First impressions

[Ray Brainer]

This is my first week of usage and impressions about the Qubes.
The idea of isolation seemed wonderful before using it.
Now I find very unhandy what I deal with in Qubes.

1) No way of desktop sharing, though I need it very much. I read some ideas on the point here https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/qubes-users/-JEfgOF-TaI/kIU_JCmUCAAJ
It sounds almost impossible. I use Zoom and Viber to share screen. Have no idea of screen forwarding to a VM.

2) Cross-clipboard operations don't work by any means. Cross-usage of applications, user-generated shortcuts to apps - everything seems a problem.
3) Appear empty windows I've never seen before in usual apps like Skype, qbittorrent, VLC etc.
4) No free space for software and libraries. There is a huge risk of loosing data when resizing images. I lost it twice, though I repeated every step from the guide.
5) Templates are based on pretty specific distros like Fedora and Debian. It takes time for Arch and Windows templates to create.
6) It is not very easy to direct webcam on a particular VM.

Again, the idea is excellent. If there is a way to save my time on points 1-3 I would be thankful.

[raah...@gmail.com]

I don't know anything about screen sharing. But what do you mean cross clipboard operations don't work?
cross usage applications sounds like defeats purpose of isolation but I might be misunderstanding you.

I've never seen empty windows appearing in vlc. weird.

In KDE it was much easier to make shortcuts to launch specific apps right in the menu. XFCE unfortunately does not make this easy anymore. You actually have to edit a cfg file to do it, but its possible.

I never lost any data increasing a vm size.

I do have a win7 vm, and it was indeed little tricky to install. Took me two tries to get windows tools working. but Linux is linux to me though. I use debian as well as fedora simply for packages available in debian not in fedora. But those two distros pretty much have everything covered for me in linux world and imo and are the two best regarding general security. Arch was always my distro of choice for traditional vms cause its very minimal by default, but I have no need for it in qubes.

Yes you can only direct webcam to appvm with terminal command for now. I'm sure they will include a way in qubes-manager eventually.

[Andrew David Wong]

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On 2016-12-03 05:07, Ray Brainer wrote:
> This is my first week of usage and impressions about the Qubes.
> The idea of isolation seemed wonderful before using it.
> Now I find very unhandy what I deal with in Qubes.
>
> 1) No way of desktop sharing, though I need it very much. I read some ideas on the point here https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/qubes-users/-JEfgOF-TaI/kIU_JCmUCAAJ
> It sounds almost impossible. I use Zoom and Viber to share screen. Have no idea of screen forwarding to a VM.

It should be easier to share a domU's screen, but sharing dom0's screen is, at least to some extent, inherently insecure.

> 2) Cross-clipboard operations don't work by any means. Cross-usage of applications, user-generated shortcuts to apps - everything seems a problem.

Are you following the instructions here?

https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/copy-paste/

> 3) Appear empty windows I've never seen before in usual apps like Skype, qbittorrent, VLC etc.

This might be a hardware incompatibility issue. I haven't experienced this, and I don't recall any other reports of this.

> 4) No free space for software and libraries. There is a huge risk of loosing data when resizing images. I lost it twice, though I repeated every step from the guide.

Can you provide more detail or context about what happened and what you're trying to achieve? The problem you're describing sounds like something that shouldn't be happening as a consequence of normal usage.

> 5) Templates are based on pretty specific distros like Fedora and Debian. It takes time for Arch and Windows templates to create.

We welcome help in streamlining the process.

> 6) It is not very easy to direct webcam on a particular VM.

I suppose difficulty is relative, but it should be easier now with USB passthrough:

https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/usb/#attaching-a-single-usb-device-to-a-qube-usb-passthrough

> Again, the idea is excellent. If there is a way to save my time on points 1-3 I would be thankful.

- --
Andrew David Wong (Axon)
Community Manager, Qubes OS
https://www.qubes-os.org
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[Eva Star]

On 12/03/2016 07:20 PM, raah...@gmail.com wrote:

> In KDE it was much easier to make shortcuts to launch specific apps right in the menu. XFCE unfortunately does not make this easy anymore. You actually have to edit a cfg file to do it, but its possible.

It's not true. It's easy to create shortcuts menu. Right click on
toolbar, then New Item> then Launcher. After it will be visible you can
change settings and add shortcuts with right click > properties

--
Regards

[Eva Star]

On 12/03/2016 04:07 PM, Ray Brainer wrote:
> 1) No way of desktop sharing, though I need it very much. I read some ideas on the point here https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/qubes-users/-JEfgOF-TaI/kIU_JCmUCAAJ
> It sounds almost impossible. I use Zoom and Viber to share screen. Have no idea of screen forwarding to a VM.

Maybe HMV can help, not regular AppVM :)

>
> 2) Cross-clipboard operations don't work by any means. Cross-usage of applications, user-generated shortcuts to apps - everything seems a problem.

On Windows I have the same problem :) Copy&past not work every time.
After I migrate to Q, then it works perfectly

> 5) Templates are based on pretty specific distros like Fedora and Debian. It takes time for Arch and Windows templates to create.

First, What I do after migration to Q was setup of Windows HVM. After
playing with Qubes and Windows... I does not start Windows, because I
found all application at Fedora which replace the need to start Windows.
Now, I start it one-two times a week for the specific problems only.

> Again, the idea is excellent. If there is a way to save my time on points 1-3 I would be thankful.

Continue learning the system...

--
Regards

[raah...@gmail.com]

I'm talking about the applications menu. what is the "toolbar" you are talking about? All I know of to edit the menu in xfce is to use alt f3. But that only lets you edit existing entries, not create new ones.

[Andrew David Wong]

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Eva is referring to what is called a "panel" in Xfce. By default, there is a panel that horizontally spans the top of the screen. You can right-click on this panel to add new "Items" to it, one of which is a "Launcher." The "Launcher" can be used to start apps inside AppVMs with one or two clicks. I find this very convenient, since I have a lot of VMs and there's no way (that I've found) to create submenus in the main "Applications Menu."

- --
Andrew David Wong (Axon)
Community Manager, Qubes OS
https://www.qubes-os.org
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