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Comment by behnamoh | Hacker News Reader

A simple screenshot of the OS environment would have been nice. But generally, I don't think people adopt operating systems just by seeing new recommendations on Hacker News or different forums. Most people have settled on macOS and then Linux and then Windows. and within the Linux ecosystem most people just use Ubuntu or Fedora and that's it. I don't see anyone using these other esoteric operating systems as a daily driver. For servers it's a different story. We have OpenBSD and FreeBSD. and of course Linux. But that's about it. Even supercomputers run Linux. creating an operating system in 2025, aside from intellectual curiosity, isn't really pragmatic.

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CubesOS is the choice if you need a very high level of security, are willing to accept some workflow changes to achieve that, but still want a modern graphical operating system that runs all your normal software in a unified workspace.

Nothing else provides a similar mix of security and usability. The alternatives are either much less secure or have much worse usability.

Of course only few people have these kinds of requirements. I'd recommend Qubes OS if you are an investigative journalist or working in offensive or defensive IT security. Everyone else can safely ignore it.

Still, even if it's not made for most of us it makes interesting design decisions that are very much of interest to this forum. And a lot of the people it is made for are here too

Qubes is far from esoteric in spaces where security is paramount. Your lack of familiarity with it doesn’t mean it’s obscure. It’s more a tool for a specific subset of people and purposes, rather than an OS meant for wide adoption.

FWIW, seeing Qubes on HN some weeks ago got me to try it out, and it's been my daily driver since. Good timing since I had holiday vacation to spend time with it before going back to $JOB on the machine.

PS Qubes is Linux. The base domain hypervisor is Fedora-based, and while it is possible to run Windows in a "Qube," the docs and tooling clearly concentrate upon Linux (Fedora and Debian) as the primary use case.

> A simple screenshot of the OS environment would have been nice.

https://www.qubes-os.org/screenshots/

Qubes is a Linux OS. It's like if you took Fedora and installed xen on it and booted up some VMs and the windows for them opened within the base OS instead of in individual system windows. Plus some cool magic with the file system to reduce redundancy and how many times you have to update things.

And cooler magic to colour code your window borders. Effectively gives you a VM running Firefox and you only see the Firefox window.

This will let you run your email in one window, and click on a link to open it in another VM.

I don’t think qubes is targeted at mainstream users— even mainstream developers— and I don’t think something has to be targeted at the mainstream to be interesting, especially here. There are probably a lot of people here that won’t ever use it that will still find the idea and ethos interesting.

Qubes is great as a development platform. The simple integration of VM's into a desktop is surprisingly useful and seamless for day to day development, testing and work.

I've used it for a number of years.

It looks basically identical to fedora with XFCE, plus the window borders being different colors to indicate different VMs and some toolbar icons for VM management.

> It looks basically identical to fedora with XFCE

You can install KDE, too: https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/kde-changing-the-way-you-use-qu...

Qubes was created in 2012!

It mostly runs Linux applications.

Runs Windows pretty well! I find that very convenient.

https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/templates/windows/

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