Xen-Based Secure OS Qubes Hits 1.0

Orome1 writes "Joanna Rutkowska, CEO of Invisible Things Lab, today released version 1.0 of Qubes, a stable and reasonably secure desktop OS. It is the most secure option among the existing desktop operating systems — even more secure than Apple's iOS, which puts each application into its own sandbox and does not count on the user to make security decisions. Qubes will offer users the option of using disposable virtual machines for executing tasks they believe could harm their computer. These VMs will be lightweight, easily and extremely speedily created and booted, and would be just as easy to discard." First covered back in 2010. See some screenshots of the X11 part in action (and they say displaying clients from multiple "hosts" isn't useful...)

Comments

Re:And I feel so safe downloading it..

[Black LED]

If your site breaks because the client doesn't have JavaScript enabled, then you are doing it wrong. The site should gracefully degrade so that anyone can use it.

Re:What a specimen

[spasm]

And people wonder why women avoid IT..

Re:New OS or glorified shell script ?

[lindi]

The way Qubes shares composition buffers of X applications over xen shared memory is much nicer than VNC. It is rootless unlike VNC and there is no extra copying of data over a socket so you get nice performance. They also do sound so you can actually watch youtube in a web browser that runs in a disposable VM.