Will certified hardware be compatible with Qubes 4.1

User Support Hardware Issues
1

Hello everyone.

I’ve been interested in Qubes for years, bravo and thank you to the team.

I’m thinking of taking the plunge and investing in a computer to install Qubes but, I’m not a geek, I ask myself this question:

Will the models certified today still be compatible with the future version 4.1?

2

Hi @Hotdog, welcome!

In a short answer: Yes!. Edit: see discussion bellow.

Quoting the certified hardware documentation page:

The benefits of hardware certification include:

  • Your hardware will continue to be compatible with Qubes OS as it further develops.

So these are guaranteed to be compatible with future versions (from my understanding). On other hardware you’ll have to check the hardware compatibility list:

(Note: I edited the title of the post to make it easier to people to find it in the future. If you think it doesn’t fit, just let me know)

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@adw can you confirm this?

4

Thank you deeplow for this quick response.
I didn’t check in the documentation before posting my question even though I’ve been interested in the Qubes project for years.

I feel like those stupid consumers who want everything effortlessly, sorry …

Some other answers and … to me Qubes :grinning:

5

I struggle to see how that could be true. Not even Microsoft could ever guarantee that a specific hardware model today will be compatible with all future versions of Windows (even 20 years from now). Instead, it seems like the standard practice is to guarantee compatibility for a particular major release, e.g. Qubes 4. Admittedly, that’s not what the Certified Hardware page currently says, so either I’m wrong, or we need to update the page. What do you think, @marmarek?

6

@deeplow
Hi, I just searched for the link you provided.
It is from the paragraph intended for certification candidates … and not for - future - users.

So it should read, in my opinion, that the hardware should be compatible with future versions … but I haven’t found anything, at Qubes or Nitro for example (I have contacted them and am waiting for their answer), that guarantees it.

@adw
Thank you for your response. As said before, there is a lack of clarity regarding versions other - later - than those for which the hardwares have been certified by Qubes … and that’s logical.

So my first question remains because I don’t have enough knowledge to try to adapt hardware to software.

7

@adw and @Hotdog sorry for the confusion generated.

That might have been a misinterpretation. I took the text from the “Become a hardware certified” section assuming that if the compatibility guarantees provided to the hardware manufacturers on future compatibility also extended to the consumer.

Totally, that would be an impossible achievement. But between minor releases (4.X) then it would make sense.

10

In practice, we treat hardware certification as being specific to a major release, e.g., Qubes 4.x. This is borne out in our announcements:

I’ll update the wording on the Certified Hardware page to more accurately reflect this.

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11

Done: https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-doc/commit/85aef1a6f6ca0aad12797e43d55dae11bae95f03

12

Generally, our certifications is for specific major Qubes version. That said, part of the testing we do on certified hardware is also testing upcoming versions and help with preserving compatibility and certification.

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13

Therefore, hardware certified for version 4.03 is certified for version 4.1.

Wait some time before proposing us the versions 5 and 6 then :wink:

Thank you all

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14

Thanks, Marek. I’ve added those points, as well. Please let me know if you see any opportunity for further clarification or general improvement.