I tried out a new linux distrobution named Qubes OS this week.
This OS is very unique and is designed to limit the effects of spyware/malware/virus/keylogging by virtualizing the different parts of your online day. Banking, work, play, personal, and even one-time-use browsers all live in separate virtual “computers” within your system. For example, in my screenshot, if there was malware on the craigslist website, it would not know anything about the other browser windows. Each “lifestyle” browser window is color coded so you know which ones are protected at a certain level. The red one is disposable, everything about it is completly and securly wiped from the machine when you close it. The yellow and green ones save your history but separatly from eachother.
It uses VM templates to spawn each window, so it is pretty amazing at disk space saving for what it is doing. The useage of it was pretty effortless, most of the time you did not know you were using virtual machines for each window.
Since it uses VM technology, you should also be able to add Microsoft Windows in the mix, so you can launch windows applications.
Because of the security, there are some limitations such as sharing files between windows, but there are work arounds for those.
This is not for everyone, but for someone who is concerned about desktop security, or someone who dabbles in not-so-safe parts of the internet, or even if you live where erasing your tracks is important, this may be something to look at.
Overall, I was very impressed with Qubes. It is one of the most unique operating systems I have ever used.
