For me it was in 2016 with Qubes 3.1 on a Core 2 Duo Sony laptop with 4 GB of RAM and an HDD. It was surprisingly usable at the time, I could have one work VM, one backup VM and one whonix VM running at the same time. It wasn’t until the new Firefox 52 ESR was no longer supported that this deteriorated, as the 60 ESR version had the multiprocess architecture enabled by default and so it used up considerably more RAM, and so 4 GB was no longer enough. I came back to Qubes only 3 years later after acquiring a compatible machine with more RAM.
What about you? When did you first start using Qubes OS and on which machine?
Started with Tails at the end of 2019 (after reading “Permanent Record”) and slowly came over to Qubes in February 2020. Bought a Lenovo P50 and later in Summer a Nitro-PC and was starting with 4.0.4 and both devices are now in daily use.
Still keep the MacBook Air and a Surface Book 2 just to check, what updates they bring up on the Apple and Microsoft front. But they mostly get lost in the rack here…
For me it was late 2018 with Qubes 4.0 on refurbished x230. From mailing lists discussions learned x230 “reasonably secure” with Heads. By time saw proposal: second qubes-certified laptop is Lenovo Thinkpad x220/x230 · Issue #1771 · QubesOS/qubes-issues · GitHub had buy i7 x230, 16GB ram, Atheros wifi card, and SSD. Qubes-Community Coreboot on Lenovo X230 guide by one7two99 ton of help to know buy Raspberry Pi 3, Pomona 5250 8-Pin Flash Clip, short Jumper Cables and learn howto external flash. Heads flash was terror 1st time but super reward. Love Qubes OS and use daily. Often confused, still learning lots, but much enjoy!
Honestly, i don’t know anymore. A few years ago i guess.
My first machine was a beefy Ryzen 1700X desktop PC, but now i am using a laptop. Went from “mainly windows user with 16 GB RAM that has a few linux machines” to using Qubes Omega grindset with 64GB RAM for literally anything except gaming. Never looked back, best decision i made (well maybe besides that one decision regarding my ex…).
However every other system feels very insecure and stupid now, so there are downsides to using qubes too. Thinking of people having their password manager on the same machine as their porn browsing machine seems like pure madness to me now. Also i hate that i cannot run my hacking lab in qubes, as it is too secure for layer 2 attacks :(.
It doesn’t feel. It just is. Yet, people still try to “harden” them inside Qubes - which I find is “miscomprehensive” at best, not to say it could be considered insulting.
Well, when it’s ethical hacking, then it should tell you that it became sufficient to waste your life on it anymore.
