Qubes OS: A reasonably secure operating system
Qubes OS
Official website qubes-os.org
Our take
Qubes takes security through compartmentalization to its logical end, running your activities in separate isolated VMs so a breach in one cannot reach the others. That is genuinely strong, and genuinely demanding: it needs capable hardware, a real learning curve, and patience, which is why it is squarely for experts. If you are a high-risk user willing to invest the effort, little is more rigorous; everyone else will find it more friction than their threat model needs.
GitHub at a glance
QubesOS/qubes-core-admin
Stars
142
+ 0 this week
Last commit
3d ago
healthy
License
LGPL-2.1
Stars, last 10d
Listed in
Qubes OS alternatives
Tails Tails: Portable, encrypted and secure through the Tor network
Whonix A free, open-source desktop operating system that forces all traffic through Tor, run as two isolated virtual machines.
Fedora Workstation Fedora Workstation: User friendly and easy to setup
Ubuntu Ubuntu: User friendly and easy to setup
openSUSE Tumbleweed openSUSE Tumbleweed is a rolling-release Linux distribution that defaults to Btrfs with Snapper snapshots, letting you boot into a previous system state if an update breaks something. Available with KDE, GNOME, or Xfce.
Arch Linux Arch Linux is a minimal, rolling-release Linux distribution built around a do-it-yourself philosophy. You assemble the system yourself from a bare base, choosing every component, and keep it current with the pacman package manager.
Qubes OS license, in plain English
LGPL-2.1 Weak copyleft
Closed-source software is allowed to link to this library, but changes to the library itself must be shared under the same license.
Permits
- Commercial use
- Modification
- Distribution
- Private use
Requires
- Disclose source
- Same license (library)
- State changes
- License and copyright notice
Does not provide
- Liability cover
- Warranty
Why it matters: Weak copyleft protects the project's own files: improvements to them stay open, while the code can still sit alongside closed-source software.
Plain-language summary of the project's license, not legal advice. Read the full text for the exact terms.