Re: Comparison to Qubes OS

["infokiller ​" <joweill@icloud.com>]

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak wrote:
> On 6/14/20 9:27 PM, Alyssa Ross wrote:
> >    So, why not
> > start a public discussion in Qubes' mailing list on issue
> >  tracker to figure out what is needed to accomplish Spectrum's goals?
> > 
> >  It will probably turn out that you made the right decision by starting
> >  a separate project, but at the very least:
> >  - You'll may get attention from people who can contribute to Spectrum
> >  - The issues involved with be publicly documented and searchable for
> >    future generations  
> >  I think you maybe don't appreciate just how huge an undertaking this
> >  would be.  There is so much that would have to change about how Qubes
> >  works that I think you'd end up having to reimplement most of it
> >  anyway, but you'd be doing it bit by bit, never having the opportunity
> >  to consider the system as a whole. 
> Plus, SpectrumOS does not have to deal with backwards compatibility. If QubesOS
> developers were to start implementing these changes, they would constantly have
> to deal with trade-offs between ease of implementing them and the cost of
> breaking backwards compatibility.
Well, that's what major version changes are for. Qubes 5 could change to a Nix model if they wanted without worrying much about backwards compatibility. I assume that won't happen for other reasons, like having higher priority work, and lack of experience with Nix.

> 
> >   At the end of the day I just don't believe that
> > trying to shoehorn these
> >  changes into Qubes is the best way to make progress.  It might well be
> >  valuable to try that, but even so it would make much more sense for
> >  somebody who believes in that approach to dedicate the huge amount of
> >  effort required to attempt it, rather than me.  This could be another
> >  effort that could be pursued in parallel to my work on Spectrum. 
> Very much this.
> 
> --
> Best,
> r