Whonix history is so suspicious, why has he not led a campaign to dislodge the "odd"ity that is Whonix from Qubes?
If Whonix is an inferior technology, and if the Whonix team is not cooperative, why has he not put in the effort to replace Whonix, based on his preferred TOR-VM solution?
Why, instead of putting in any of the work above, does _unman casually spread a conspiracy theory about the relationship between Qubes and Whonix?
“Odd.”
_unman seems to think he can level underhanded accusations with insinuating language while putting in zero effort to prove his statements. It’s the expression of an inflated ego. I think _unman has become so used to getting the red carpet treatment around here, that he assumes he can post anything and get away with it. I’m happy to prove that he’s wrong.
You don’t get to slander Whonix with lazy insinuations. I demand you tell the truth, making direct statements supported by evidence. Or take a hike.
And I remind you if you hadn’t started this BS, I wouldn’t even be here to misunderstand your statements. Remember, it’s shit that attracts flies.
I hope this puts an end to _qubist’s daydreams, whatever they may be. But if there is still some song bird flitting through the sky of his mind, I reiterate, positively, constructively: follow up on TOR-VM, answer to the challenge posed to you by the Whonix documentation, and supply us with a superior solution, and back it with determined effort for 5 years. If you make it I will applaud you.
I’m 100% sure you won’t make any such effort–to write a fair history, to respond to Whonix documentation, to build an alternative–and all you’ve accomplished is wasting my time. Why would you do what _unman failed to do?
If there is any need for me to reply to this thread, I will do so on the Whonix forum.
It looks like no one (including me) cares about why Whonix was chosen.
That might be an answer not only on this specific “why”, but to many “whys” when Qubes OS design is.
word count = 3,132, dang…
I don’t like that you are trying to turn this thread into something it was never aimed to be - tilting at windmills - so I will be as clear as possible in answering what I consider relevant. If you need answers to anything else, you can open a separate thread, tag me and ask (concisely, please) - I will answer everything that sticks to community guidelines.
Odd means strange. Yes, it is strange that WhonixQubes left, just as it is strange how you registered an account here and immediately started attacking this thread. We don’t know why WhonixQubes left - he may decided to move from computers to agriculture, or been abducted by aliens - I am not interested.
I have not asked anything from the Whonix team in this thread. Please don’t invent “facts”.
I did ask @unman for clarity as you can see in my question after his reply. I would also be interested to know about the other reasons, he mentioned, but he is free not to provide more info, considering his signature.
_qubist does not ask who or what WhonixQubes was.
Because I took the time to look at the mailing list archives and see that he was a participant in discussions from April 2015. I doubt anyone can answer who was behind that account and it seems unimportant too.
This thread is where I am trying to learn about the history of Qubes + Whonix. I opened a separate thread because I want to learn something else that is off-topic to current thread.
That’s what one does when one wants clarity.
I had started on a somewhat lengthy reply, but as rideordieII
has left the forum, I see no point. It’s a shame that visitors from
Whonix forums should behave here in such a way. The question obviously
touched a nerve.
The question of how Whonix came to be part of Qubes is valid, as
are questions like, “Why Xen?”, “Why Fedora in dom0?”, “Why python?”. I
attempted to provide some context, and pointed to the best resource
available, mailing list archives. If this was unclear the best way to
proceed would have been to say so, instead of jumping to false conclusions.
If I want a lightweight, stripped down, fast car, there’s little point
in extolling the virtues of the cyber truck. I continue to use a Tor
qube because (among other reasons) I find Whonix unwieldy and a resource
hog. I do not promote the Tor qube heavily: I think that there are perhaps
500-600 users - not many, but not an insignificant number. If any one
should want to try out a TorVM I’ve given guidelines in @qubist other
thread.
I didn’t know that. Odds never end.
If I want a lightweight, stripped down, fast car, there’s little point
in extolling the virtues of the cyber truck. I continue to use a Tor
qube because (among other reasons) I find Whonix unwieldy and a resource
hog.
FWIW:
among other reasons
Could you elaborate?
It sounds like a lot of this history is scattered across old mailing-list posts. Would it be worth putting together a short timeline in the Qubes documentation showing when TorVM was used, when Whonix integration started, and what the main reasons for the change were?
To me, the answer is yes. That’s why I put the forum tag needs-doc on this topic.
Sorry still confused @unman and @adrelanos, but unclear about
Due respect @corporateblush but I disagree
even 
@ephile spent a little time to do a
That or any pseudonym now or on the mailing list? I bet at least one person knows 
+1 but my interest not only about past but present
Clearly. I appreciate you and understand
Humbly request also present state
Hope did not misrepresent any meaning in quotes above.
Thank you all.
Whonix Team are together with the Qubes OS team, the light in the darkness.
FWIW I too am very interested in a more detailed history and status of the relationship between Qubes and Whonix for the sake of transparency. I’m all for reading up on things, but I don’t currently have time to spare to look through 7+ years of email threads. I’d like to have all the implications stated explicitly, especially how confident the Qubes team is in the Whonix team and software. Trusting yet another party for security- or privacy-sensitive operations requires transparency and understanding, and we have limited free time to do it. It makes the equation simpler if Qubes makes statements and claims, since we implicitly trust Qubes if we use the OS (saying this as I highly doubt most users have personally audited the code). It’s also a lot easier to verify claims than it is to perform primary and secondary research. Personally, I’m of the public opinion that the Qubes team has its time best spent on the Qubes code, but I do think it’s worth their time to take it upon themselves to be just as reasonably transparent as they are reasonably secure.
This is far from a criticism right now. For whatever reason mistakes and oversights happen, but I do think it’s important that such large and integrated collaborative relationships like Qubes+Whonix should be explained to users. I would be concerned if a year passes, Qubes is aware of this deficiency, and still refuses to make a substantial comment.
7 posts were split to a new topic: Whonix origin