From: joweill@icloud.com
To: discuss@spectrum-os.org
Subject: Comparison to Qubes OS
Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 11:06:45 -0000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <159196000593.15924.11324981664160187764@localhost> (raw)
Hi there,
I just discovered this project and I'm really excited about it! I've long waited for an OS that combines Qubes-like compartmentalization with the reproducibility of Nix/GUIX.
I'm trying to understand what this project aims to improve over Qubes, other than the integration of Nix (which I do think is really important!). I read the motivation page [1], but I'm not yet convinced by most
of the points mentioned that relate to Qubes. Going over each usability issue mentioned in the motivation doc:
- "Hardware compatibility is extremely limited": I don't believe this is really the case for the minimum Qubes 4 requirements [4]: most modern computers people buy support these. Is there anything I'm missing?
- "People are reluctant to use Xen on their computer for power management etc. reasons." Can you elaborate on these issues?
- I know that Qubes considered using KVM and decided against it for security reasons [2]. My understanding is that the downside of this decision is the limited hardware support, which is one of the things that Spectrum views as an opportunity for improvement. Can you elaborate on this decision?
- "VMs are heavy": How will Spectrum improve on this without sacrificing security?
- "GUI applications are buggy, command line tools are mostly undocumented": I assume that the reason for this is the lack of resources the Qubes project has. However, I don't see how this will be be
better in the case of Spectrum which is a new project with one developer.
More generally, I'm wondering whether this projects' goals couldn't be better achieved by trying to work with the Qubes developers to integrate Nix. It may very well be that they would reject it for
some reason, but then the logical next step would be to fork Qubes.
Have you reached out to the Qubes developers?
Thanks in advance!
## References
[1] https://spectrum-os.org/motivation.html
[2] https://www.qubes-os.org/faq/#why-does-qubes-use-xen-instead-of-kvm-or-some-other-hypervisor
next reply other threads:[~2020-06-12 11:07 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 19+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2020-06-12 11:06 joweill [this message]
2020-06-12 11:28 ` Michał "rysiek" Woźniak
2020-06-12 11:54 ` infokiller
2020-06-12 12:02 ` Michał "rysiek" Woźniak
2020-06-13 11:19 ` Alyssa Ross
2020-06-13 11:38 ` Alyssa Ross
2020-06-14 20:19 ` infokiller
2020-06-14 21:27 ` Alyssa Ross
2020-06-14 22:19 ` Michał "rysiek" Woźniak
2020-06-15 1:59 ` infokiller
2020-06-15 1:54 ` infokiller
2020-06-14 21:13 ` Michael Raskin
2020-06-15 1:33 ` infokiller
2020-06-15 11:38 ` Michael Raskin
2020-06-15 13:44 ` infokiller
2020-06-15 14:06 ` Michał "rysiek" Woźniak
2020-06-15 15:07 ` infokiller
2020-06-15 14:42 ` Michael Raskin
2020-06-15 15:29 ` infokiller
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