What would you like to see improved in Qubes OS?

[Rel4967]

Same! This has been the single biggest inconvenience/annoyance.

YouTube videos for me have a 0.2 second lip sync delay and its quite noticeable.

Would love if anyone knows a fix!

[Himeno17]

I’d like too see AEM working with standard UEFI secure boot, and use something like GitHub - okirch/pcr-oracle: Predict TPM PCR values for future boot to seal and release the secret instead of TXT.

[barto]

I’d like to see no more “pushing updates which break the update system, and require users to add testing repos or make manual changes/fixes to re-enable the updates”. There are several techniques to avoid this, the simplest one being having an update system not depending on python.

Or as a goal, “Improvement: make 4.2.1 the last version in which updates can break the update system”.

[anon52699640]

I’d like to see onion forum link available.

[apparatus]

Onion address for Qubes Community Forum?

Hi Qubians, I would like to ask whether there is an onion address for the forum available. If so, could that be shared? If not, would it be possible to create it?

[SteveC]

@barto

I’d like to see no more “pushing updates which break the update system, and require users to add testing repos or make manual changes/fixes to re-enable the updates”. There are several techniques to avoid this, the simplest one being having an update system not depending on python.

You should never have to enable a testing repository to get core functionality to work.

I’m still waiting for the all-clear to update dom0 since I heard the last update broke the updater.

[qubist]

I’m still waiting for the all-clear to update dom0 since I heard the last update broke the updater.

Could you provide more info?

[barto]

@qubist

Could you provide more info?

There are at least 10 threads on this forum, probably caused by:

Qubes Update broke after 21 May 2024 dom0 update

Latest news is:

Dom0 update => Qubes Update no longer available

The update is in current-testing and should be good for stable in few days. If somebody affected by the issue could confirm (by installing the update in dom0 from current-testing repo and retrying), that would help. IIUC the issue happens only when no template updates are actually available to be installed, so the practical impact is small (if there are some updates to be installed, then the tool works).

[qubist]

Thanks. So, it is about the GUI version.
Is it safe to update dom0 through CLI?

[likeafox]

look here for audio_low_latency setting:

Config files

Check that it is enabled on your system. It says it is enabled by default, but it is possible you upgraded from an older version of Qubes where it was not the default (total speculation by me).

Note too, bluetooth devices have audio delay which is inherent to the bluetooth protocol, and can be significant (into the 100s of ms) depending on the specific bluetooth protocol used.

[alzer89]

I have one that would be kind of cool:

• A software/script/tool that would automatically turn your windows installation into an HVM
  - Both physical drive and disk image

Use Case:
Would allow many people who dual-boot Windows to finally get rid of their physical windows partition and make the switch.

Or for dual-booting folk, it could create an HVM where the boot drives are the physical block devices.

During the Qubes OS installation, imagine the installer saying “we’ve detected a Windows partition on the drive. Would you like this to be converted to an HVM?”

[GWeck]

Something that might help along this line:

You can create an empty HVM with appropriate properties and attach the Windows partition permanently to this VM. However, when booting, Qubes complains that there is no bootable media. Finding the cause of this problem might lead to a solution.

[apparatus]

You can try this:

Installed Qubes to external drive, is it possible to boot win drive as VM?

You can try this: Create HVM, set uefi feature for it: qvm-features <vm-name> uefi 1 Add ovmf.bin in your dom0: Unmount the EFI System partition from Qubes OS: sudo umount /boot/efi Presistently attach the EFI System and Windows partitions as block devices to your qube: qvm-block a --persistent qubename dom0:nvme0n1p1 qvm-block a --persistent qubename dom0:nvme0n1p2 Boot from qube and if you end up in startup.nsh shell then enter exit to enter UEFI menu and in Boot Manger select WIndows…

I didn’t try it with WIndows, but Linux OS worked for me.

[alzer89]

You know what? I used that exact same guide, and it worked for me too

There’s definitely ways to achieve this, for sure.

I meant, for example, like a tab in the “Create new Qube” Python/Glade GUI or a spoke in the Anaconda (Fedora/RedHat) installer on the Qubes OS ISO that would potentially detect this and offer to do all the work for you

I’ve been trying to familiarise myself with the structure of existing Qubes OS software so I can try to write a few. Slow but steady, hopefully I’ll have something usable soon.

Plus, trying to incorporate it into a built ISO is a lot harder than I was expecting…. I am pretty sure the Qubes team made it this way deliberately to prevent tampering. Well, it works fantastically, but it’s an ordeal to try and play around with. Hahaha

[otter2]

Okay, here’s my list of ideas I had and would like to implement but will probably never get to it:

• Extend flexibility of the qubes themselves, namely:
  • Be able to create a disposable based directly on a template bypassing the AppQube step completely. Why don’t just use the same mechanism that creates a new user for an app qube by copying /etc/skel? Probably there is a good reason idk
  • Be able to run multiple instances of a named disposable. Yes, the same way the conventional disposables are spawned with arbitrary numbers. For me, named disposables are just a way to store a particular config detached from their template. It doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to run multiple instances of the same config.
  • Be able to have a template tree. This seems more like sci-fi to me, but it would be really cool to have a template based on a template which differ by one additional not-so-trusted app installed. This would greatly decrease the space required to operate qubes. Dedup may be an alternative to this.
  • Snapshot tree. It should be possible to work with snapshots via gui. I want to be able to version-control my vms and revert to any of manually saved states on a whim instead of cloning them like a caveman. Please throw a link at me if this already exists and I am just unaware of it.

    I have a feeling that the template tree may be done by using a snapshot tree. How? No idea.

• Improve sys-usb
  • sys-usb is pretty problematic, mainly because usb passthrough is pretty laggy even when works correctly. Sometimes it takes multiple seconds to attach hardware to a qube. I understand that it may be a hardware problem, but if the speed can be improved in software please do so.
  • sys-usb tray applet is very janky. It works fine when everything is fine, but when a usb device fails to attach for some reason or gets unexpectedly detached, it is completely clueless and still shows that the device is attached. Usb device passthough is a significant part of everyday routine for an average qubes user. Please make it smoother.
• Improve visual support for domains without qubes-gui process running. Sometimes people run boring vms and the fact that graphics support is not even close to the convenienve of the remote viewer that often comes with the virtual machine manager on the conventional distros is pretty annoying. Sometimes it is problematic to change resolution. It is impossible to resize or maximize the window. I have no idea how to do this, but such a feature would noticeably enhance the user experience.
• Increase efficiency of the system by delegating at least OpenGL/Vulkan and WebGL tasks to a graphics card. We already have sys-gui on the horizon, but it only exists to separate gui rendering from the dom0. Next step would be to somehow allow domains to call it to do computing tasks. This seems like a security issue to me, and kind of tickles the existential aspects of the QubesOS itself but it would be cool nonetheless ngl.

Website and documentation:

• Add better documentation and forum search. People ask about already documented stuff on forums all the time. It is hard to sift through the documentation, even when you know what you are searching for and pretty sure that it should be there somewhere. Maybe add AI to help to search it.

[Quben]

I would love to see more improvements in RAM usage. I’m not complaining because Qubes has already gotten better in this regard since I started using it (because xfce probably) but it’d be nice to be able to squeeze in another qube or two in 16 gigarams

[palainp]

FWIW qubes-mirage-firewall helps with this goal and should be easy to install thanks to @unman’s tool: https://qubes.3isec.org/tasks.html

[pmmsdn]

Would definitely like to see something more hardened than Fedora for system VMs, I base a lot of this on CVE vulnerability listings. Also better support for VPN.

Like many others, I like OpenBSD but there seems to be support issues using it as a template. The pfsense firewall is based on FreeBSD, a sibling of OpenBSD, and it tends to be more user friendly and has better software and driver support in my experience.

Developers probably prefer a linux-based option. In that regard I might suggest Devuan (debian with no systemd), some people might also suggest Kali or Alpine.

[fsflover]

@otter2

• Be able to create a disposable based directly on a template

Allow disposable qubes to be based directly on regular templates

@otter2

We already have sys-gui on the horizon, but it only exists to separate gui rendering from the dom0. Next step would be to somehow allow domains to call it to do computing tasks. This

Provide a GPU acceleration toggle

[stumpi]

Well to put in my bit, mainly “upvotes” for things like incremental backup support, ease of some setup things (I am thinking VPNs but could be installing one of the other WMs like KDE, i3, or maybe a combo of i3+ a DE; using hardware tokens), more colors for qubes (or patterns if thats even possible?). I could probably think of other things but those are reoccurring issues that I keep running into since I started using qubes (a fair number of years now).