Qubes OS: A reasonably secure operating system

Joanna's (Qubes OS Founder) blog [1] is a gold mine when it comes to hardware-software boundary security. Especially "State considered harmful" [2] and "x86 considered harmful" [3] papers are eye-openers.

[1] https://blog.invisiblethings.org/

[2] https://blog.invisiblethings.org/papers/2015/state_harmful.p...

[3] https://blog.invisiblethings.org/papers/2015/x86_harmful.pdf

That's why I don't get Qubes. She knows what a steaming pile PC hardware is, and decides to write a spinoff OS for it???

Seems like she'd have more effect designing hardware.

Q: Would the steaming pile be stinkier with an easy way to deploy & use VMs to separate things, or without?

A: Stinkier without, therefore Qubes.

That's assuming the virtualization extensions are doing their job, and the other parts of the processor aren't leaking anything, and that Xen doesn't have any problems, and that the Qubes additions are solid, and that various interactions between these layers won't present any other problems, and probably a few other things...

I'd consider betting on one of those things being solid on its own, but not all of them together.

Well it obviously doesn't compete with whatever you're currently doing that solves all the same problems perfectly.

Why does it have to get personal rdiddly?

If you've spent any time with Intel's phone-book-sized opcode manual, or following the history of the PC, you get real skeptical when the words "secure" and "PC" are mentioned together.