What’s the status of Qubes Windows Tools (QWT) nowadays? Is it still on the backburner, or frozen? Last word, afaik, was that it has had some (potential?) vulnerabilities and therefore got somewhat abandoned. This was when Windows 10 was around. Is there something in the works for getting Windows 11 working on QubesOS with QWT? I really want to get windows to have QubesOS integration tools such as qvm-move,-copy, and the seamless experience.
Work is being done on this:
opened 07:42AM - 21 Mar 16 UTC
T: enhancement
C: windows-tools
P: critical
release notes
bounty
meta-issue
## Latest updates
Alright, since I (@omeg) have been working on this for a wh… ile now and finally it's in a state that will allow for user testing soon, here is the current status of Windows 10/11 support. More items might be added in case I forgot something.
All of the current code is here: https://github.com/omeg/qubes-installer-windows-tools/tree/omeg/win10
Don't use on production VMs, it's not ready yet. Make sure to set the `default-user` property for the qube manually as appropriate (https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/9020).
TODO:
- Core
- Xen PV drivers
- [x] Core drivers (xenbus/xeniface)
- [x] Additional drivers (disk/network for performance)
- Integration
- [x] Core services (qrexec agent, qubesdb)
- [x] `qvm-run` with passthrough i/o
- [x] AppIcon extraction
- [x] Clipboard integration
- [x] File receiving
- [x] File sending
- [x] Shell context menus for file sending and editing in other VMs
- [x] Initializing the private disk volume
- [ ] Moving user profile to the private disk volume (https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/5916)
- GUI agent
- [x] Secure attention sequence (CTRL-ALT-DEL) simulation
- Fullscreen mode
- [x] Basic functionality
- [x] Resolution change on resize (limited by the basic display driver's hardcoded list of supported resolutions)
- Seamless mode
- [x] Basic functionality
- [x] User account control (UAC) popups (desktop switch)
- [x] Capturing Start Menu and notifications
- [ ] A way to interact with the tray notification area
- Installer
- [x] Component selection
- [x] PV drivers component(s)
- [x] Core component
- [x] GUI component
- [x] Proper versioning
- [x] Installing prerequisites (MSVC runtime)
- Building (no cross build on Linux possible anymore due to building Xen PV drivers from source)
- [x] Visual Studio build
- [x] Standalone build
- [ ] Integration with Qubes builder
Nice to have (will most likely be done after an initial release):
- Release-signing for PV drivers (https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/9019)
- Performance-enhancing OS tuning
- Windows 7/11 compatibility (11 seems to mostly work without issues)
- Seamless mode optimization (moving windows looks laggy)
- A GUI utility for various settings that are configurable via registry
- Custom WDDM GPU driver (for better performance and easier access to DWM-managed window surfaces)
Known issues (will be added to github once the code is merged):
- Stubdomain memory may need to be increased if you encounter Qemu being oom-killed (https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/3821)
- NTFS symlinks are not handled correctly by file sender
- Rarely some framebuffer changes seem not to be detected correctly in fullscreen mode
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<summary>Original issue text</summary>
Hi,
I was wasn't able to find any already opened issue about this topic so I'm creating one right now. In all documentation on qubes-windows-tools there is always only the information that newer Windows versions than Windows 7 are in development.
Can anyone please clarify what exactly this means? Do we have a roadmap or special features, which are missing at the moment? Because the MSI installer has a hard check for Windows 7 version in it I wasn't able to run the installer on Windows 8 and Windows 10 in comatibility mode (as the user cannot specify a specific Windows version in compatibility mode as he could do when running some executable file). I bet there are some reasons to include such a check there.
Would be great to have this list posted here. I'm also willing to help to get support for Windows 8 and 10 of course!
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2 Likes
Looks cool. However, I would also like to see some words on this by the developers for the laymen – ie, a few words on the state of QWT, the work being done, and the roadmap, outside of the github issues comments, with as little technical jargon as possible.