Can containers be saved and copied to another qubes install?

[toboz...@gmail.com]

Hi,

Is it possible to take a container from Qubes that has some app installed and copy it to another system?

Reason why this would be interesting, bc if containers can run windows apps (thinking about hardware development, microcontroller and FPGA connectivity through USB),

and windows tends to crash over time, so it needs to be reinstalled, with every program in it...

It would make life easier if it is possible to use the containers as containers on freight ships, unload and load it on another ship (os), so only the platform has to be changed underneath.

(while Qubes would be the harbor in this metaphor)

Is that possible? I would try it myself, but cannot run qubes in virtual machine and messing up my pc is not an attractive option.

Appreciate your answers!

[Claudia]

Qubes has built-in backup and restore for VMs, so yes. Just copy the backup file to another Qubes machine and restore it. However I don't know what you mean by "so only the platform has to be changed underneath." Qubes VMs aren't really intended to be portable to other virtualization platforms (like KVM or VirtualBox), if that's what your asking.

Not sure how template VMs work with Windows guests, but with Linux guests you can keep apps separate from user data, so that you don't have to reinstall apps when you create or delete VMs.

Also, you can install Qubes on a USB flash drive if you just want to try it out.

https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/backup-restore/
https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/windows-template-customization/
https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/installation-guide/#installation-destination