[Cryptography] Qubes

[John Denker]

Hi --

Is there anybody here who would care to comment on Qubes?
  "A reasonably secure operating system"
  https://www.qubes-os.org/

It's kinda new, and I have zero first-hand experience with it,
but people seem to be saying nice things about it.

The basic idea seems to be to use modern VM features (and optionally
TPM) to tilt the playing field in favor of defenders.  Also they
seem to have a good attitude toward following through on the 10001
little things that are required.

The basic idea has been around for years, used in niche markets
such as kiosk machines.  Maybe the time has come for it to break
into the mainstream.

The downside is that it demands a lot of the hardware.

This is crypto-related insofar as it doesn't matter how good your
number-theoretical algorithms are if somebody has pwned your platform.

If it achieves critical mass it could be kind of a big deal.