Legion 5 Pro - will it work with Qubes? Dual GPU/Boot*

Hello, i’m looking for laptop which will be useful for few mine use cases, one of these is Qubes, thats why i’m writing there. I found laptop with good specs: Lenovo Legion 5 Pro (16irx10 or 16iax10). Question is, will Qubes work well in this Laptop? I seen that it might not work with nvidia gpu’s, but what if it have 2 gpu’s at same time - Integrated Intel UHD Graphics and Dedicated Nvidia geforce 5070? Then i can choose which one to use?

Other option is dual boot, is it possible that i can choose Nvidia with Windows and Intel UHD with Qubes somehow at bios?

I think also about gaming, thats why i choosen at first, bit other than just, thinkpad or sth like that and dualboot was in my mind

Questions specific to Qubes OS are best asked on the Qubes OS Forum. You can look for your specific model on the hardware compatibility list, if it isn’t listed the next best thing you can do is research the system requirements and try to find similar laptops reviewed in the HCL.

To quote their system requirements page:

  • Graphics: Intel integrated graphics processor (IGP) strongly recommended

Depending on what drivers you need (and how you must get them), this could come with a significant negative impact to security:

Manual installation

WARNING: Nvidia doesn’t sign their files. To make it worse, you are forced to download them over a plaintext connection. This means there are virtually dozens of possibilities for somebody to modify this file and provide you with a malicious/backdoored file. You should realize that installing untrusted files into your Dom0 is a bad idea. Perhaps it might be a better idea to just get a new laptop with integrated Intel GPU? You have been warned.

As I understand it, all of this would just be to get your Nvidia GPU running in dom0 and not for any hardware accelerated applications running in VMs (like games), which according to their FAQ seems unsupported. Some try to work around this by configuring GPU passthrough which is notoriously difficult and may result in additional negative impacts to security.

I’d assume so, but I’m guessing you bought this laptop with the intention of using your Nvidia GPU, so you’ll probably end up dual booting which comes with its own security issues. If using QubesOS is something necessitated by your threat model, you should strongly consider purchasing a compatible computer dedicated for QubesOS. Installing additional dGPU drivers, configuring GPU passthrough, and/or dual booting seems like it’d often result in worsened security which almost defeats the point of using something as strict as QubesOS in the first place.

Qubes is not designed for gaming. Passing your GPU through is a security risk.

Besides getting another laptop, your best bet is to disable your Nvidia dGPU when using Qubes OS.

Maybe it won’t be an option for you now, but it can potentially be a great device in the future for Qubes if you don’t sell it.