For some time now I have been following the evolution of Qubes OS a completely different one functional system from what we know, which is developed with security in mind.
Qubes OS is one operating system which allows you to create different virtual spaces (virtual domains) to perform different tasks.
So you can go from one domain to another, depending on the task you want to do, and you can install a completely different operating system.
Qubes OS is based on Fedora and a main idea that is summarized in the following words: "security in isolation."
Using the domains mentioned above as light Xen virtual machines attempts to combine two contradictory goals:
How to make isolation between domains as strong as possible, and how to make this isolation as simple and easy as possible.
Although you could certainly use any of the applications virtual machines out there to run as many VMs as you want on your favorite Linux distribution, the result won't be the same, especially if you don't want multiple desktop environments running in their own windows. You will be presented with a lot of errors and problems that you will have to solve.
For example, how do you share files or copy and paste them safely between VMs? How do you keep all of these VMs up to date with the latest security updates?
In a traditional Linux distribution you have to do this manually in each of the VMs you have installed. Qubes provides a number of additional tools that make it easy to manage a desktop full of different virtual machines and running with different levels of trust (untrusted).
The distribution uses Xen to provide more security. Instead of each VM having its own full interface, Qubes uses the most privileged dom0 Xen VM as a host for a desktop environment (currently Qubes has KDE or XFCE, although the community offers other DEs) .
Thus, VM displays the windows of each individual application within the dom0 desktop environment.
So, to run him Firefox on Qubes it's just like you'd expect on any other distro. The main difference though, is that Qubes allows you to give each of your VMs the level of trust you want, from red (untrusted) to black (trusted) in various colors of the rainbow.
If you are interested below you will find the distribution link download in the latest version (RC).
Not recommended for beginners.
Qubes OS Release 4.0-rc3 (release candidate)
- Qubes-R4.0-rc3-x86_64.iso
- Qubes-R4.0-rc3-x86_64.iso.DIGESTS
- Qubes-R4.0-rc3-x86_64.iso.asc
- Qubes-R4.0-rc3-x86_64.torrent
