After two years of development, the operating system Qubes 4.3.0 has been released. This version implements the idea of using a hypervisor for strict application isolation and OS components. To operate recommended is a system with 16 GB of RAM (minimum 6 GB) and a 64-bit Intel or AMD CPU with support for VT-x c EPT/AMD-v c RVI and VT-d or AMD IOMMU technologies, preferably an Intel GPU. The size of installation image is 7.8 GB (x86_64).
Applications in Qubes are divided into classes depending on the importance of the data being processed and the tasks being solved. Each class of applications (for example, work, entertainment, banking), as well as system services, run in separate virtual machines running using the Xen hypervisor. These applications are available within the same desktop and are highlighted with different window frame colors for clarity. Each environment has read access to the base root FS and local storage without overlapping with other environments.
Utilizing the Fedora and Debian package base, virtual environments can be created. Community-supported templates for Ubuntu, Gentoo, and Arch Linux are also available. It is possible to access applications in a Windows virtual machine and create virtual machines based on Whonix for anonymous access via Tor. The user shell is built on Xfce, where launching an application from the menu starts the application in a specific virtual machine.
