will R3 run on hardware which is fully compatible with R2 ?

[somelegald...@gmail.com]

situation: user wants to buy a notebook(workstation actually) and wants to run latest version of Qubes on it.

user is not expert in hardware or operating systems, but can do tweaking if there are some instructions on how to do it. 

while choosing model from this list https://www.qubes-os.org/hcl/ is it safe to assume that hardware running R2 is also able to run R3 ?

[Eric Shelton]

Umm - it doesn't sound too bad as a general proposition, but we are talking about computers and software, and sometimes things don't work for arcane reasons, so no one is going to say you are 100% (or even 95%) safe.

It is sort of (but not quite) like assuming that hardware running Windows 7 can also run Windows 8.  There is probably some hardware that fails for some reason - and keep in mind that Windows gets far more testing across different systems than Qubes or Xen.

Best,

Eric

[M. Ivanov]

On Sat, 2015-11-07 at 10:29 -0800, somelegald...@gmail.com
wrote:

Shouldn't this be asked in qubes-users instead?

And on topic - imho there are 2 main problems one might experience - the
installer may fail due to random reasons(ie. random req for at least 50
GB of space - happened to me, found out the hard way it's the problem,
no VGA driver for your discrete VGA - happened as well, but you might
install in text mode if so, or disable discrete VGA if you have an
integrated one and the bios allows you to). The easiest method is to
just remove/disable all hardware that is not necessary for running - ie.
discrete vga, wifi, card reader, etc. And re-enable it after install.

If all else fails - install on another machine and copy the installation
to your laptop.(Gotta run the grub install to get the bootloader right,
also /etc/fstab and partitioning, but it's simple).

After installing you might have random problems due to the nature of
Xen.

Personally when comparing Qubes vs just Linux, I don't see how hardware
would matter(in 99% of cases, because black magic), if not for the IOMMU
- which basically is all about Xen and the kernel(vt-d is the intel's
name for IOMMU, read up on it if interested - a lot of info in intel's
free books about the x86), and can be a pain in the ... if you have some
non-pci compliant hardware and require custom Xen patches. Disabling
Iommu is an option too, but you lose like 50% of the features and
security. Also no Windows HVM with a pass-through VGA either.

So if it doesn't work and it previously worked - you could try an older
Xen and/or Linux kernel. Also it could be about the graphics
drivers(they come as kernel modules with the mainline kernels - the open
source one, you could try the proprietary ones too I guess, but I hate
blobs and everyone should), had a lot of issues with that.

If all else fails, the non-expert user should seek help and offer
something in return if it's too specific and requires time :)
Of course he could also languish in damnation as no one bothers to help
and decides to bail out or starts reading and tinkering.

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[timwelter]

I would say in all likelihood it should work fine if it has a decent size SSD drive for the target of the install. 

 As a desktop workstation it likely will be much easier to address issues IF the come up.  THe VT tech should be fine or it should not be checked off on the HCL.

If there is an issue with a PCIE GPU at worst its as easy as pulling the card if there is no bios means of disabling.  I would check the bios and see how much control over the built in peripherals ethernet card, wifi bluetooth  etc.  If they are an issue they could worst case be disabled and separate card be install. 


If you are going to go into a store and purchase it why not bring the liveUSB image and run it or even do a install to a USB so you do not mess with the HD.  That would be the 100% way to ensure its compatible.  I did this on every computer I was looking at I could find in a store.