Dear Qubes Community,
At long last, the Qubes 4.1.0 stable release has arrived! The
culmination of years of development, this release brings a host of new
features, major improvements, and numerous bug fixes. Read on to find
out what's new, how to install or upgrade to the new release, and all
the noteworthy changes it includes.
## What's new in Qubes 4.1.0?
In case you still haven't heard, Qubes 4.1.0 includes several major new
features, each of which is explained in depth in its own article.
### Qubes Architecture Next Steps: The GUI Domain
https://www.qubes-os.org/news/2020/03/18/gui-domain/
The GUI domain is a qube separate from dom0 that handles all
display-related tasks and some system management. This separation allows
us to more securely isolate dom0 while granting the user more
flexibility with respect to graphical interfaces.
Note: The GUI domain is still experimental, so it's an opt-in feature in
Qubes 4.1.0:
https://www.qubes-os.org/news/2020/03/18/gui-domain/#what-will-actually-be-in-qubes-41
### Qubes Architecture Next Steps: The New Qrexec Policy System
https://www.qubes-os.org/news/2020/06/22/new-qrexec-policy-system/
Qrexec is is an RPC (remote procedure call) mechanism that allows one
qube to do something inside another qube. The qrexec *policy* system
enforces "who can do what and where." Qubes 4.1 brings a new qrexec
policy format, significant performance improvements, support for socket
services, and policy notifications that make it easier to detect
problems.
### New Gentoo templates and maintenance infrastructure
https://www.qubes-os.org/news/2020/10/05/new-gentoo-templates-and-maintenance-infrastructure/
There are three new flavors of Gentoo templates, as well as an advanced
infrastructure for automated building and testing, which also supports
Linux kernel and Arch Linux building and testing.
### Improvements in testing and building: GitLab CI and reproducible builds
https://www.qubes-os.org/news/2021/02/28/improvements-in-testing-and-building/
This article explains our work on continuous integration (CI), which
automates and improves several aspects of the development process, and
reproducible builds, which improves the security of the build and
verification process.
### Reproducible builds for Debian: a big step forward
https://www.qubes-os.org/news/2021/10/08/reproducible-builds-for-debian-a-big-step-forward/
This article explains the tools and infrastructure we've built to verify
official package builds by rebuilding them. While this was supposed to
be possible in theory, making it a reality required significant work,
including rewriting certain components from scratch.
### More improvements, bug fixes, and updated components
In addition to the articles above, there are also numerous other
improvements and bug fixes listed in the release notes (reproduced
below) and in the issue tracker:
- https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/releases/4.1/release-notes/
-
https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues?q=milestone%3A%22Release+4.1%22+is%3Aclosed+-label%3A%22R%3A+duplicate%22+-label%3A%22R%3A+invalid%22+-label%3A%22R%3A+cannot+reproduce%22+-label%3A%22R%3A+not+an+issue%22+-label%3A%22R%3A+not+our+bug%22+-label%3A%22R%3A+won%27t+do%22+-label%3A%22R%3A+won%27t+fix%22+
Finally, Qubes 4.1.0 features the following updated default components:
- Xen 4.14
- Fedora 32 in dom0
- Fedora 34 template
- Debian 11 template
- Whonix 16 Gateway and Workstation templates
- Linux kernel 5.10
## How to install or upgrade to Qubes 4.1.0
- To perform a fresh install, download Qubes 4.1.0, then follow the
installation guide:
1. https://www.qubes-os.org/downloads/
2. https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/installation-guide/
- If you're currently on Qubes 4.0, please see how to upgrade
to Qubes 4.1:
https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/upgrade/4.1/
- If you're already on any 4.1.0 release candidate, simply perform a
normal update:
https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/how-to-update/
## Support for older releases
In accordance with our release support policy, Qubes 4.0 will remain
supported for six months until 2022-08-04.
https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/supported-releases/#qubes-os
However, the Whonix Project has its own support policy for Whonix
templates, which states that one month after a new stable version of
Qubes OS is released, Whonix templates will no longer be supported on
any older version of Qubes OS. This means that users who wish to
continue using Whonix templates on Qubes must always upgrade to the
latest stable Qubes OS version within one month of its release.
https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/supported-releases/#note-on-whonix-support
## Thank you to our partners, donors, contributors, and testers!
This release would not be possible without generous support from our
partners and donors, as well as contributions from our active community
members, especially bug reports from our testers. We are eternally
grateful to our excellent community for making the Qubes OS
