Qubes VM Manager: Organize?

[el...@tutanota.com]

I can organize apps/folders in my startup menu ("Application Launcher Menu"), but I can't seem to organize my VMs in the dom0 Qubes VM Manager.
Am I missing something?
Looking to be able to throw them into 'folders' or something, so that some can be permanently hidden/grouped as I like.

[Andrew David Wong]

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You're right; there's currently no way to do that. However, we're planning
decomposing the functions of the current Qubes Manager in R4.0. Part of this
task will involve hiding most of the "infrastructure" of Qubes (i.e., most
service and utility VMs) from the user by default, which should help
significantly with keeping VMs organized. Here's the issue tracking that:

https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/2132

I like your suggestion about providing a way to keep VMs organized. I don't
yet know what the new system will look like, so I can't say whether a
folder-based system (like the app menu) will make sense, but something like
that could be a good idea. I've added this suggestion as a comment with a link
back to this thread.

- --
Andrew David Wong (Axon)
Community Manager, Qubes OS
https://www.qubes-os.org
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[el...@tutanota.com]

> don't
> yet know what the new system will look like, so I can't say whether a
> folder-based system (like the app menu) will make sense, but something like
> that could be a good idea. I've added this suggestion as a comment with a link
> back to this thread.

Thanks.

If you do make it, please try to remember to try to be intuitive... Copy shit that everyone knows.. (Click on triangle to reveal subdirectory or something that runs through most OS guis). Not trying to be rude or imply that qubes is overly complicated.. It just is by its very nature.

I am not sure about other people, but I connect to different AppVM's via different VPN locales (of the same VPN provider). Perfect? No, but it saves money, and I bet a bunch of users do something like this. Most VPN's give you 20+ different locales to connect to (London, Paris, Sydney, etc..) It is desirable (when not using tor at least) to set up different ProxyVm's for each AppVM that you use, even if you are using the same vpn company.
If I am not the only one out there doing that, it would be really helpful to be able to visualize which appvm connects to which proxyvm (maybe by shading background colour or a dotted line denoting parents/children/siblings when you scroll over the app/proxy to indicate relationships?).

And I probably just came up with an unintuitive idea. But if it's intuitive to you too, maybe it would be for more people. Maybe a mouse-hover would bring up a small explanation of 'taint/relationships with other appvm's that are using the same ip?

My couple nunsense.

[Drew White]

You are right, they should add in that into the Qubes Manager for the networking visibility. These are things that I've got in my system and I find very useful.

AppVMs should never have use of the same IP, unless you have over 254 VMs on the PC (including templates) under the same networking partition.

I do not VPN often, but I have everything set out, and I can look at my manager and see what VPN I'm connected to because different Proxys have different VPNs, and thus a different name for their NetVM.

I know I'm speaking as a PRACTICAL person, not a "wanky GUI" lover type person, but I do agree with subdirectory style, but there has to be many methods of sorting and categorising.

For example, I might click on a button to categorise by NetVM, so it has the NetVM, then the Proxy VM under it, then the AppVMs under it.

If the ProxyVM has 3 NetVMs assigned to it, then it should be under all three NetVMs.
If an AppVM has 4 ProxyVMs attached to it, then it should also be under each of those ProxyVMs.

But then again I might want to sort on CPU cores. So I want to see what ones have use of Thread 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24 .. etc..

So I click on 1, and it showes me which are able to use thread 1.
If I click on 1+2 it showes me all that can use 1 OR 2, or I click the AND button to show only the VMs that are allowed to use core 1 AND 2.

But then I may want to see template based sorting. So parent to child there too.

Then there is the custom sorting.
I may want to make my own methodolgy, but also switch between them all.

It's not really asking much at all.
It's a simple task, and easy enough to perform. (Depending on what you are programming in)

They are just some thoughts that I used to develop my manager.