There are many Operating System present in the market that serves purpose respectively.  One would limit to use Linux if they wish to handle tasks in more user friendly way. Qubes OS is an OS specifically developed to serve security on given tasks.

Today we are going to take a look on the what is Qubes OS, its main concept, benefits of Qubes OS and  how Qubes can derive a change and make a difference  in todays need of increasing securities.  Without increasing CPUs lets get to know Qubes Os!

What is OS actually?

Operating System OS is  mechanism to manage applications and perform tasks given by end users. The history of Operating System is very wide. The evolution happened gradually and what we call fourth generation is today’s modern version of OS.  Top talked about OS are windows 7,10,11 and Linux distributions such as CentOS, sushi, macOS and there are many like these with respect to users need of usage. Each Operating system has its own way and capabilities of handling things.

Lets check out about the the Qubes OS in details.

What is Qubes OS?

Qubes OS is a Linux distribution mainly focuses to keep security in center. Qubes OS is an open source Operating System which means it is also free and anyone can contribute to its core of code. Polish computer researcher Joanna Rukowaska is a founder of company Invisible Things Lab and Qubes OS. Needless to say but her bio is really sensible and reason to include it is here you can read about her.

Main concept of Qubes OS

The main concept of Qubes is to provide security on compartmentalization principle. Compartmentalization is a concept in Information Security which deals with limiting the access to information. It does that on the basis of need to know information  to  perform a task. To put this at ease, compartmentalizing means dividing  into separate compartments. It is as if a country is often separated into different states. This way the device that is in use would be less vulnerable or to exploit.

We have checked what is Qubes OS and its principle, lets check why security is important now a days.

Importance of Security 

Generally speaking, we use our laptops and desktops for various purposes. 95% of the times we connect to Internet and perform certain tasks. Internet is an information exchange platform where everyone can share whatever they want with few regulations here and there. When we have this level of freedom the entire system becomes more prone to many insecurities.

According to latest reports, Joker malware has infected 50 Google Play apps. These apps could have permission such as contact list permissions, camera permissions, app to know other app permissions. This means that the app developer might have the data the user never wanted to share at the first place. Lets take an example of website hack statistics,  on an average hackers hack 30,000 debuting websites per day. This statistics is enough to explain how digital assets are at risk. Similarly rise of email phishing is growing rapidly and needless to say but we know someone become victim of it.

After looking at it this closely we definitely need something to back us up, few things comes up in form of VPNs, a malware scanner and so on. We know how those things costs and thus we need more options towards this situation. To know more details on hack statistics you may visit here. Ignorance of digital security may lead to many disasters and thus this becomes one of the important matter one should be careful about.

Features of Qubes OS

1. Strong isolation- isolates the software into pieces that provides more security

2. Multiple operating systems- use Fedora, Debian and Windows at the same time.

3. Disposables- can create a disposable cube for task like browsing or emailing which disposes when work is finished.

4. Whonix integration- a security hardening on internet operations.

5. Split GPG- keeps private key safe.

6. U2F proxy- Universal 2nd Factor provides authentication using hardware devices.

System Requirement

1. CPU 64 bit
2. 16 GB RAM
3. 128 GB free space
4. Intel integrated graphics
   
   

To download the Qubes OS you may visit here. The minimum requirements for installation is 6GB RAM and  32 GB free ROM. They recommend not to install Qubes OS on machines untrusted hardware, meaning you may want to do a lite scan of your machine before installing this OS. The installation can be performed by the steps shared  here.

Conclusion

We have reviewed the Qubes OS, how it works and I must say this operating system follows a unique approach towards handling security. Obviously nothing can be perfect but we can make things more and more close to being secure and this OS is an effort towards it.

This concludes about what is Qubes OS. What you think about Qubes and what security measures do you follow, do let us in the comment section. If you have any suggestions to make, please shoot me form here. Pease out!