Safest OS from your experience

When looking for a safe and stable OS, do you require a specific anonimity/privacy mindset like TAILS offers or an uber-crypto-suitcase-laptop like the linked Blackbox?
Or are you just looking for a simple robust banking, business&stuff OS where most popular original (LTS) distros will suffice.
What do you lack in a common live-cd/usb?

 

I was looking for a os that did not log any details, installations and history and websites visited etc, it feels apart from tails and few others not many geared that way apart from live os ie running ubuntu live or tails live.

Still ubuntu live seems easiest and with use of virtual box and plenty ram should suffice, perhaps throw in the use of a tc drive to help adds privacy and security as best can.

 

Hi TheCatMan,

Only web browsers log websites visited, while OSes all log important event details of operation otherwise. Live CD/USB OSes are usually the safest to operate as you have found out.

-- Tom

 

thx for confirmation, I will stick with live cd/usb options

 

First things first, hello to everyone! I’ve been a silent reader for a long time and enjoyed the many discussions regarding the many security issues.

Anyway, I am struggling to get my head around the Qubes OS. Well, it’s over my head. I am reading a lot but the learning curve is flat. That’s mainly because I am not able to establish an internet connection. Without help from the qubes wiki or other guides it’s very hard to make progress.

I am running Qubes 2 on an AMD system, therefore without VT-d. I only have one system with several operating systems (both linux and windows).
My question is, can someone provide me with something like a beginners guide (other than the qubes wiki, which clearly is for the advanced user)? Are there books available that I could work with? I think of myself as rather patient (well, in our times that is), but it’s frustrating that I am only making the tiniest baby steps right now.

I don’t use WLAN. When I configure the Ethernet manually it does say I am connected but there are still problems. For example, when I try to send a ping it responds with errors and of course websites won’t connect in Firefox.

 

Hi Balthazar,

To my knowledge, Johanna (main author of Qubes), ran Qubes on an Intel board computer with both VT-x and VT-d so that it had hardware support for the VM aspects of the Xen hypervisor of Qubes. Maybe it is time for a Linux laptop with both VT-x and VT-d plus multi-cores?

The only somewhat related beginner's guide I was able to find is the following:
Xen for Beginners (Video)

-- Tom

 

Hi Tom,

Thanks for your answer. Yeah, I read Joanna's thoughts on virtualization and Intel. My next laptop will be a linux laptop (not sure about the hardware though, with all the talk about Intel and backdoors). Unfortunately, I don't know when I will be able to afford a new laptop, money is tight.

Thanks for the link to the video. It was rather odd and not as insightful as I had hoped. I am sure, I will get to the bottom of the problem at some time.

I have several different systems installed on my laptop that I tried out for a while (Ubuntu, Mint, Crunchbang, Qubes) I don't want to use Windows7 as often as I do anymore. I like Crunchbang and Mint very much, Ubuntu is nice as well but I think it has to go first (again, because of privacy policy).

 

Finally, I think I found the explanation for my problem. It looks like it's the hardware because I am experiencing the same problems described here:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topicsearchin/qubes-devel/pci$20not$20working|sort:date/qubes-devel/RzQhxAYI5H0

I wish I had found this thread earlier. It would have spared me hours of frustration.

My system also hangs when trying to reboot/shutting down.

I am a little relieved to finally know what's been keeping me from accessing the internet in Qubes. I can tell you, networking and my laptop - that's a neverending story. I changed my Wlan card and couldn't get the new one to work and now even ethernet is not working.

 

Well, I was too curious if it would work so I spent 30 bucks on a LAN express card for my laptop. I only had to add the device to the netvm and everything worked properly so far. Now I’ve got a new toy! I like Qubes very much and at last, I can check the internet *and* try out and update the VMs.

I didn’t get the updates to install via GUI in the VM manager but I think that must have something to do with root access. I was starting the updates via the terminal and everything went smoothly.

The next steps will be to make keepass work for both Windows and Linux (without messing up the OTP count on my Yubikey) and to set up a VPN connection in Qubes.

PS: Sorry for the monologue. I'm just happy it worked!

 

If you choose Linux, make sure the package management and its mirrors etc has a well defined security concept.
Not all distros sign their packages which in theory could compromise your system.

Also watch out for distros where you, out-of-the-box and per default run as root.

 

Not sure if it is as secure as those mentioned above, but I like Puppy's live DVD. It is sort of like having a frozen system.

Bob