Just saw that the ISOs for Qubes R4.1 have disappeared from https://qubes.notset.fr/iso/. Currently, there are only logs, signatures, and digests in this directory. Also, older Versions of the ISOs before April have gone. What happened there, and where can the last version of Qubes R4.1.2 still be found?
This sound insane, but I just checked mirrors and 4.x version are there?
May I 2nd: What happened there? This looks weird to me.
Just for the record and example
https://archives.fedoraproject.org/pub/archive/fedora/linux/core/1/i386/iso/
Could be housekeeping gone wrong.
notset.fr is not an official mirror, and all the official mirrors still
have 4.0,4.1 and 4.2 iso
I never presume to speak for the Qubes team.
When I comment in the Forum I speak for myself.
Sorry that I took the wrong mirror.
Anyhow, it is not helpful that there are different mirrors that are not kept consistent. What makes this situation worse is that, currently, there is no official link to point to the right mirror, as these links have disappeared from https://www.qubes-os.org/downloads/.
In my opinion, it should not be attempted to educate/force the users to move to R4.2, especially as this version is, at least regarding Windows support, still not functional. It would be much more user-friendly to let anyone decide, according to one’s threat model, if it is better to run Windows on an EOLed version of Qubes than natively.
So, why not just re-add these links to the Qubes download side, together with appropriate warnings, and let the users decide for themselves? Anyone intelligent enough to see the advantages of using Qubes should be able to select the right choice!
I understand your argument, but I do not see the incentive to put direct links to an unsupported version?
There are all the mirrors below the download links (a few of them are dead, I opened an issue) all working mirrors I tried had all the ISO. The specific need for using 4.1 is to use a QWT in a better state, this is not something you could figure the first time you download Qubes OS.
Maybe a sentence like “Previous versions are available in mirrors” would be enough for people needing an older versions (for various reasons), what do you think?
But with a link there!
there being a link to what exactly? Latest release iso? The qubes iso directory on the official mirror?
Just as I wrote in the post I was quoted for (?) and I wasn’t referring to an unofficial but to an official repo(?). Still, no earlier versions though. Still weird.
That’s @fepitre’s private website. He’s free to do whatever he wants with it.
There’s no way to prevent people from making unofficial mirrors.
There’s no way to force mirror operators to keep their mirrors up to date.
All that the Qubes OS Project can do is decline to link to mirrors that aren’t kept up to date.
We absolutely should attempt to educate users about the importance of upgrading from an EOL release to a supported one. This is a security-oriented operating system. Receiving security updates is critical to security.
Educating users isn’t forcing them to do anything. It’s providing them with information and letting them decide what to do with it. They’re free to ignore it (at their peril).
That is already the case.
The Qubes OS Project does not support releases after they reach EOL. Maintaining downloads for a release is part of supporting that release. Not supporting something isn’t the same as depriving you of it. If you care so much, maintain a mirror with the old downloads yourself. That’s exactly what #8623 is about.