It’s not officially included into Qubes OS, I thought so from your message. Thanks for sharing though, it’s still useful
What would sven say:
Wow, that’s like wearing a mask and then making a big fat hole where the nose is to make breathing more convenient.
and then indeed
The ability to attach a dvd burner to a vm. I am on a desktop computer and nobody else has physical access to my Qubes installation.
An USB DVD burner may work using sys-usb?
- GPU acceleration (for Windows qubes too)
- Memory encryption (and other relevant anti-“spectre”-like measures)
- Inter-VM file moving which does not rewrite the same amount of data just in a different place (thus wearing SSDs)
- Option for installation based on minimal templates
- Option for entirely-in-RAM DispVMs
- Option to easily (and actually) disable swapping of VM memory for a qube (given enough physical RAM is available)
- Network monitor panel applet
- Easier handling of HiDPI displays (and multi-screen multi-DPI setups)
- Good incremental backup with advanced features (like Bacula)
- Better documentation (so one can also learn advanced stuff without having to bother others on the forum)
- No AI. Ever.
just a little thing:
In Qube Manager, right click a qube, and have an option to ‘launch terminal in qube’. It just seems like an oversight that its not there.
bigger thing:
a ‘wizard’ or something to simplify the setup of VPNs. One trusted, universal method in one little wizard (or, one for wireguard and one for OpenVPN). But that may not be possible due to, e.g. variations between VPN providers, I guess.
medium-size thing:
drag and drop files between qubes.
Two more things:
- phones should easily and reliably connect to qubes. Right now, they usually don’t, in my experience.
- better video would be nice.
medium-size thing:
drag and drop files between qubes.
I have thought about this too but it can be quite dangerous without proper protections/warnings/confirmations.
If you still get the popup asking you to confirm the file transfer, then it’s basically just a graphical version of qvm-copy-to-vm (note: not qvm-copy, which doesn’t specify the target machine on the command line, forcing you to choose it in the dialog).
There is one further difference: presumably he wants to be able to pick the destination folder rather than QubesIncoming/
That would be very nice.
I realize there would be challenges in actually implementing this. For example, dragging a file over to a particular qube window could be enough to select that qube as the destination. However, I have problems imagining how the focus of selection could then ‘go inside’ the destination qube and select a particular folder. Maybe I’m wrong.
I guess I’d be happy just keeping QubesIncoming as the destination folder. Still a bit simpler than pfaffing around with pop-up menus. I’d like to keep it an all-mouse/graphical operation, no breakout to keyboard .
I wouldn’t bother with a pop-up confirmation, graphical ques would be fine. But then I don’t work with really sensitive material and a strict need for separation, unlike some other users. Maybe that’s just too lax for Qubes, as @qubist implies.
That would definitely be nice.
The rest of my list:
- Support for lower power states so modern CPU’s can reach their lowest frequencies when idle.
- Support for amd-pstate driver / CPPC.
- Collaboration with grsecurity to get grsecurity kernels and userspace protection on Qubes.
- Get Mirage firewall in Qubes Community Repository.
- Get Qubes-VM-hardening in Qubes Community Repository (was already expecting it to be in there by now).
I spent a long time compiling a comprehensive list of all things I would like to improve and sorted them in order of importance to make it easier to filter through the chaff:
- faster system and vm boot time
Apologies for the cheekiness, but it really is just that (Qubes is really good!) and at the same time believe it would be the biggest improvement to it.
- When letting the installer create the default VMs, I would like the
sys-*
ones to be based on a minimal image. - A backup that is more space efficient (incremental backup) and the ability to include/exclude certain files.
- Allow permanent device bindings based on device IDs instead of the port it is connected to.
- Some sort of best practices guide on how to safely use QubesOS (“if I want to be protected against X, then I have to do Y” and “those are general security and privacy best practices”). Make this documentation accessible for the less technical people.
If you still get the popup asking you to confirm the file transfer, then it’s basically just a graphical version of qvm-copy-to-vm (note: not qvm-copy, which doesn’t specify the target machine on the command line, forcing you to choose it in the dialog).
I don’t know why but whenever I use qvm-copy-to-vm <vmname> <filename>
I still get the dialog asking me to choose the VM. How come?
I wouldn’t bother with a pop-up confirmation, graphical ques would be fine. But then I don’t work with really sensitive material and a strict need for separation, unlike some other users. Maybe that’s just too lax for Qubes, as @qubist implies.
That is the well known contradiction between security and usability. Take your suggestion to an extreme case, e.g. imagine one’s cat walking on the desk, stepping on the mouse button, dragging (and then stepping on the “Enter” key to confirm inside a potential popup, if there is one). Of course, that is a probably a silly example because one should never allow cats walking on computers or leave an unlocked desktop when not in use but you get the idea. Dangerous things can happen even when one is tired, or when one spills something on the desk. Nothing can prevent all possible insecurities caused by human error but we should be careful when we request/implement insecurities deliberately.
Personally, I would like to have the convenience you suggest too. However, that should come:
- as an option which one unlocks explicitly (after a big warning)
- in a controllable way - one should be able to control between which qubes and in which direction the feature should work, e.g. I may want to be able to drag to a disposable but I may not like to drag from a network connected qube to a disconnected one, or from “personal” to “work” and vice versa, etc.
It is expected according to /usr/bin/qvm-copy-to-vm
, which is a symlink to /usr/bin/qvm-copy
.
I think the idea is that one should not useqvm-copy-to-vm
inside qubes except dom0
.
Probably due to the fact that using other qubes name inside the qubes is against the logic of Qubes OS of compartmentalization.
State-preserving VM suspends
A tool to “gracefully retire” archived qubes (extract documents and browser passwords and save them in a convenient way), a tool to export and import qubes as vmdk’s
More qube colors
Liteqube in default setup
Full Windows guest support (seamless mode and decent performance)
Screenshot tool working out of the box
Permanently attach USB devices regardless of bus id’s they get
CDE theme
Make an intutive way to add a TAB to the list of options of available programs, for a program that one adds to Qubes on ones own. Obviously this would be a program installed from outside.
Yes, there are security risks to adding programs not screened by groups like Qubes developers, Free Software Foundation.
But it makes Qubes easier to us for some types of users.
this would be a shell completion script (like bash completion), this could be made part of qubes projects, so it shouldn’t be a security risk if integrated into qubes source code.