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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Is Qubes any more efficient in resource usage than a typical VM? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Privacy benefits aside, does qubes run better than a typical vm like virtualbox? I tend to fiddle with distros a lot and I feel qubes might be a good choice, though I'm wondering about how efficient it is

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (8 children)

Xen, The backbone of qubes, is One of the very few microkernels that is widely deployed. It's extremely efficient. It only does the minimum amount of work necessary to dispatch resources to different virtual machine guests

So comparing a VM running on a dedicated microkernal hypervisor like qubes, compared to QEMU or KVM which requires a monolithic kernel, it's going to be much more efficient.

But, when you start talking about the full desktop experience, with a window manager and mice and keyboards, and a guest VM, and a VM to run the desktop, and a VM to run the USB for the mice and keyboard, and a VM for the network stack, and a VM for the firewall..... It's less efficient compared to a system running a single QEMU VM with a monolithic kernel, and everything handled with a traditional monolithic operating system.

It depends on your use case, what you want to optimize for, quite frankly if you don't care about segmentation and security qubes is probably going to be too much friction for you.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (7 children)

for me i will likely play some games or use proprietary apps in windows or something and swap back to linux. i also develop for linux sometimes so being able to swap distros quickly and with good efficiency while being able to share files easily would be nice.

i dont know how viable qubes is for this use case. i like the concept of privacy but i dont need 100% lockdown for each app.

i hate dual booting with a passion, and i also hate how much my base OS interferes with the operation of a virtualized os.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You should use KVM for games

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

yeah ive been considering it

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