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List:       qubes-devel
Subject:    Re: [qubes-devel] Qubes Air's usefulness
From:       "'Tom Zander' via qubes-devel" <qubes-devel () googlegroups ! com>
Date:       2018-01-23 14:05:13
Message-ID: 2793920.UrlAICczuj () mail
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On Tuesday, 23 January 2018 05:56:05 CET Chris Laprise wrote:
> But at some point the hardware will make or break us, and the
> hardware we got now is Wintel; even Linux is an afterthought when you're
> not looking at server components.

I'm not sure if you guys caught the subtle side-effects of the 'Qubes-Air' 
proposal. It didn't hit me until I slept on it.

Today there is a duopoly for CPUs and practically nobody considers ARM or 
even smaller CPU makers. The main reason for this is the "bang-for-the-buck" 
factor. To get a speedy desktop you need a fast CPU. The C stands for 
"Central" for a reason.

Now should Qubes Air roll-out I can foresee building a desktop that is VERY 
different from today.

Consider this;
I buy a simple piece of hardware (they mentioned a raspberry Pi for a 
reason, I'm sure) as my main desktop which powers my graphics system and 
thus my monitors.

I will want to add some more beefy qubes to this, and instead of buying one 
very powerful CPU, I end up buying a series of cheaper "computers". I put 
the word "computer" in quotes since I really only need a mainboard, memory 
and a CPU plus some way to communicate to the main-qube (doesn't have to be 
Ethernet).

Then for my C++ compilation I buy an ARM threadripper and plenty of memory.
On the other side of the scale I get for my 'Vault' VM a microcontroller 
that only really has some sort of non-volatile memory and communication with 
the main qube.
Be creative, use mini-itx PCs or any other such device, as long as it can 
run python and xorg, you can turn it into another part of your desktop 
computer.

So, what Kelly described Qubes Air as being good for;
"Apparently, managing a cluster computer"

I do agree, but I would argue that it is quite exciting as it effectively 
removes the _central_ from CPU. And we have to admit that the majority of 
the security issues we have today are with the CPU makers.

-- 
Tom Zander
Blog: https://zander.github.io
Vlog: https://vimeo.com/channels/tomscryptochannel


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