Why does qubes come with fedora?

Questions
1

Isn’t fedora horrible for privacy, especially concerning that it’s owned by red hat?

1 Like
2

You are severely misinformed. It is not horrible for privacy by any measure or metric.

Also, you need to say and explain a lot more to make a case for why you have this question.

5 Likes
3
  1. No…
  2. It isn’t “owned by Red Hat.”
  3. But even if it were (which it isn’t), it isn’t clear why you believe that would be “horrible for privacy.”
2 Likes
4

It’s likely a general sentiment towards corporation backed distros. Some are worse than others though (Looking at you Ubuntu).

5

Fedora is a community-driven project with Red Hat as its main sponsor. It’s true that Red Hat’s influence is very strong, but having a community backed by a company like Red Hat is a killer combo for a Linux distro. It drives innovation and ensures things stay solid and reliable in the long run, making it one of the best models out there.

Qubes OS uses Fedora as the default template because it’s simply the most convenient choice in this context. Fedora makes a solid base thanks to its security and package management. The fact that it’s also good for privacy is, honestly, just a happy coincidence.

6

Originally, the reason Qubes chose Fedora was simply because they liked it.
However, the current reason for using Fedora in dom0 is to ensure better hardware support.
This choice has been subject of ongoing discussions for years.

(As a new forum user I can’t add more links, just search the qubes forum for the topic if you are interested)

I should also note that it is possible to use Debian in dom0, even if it is not officially supported.

2 Likes
7

Just to drill into this a bit, the relationship between a community and single or multiple companies can be symbiotic or exploitative and likely ebbs and flows as leadership and priorities in the company change as well as the community politics.

There is good reason to be skeptical in general of these relationships but as others suggested, you’ll want to do some investigation. You should do your best to avoid generalizations like “red hat/canonical bad” and “permissive/copyleft licensed open source is good”! The real receipts of power come down to influence on the technical direction of the main project, the amount of alternatives to any given solution around a shared central project, and the flow of information (marketing, perceptions of the project, freedom to call stuff out). Most importantly, you must be careful not to assume that once a good ecosystem, always a good ecosystem, there are always changing dynamics that you want to keep a slight pulse on through various relationships.

This all is not easy to understand from a cursory view so you need to generally find a few people involved in the community and get their takes… But this also requires validating their opinions aren’t biased and fllawed. What is their relationship to the community or the corporations? Do they care more about community reputation or taking bribes?

It important to intentionally build up a network and RSS feed of micro journalists that report things from the communities you care about. This skill will become more and more important as we move away from centralized trust in corporations and governments.

Edit: @andreasglashauser may be one of those folks for Qubes :).

This is always something good to see the microjournalist (MJ) suggest too. That said, you will find a lot of noise doing this. What I find to be the best research is to get the MJs with different opinions and biases in a chorus and look for patterns between the stories they tell.

8

I’d like to add a few more links to discussions that have really been ongoing for years, not just since the beginning of 2024 (as referenced in the second link from my first message):

I’m quite certain that most of the arguments against Fedora, especially regarding security concerns, have already been addressed (and, in many cases, debunked) in the links I provided.