Qubes OS

A collection of posts about Qubes OS and related applications. This section contains guides on setting up MirageOS, Split SSH, and proxies on Qubes OS.

Firewalling with MirageOS on Qubes OS

MirageOS is a library operating system with which you can create a unikernel for the sole purpose of acting as Qubes OS’s firewall. In this post, I will walk you through how to set this up. Advantages Small attack surface. The unikernel only contains a minimal set of libraries to function, so it has a much smaller attack surface than a general purpose operating system like a Linux distribution or openBSD....

Using IVPN on Qubes OS

IVPN is a fairly popular and generally trustworthy VPN provider. In this post, I will walk you through how to use the official IVPN client in a ProxyVM on Qubes OS. We will deviate from the official guide by using systemd path to handle DNAT. This will provide the same robustness as their approach to modify /opt/ivpn/etc/firewall.sh, while avoiding the risk that the modifications will be overwritten by a future app update....

Using Lokinet on Qubes OS

Lokinet is an Internet overlay network utilizing onion routing to provide anonymity for its users, similar to Tor network. This post will go over how to set it up on Qubes OS. Before we start… This post should not be considered an endorsement of Lokinet in any shape or form. Lokinet is currently not in a good state — it has not had a public release since 2022, and most free public exit nodes have gone offline....

Using Mullvad VPN on Qubes OS

Mullvad is a fairly popular and generally trustworthy VPN provider. In this post, I will walk you through how to use the official Mullvad client in a ProxyVM on Qubes OS. This method is a lot more convenient than the official guide from Mullvad (which recommends that you manually load in OpenVPN or Wireguard profiles) and will let you seamlessly switch between different location and network setups just as you would on a normal Linux installation....

Using Split GPG and Split SSH on Qubes OS

This post will go over setting up Split GPG, then setting up Split SSH with the same PGP keys. Effectively, we are emulating what you can do with a PGP smartcard on Qubes OS. Split GPG Follow the official Qubes OS documentation to set this up. Note that if you already have a PGP key with a passphrase, you can remove it by installing pinentry-gtk to vault’s TemplateVM, then run gpg2 --edit-key <key_id> and passwd to set an empty passphrase....