What Is Qubes OS?

Maybe this isn't the best place to ask this, but I'll try anyway:

I'm a consultant involved in cybersecurity who often has to build and run VMs to either test out software, run things in sandbox, or connect to TOR from a VM I'll never use again.

Having said that, I currently use Windows with VMWare Workstation, but I find it frustrating and would prefer something that's less frustrating and feels more built-in.

Is there a solution that anyone would recommend for this kind of thing? Internal networks, Windows and Linux sandboxes, etc. I use Microsoft office products regularly, and my workstation (Dell Inspiron with an i9, 64GB ram, 2tb SSD) is connected to a thunderbolt 4 dock with 2 1440 monitors. I'd prefer for a Windows VM to have passthrough to the monitors and be able to interact with the host OS via that VM, so I can still share my screen during meetings and while coordinating efforts.

You don’t really mention specifically what you find “frustrating” about VMWare Workstation so it’s hard to know on what criteria to give a response.

I don’t know how “built in” it can be considered but I’ve used LXD a bit and since it now supports VMs as well I’m guessing you could define VMs in yaml in advance and “easily” (depending on your definition) tear down and re-deploy VMs with preconfigured network settings etc. Vagrant should also work for this with a Virtualbox or VMware backend (paid feature).

What exactly do you mean when you say that the VM should be able to “interact with the host OS”, isn’t that exactly what you don’t want and why you’re running a VM in the first place?

I'd like the ability to drop files to a VM from another VM, like shared folders in Workstation.

My frustrations with VMWare usually revolve around network connectivity issues. My internal or NAT networks often fail to give the guest VMs the expected connectivity.

You work in cybersecurity and want more exposure between the host and the guest? You have a very different risk tolerance than I would in your shoes

If I'm doing real malware execution and analysis, I would one- way transfer the relevant file(s) to my sandbox and disable any backward connectivity before execution, but I still need a reasonably simple way of getting files to (suspicious files, etc) and from (resulting logs, registry changes, pcap, etc) the malware sandbox. Ive kinda solved this already using a number of tools outside my work host, but just in the off situations where this is necessary I want to have a template VM prepped in advance.