A simple question I don’t really find an answer for but it might be useful for setting the right expectations:
With Xen - HVM, PV, xxPVyy etc. - what can we actually expect in terms of performance from a machine - simply compared to -say- standard Ubuntu bare metal ?
Is it reasonable to assume that using all latest hardware virtualization technology, the machine should be close to the same performance - both in power and speed, or is it more reasonable to assume a significant penalty for both?
If penalty - what should be the range? Just ballpark number are enough.
It’s slower for anything related to GUI programs, and use more power in average.
If you only run command line programs, the performance are not that bad.
When I’m using a regular system occasionally, I’m always astonished how snappy and smooth things are. But I’m fine with the tradeoff for everything Qubes OS gives me in return.
With some things is like 10% slower with others like 99% slower (gpu).
If you run on one gpu whole system then it runs as slow as old pre-3d era gfx or even slower.
From my personal experience, with a high-end PC, you don’t really notice the difference between using Qubes OS and bare-metal Ubuntu. If you have enough memory and preload all the qubes you regularly use, then you don’t have to wait for qubes starting, and applications open instantly.
My guesstimate would be around 10%, but if your typical workload only uses 20% of the CPU, you are not going to notice the difference between 20% and 22%.
I didn’t notice any difference in performance at all - absolutely none. Browsers, GIMP, video editors… not even a one‑second slowdown. My eyes don’t see any changes, but I have a good CPU and plenty of memory
New user here; just installed qubes on an old 4th gen i3 NUC. Just out of curiosity (“will it work”). Performance is not great. Hard to put a number on it though.
But it is to be expected from a now 12 year old low end device. It works for basic tasks like browsing, email, messaging.
Do not expect to run smooth video/audio; though it’s driving a 4k screen right out of the box.
Other than all that, it’s absolutely usable, in case one does not have something else at hand. Will use this for sure.
Thanks for all feedback so far. The overall gist makes sense.
Here’s what I have experienced (and thought I had gone crazy…and why I asked the question):
Finally a “complete” install had worked and I ended up with what seemed like a system exactly according to the “introduction” in Qubes main pages (using a high spec AMD laptop)
However, there was no network and I had no idea what to look for or even where to start. So, my wife and I went out to have Pizza (though this is not of particular significance to my story, but I thought it’d be a nice personal touch).
When we came back there was network. At least displayed in the icon. We had been gone for 2 hours - but of course that doesn’t mean it actually took 2 hours for it to come up - it could have happened 1 minute after we had left, who knows? (It, however had NOT happened in the 2 hours prior to leaving while I was still sitting in front of that damn thing)
Anyways, the laptop was noticably warm (while downright scorching during other parts of the installation) - but worse, the network was not acually working. At least I was not able to ping Yahoo (Yes, old guys still ping Yahoo to verify connectivity…) from any cube, including dom0, sys-net etc. .
So - depending on the exact detail and task, something can be exactly as fast as “baremetal” or significantly slower - that’s how I would rate my own experience as well.
My company has decided to make its own security oriented distribution of Linux (including lots of “from scratch” elements) which I have been using on my previous machines and it is a similar story. I think it’s a dumb idea to attempt something of this scale by oneself, which is why I feel Qubes would be a better choice for us, but unfortunately I lack good arguments so far. The experience with our own solution is pretty much the same - laptop slightly hotter and slower, sometimes more and sometimes less. Makes it not unusable but behave like a couple of generations back. Of course if it were just for vanity, I could live with that, “snappy” is nice but not a fundamental requirement. Unfortunately, though, we sell software (or at least we try…) and need to “demo” our stuff, There it makes a big difference.